Another Police-State Headline

The post on fark.com:

(The Boston Globe)

"America takes another bold step towards becoming a police state. Supreme Court rules cops can frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so"

I'd comment, but luckily people weren't excessively alarmist and brought up intelligent points. I'll go through and cite some cases later today; I just wanted to make sure I got this info before it's off the fark main page.

To see the forum discussion post, click here.

A couple of the more knowledgeable posts:

More bad legal reporting. This is a pretty logical extension of Terry. Here's the actual opinion so you don't have to indure the stupid in the linked article.

-Posted by filth

Let's not rush to judgment here. AP reporting on legal decisions is usually pretty shiatty.
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers have leeway to frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so.

Followed by:

The justices accepted Arizona's argument that traffic stops are inherently dangerous for police and that pat-downs are permissible when an officer has a reasonable suspicion that the passenger may be armed and dangerous.

Nothing to see here, folks. Police have always been allowed to search a driver if they have reasonable suspicion that he may be armed and dangerous (police safety rationale). Same would logically apply to a passenger.
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A unanimous Court? Interesting, though I'm not really surprised.

Reasonable suspicion to search a driver or a passenger cannot rest on an officer's unparticularized suspicion or "hunch" -- the officer must have objective, articulable factors to justify his actions (U.S. v. Sokolow)

-Posted by KaponoFor3 (three separate posts)