Police Now Have Unprecedented Power to Invade Our Home | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary

Police Now Have Unprecedented Power to Invade Our Home | Nat Hentoff |

Cato Institute: Commentary: "Before the American Revolution, when we were King George III's colonists, his customs officers and soldiers, writing general warrants (writes of assistance) all by themselves, barged into offices and private homes in dragnet searches.

'Our houses and even our bed chambers,' reported enraged Bostonians, 'are exposed to be ransacked, our boxes, chests and trunks broke open, ravaged. ... Flagrant instances of the wanton exercise of this power have frequently happened in this and other seaport towns.

'By this we are cut off from that domestic security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreeable.' (Linda Monk, The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide).

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.
More by Nat Hentoff

This regal contempt for these new Americans was one of the most precipitating causes of the American Revolution — and for the inclusion of the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution's Bill of Rights:"