Going with the principle that police have the same rights and powers as the indival citizen themselves, but that certain responsibilities have been delegated to the police to provide the service of law enforcement…
If you are walking or travelling down a public steet, the police are free to ask you questions, and you are free not to answer. You are also free to continue on your peaceful/rightful travels unless they legally detain you for further questioning. Police must have reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime before they can legally detain you.
Unfortunately (and incorrectly), the state’s power-enhancing court system has repeatedly said checkpoints are legal, and that people must stop. However, people still do not have to answer any questions (in fact, both attorneys and police agree you should never talk voluntarily) or submit to any searches unless the threshold of probable cause has been met. The police are well trained to manufacture this ‘probable cause’ as vaguely and as often as they like.
Many people are OK with checkpoints since they are sporadic, minor inconveniences (“I have nothing to hide”), and they also help get the evil law breakers off the road. But without a principled theory of justice and law, it is quickly apparent that their argument invites a slippery slope which is deeply coated in industrial grade AstroGlide/KY.
Would checkpoints at the exit of every neighborhood be acceptable? Would it be OK to require full cavity searches and full radiation imaging bfore entering any public venue? Not just planes, trains, buses, stadiums, stores…etc? Or even random and forced home inspections where police get to go into a person’s home to check for evidence of illegal activity? At what point does something become too much and a violation of your rights? How do you reconcile your disagreement in this or that instance with your passive tolerance or even outright support of police checkpoints?
Below is a video of cops conducting an illegal (natural law) checkpoint and then proceeding to violate both the Constitutional and Natural Law.
Of course, the Sheriff later came out and defended his deputy. His response is the standard equivalent “Move along folks, there is nothing to see here”, and then tries to paint himself and his corrupt deputies as the victims.
http://www.newschannel5.com/story/22809496/sheriff-speaks-out-about-viral-youtube-video