You do not have a right to privacy in your car
Jul 12th, 2008 by Micheal
In Florida, apparently, there’s a new that allows employees to carry a firearm on to the company property. Disney World is saying employees are exempt because of a loophole in the law that forbids businesses dealing in explosives from having firearms on the property. Well, the heated debate that ensues is interesting and underscores the reason people need to understand their rights and responsibilities.
I’ll try to not get in to case law, but one thing that really bothered me in this news clip I saw was the person who helped write the law claimed that people have a right to privacy within their vehicle as it is an extension of their home. No it is not! The US Supreme Court ruled the complete opposite of that, actually. That’s why police don’t have to get a warrant to search your vehicle. All that they need is probable cause and they can search it, unlike your home. Now, if the car was up on blocks in the front yard, then yeah, you could argue that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Basically how this works is because the vehicle is mobile and the risk of evidence being lost is high, police are allowed to search the vehicle after catching a whiff of marijuana or seeing a roach sitting in the ashtray. Furthermore, local and state laws require residents to display certain stickers stating that the vehicle is registered, has been through testing to make sure it complies with emission laws, and so on. Additionally, I can look through your window while you are driving down the road and see in to your vehicle. So your privacy is pretty much gone at that point. Right to privacy? Yes. But not in your vehicle.
Could you envision a challenge to this law based on the new class called “mobile homeless”? I have read a number of different articles that talk about people getting forced out of their homes and now living in their cars. Here is one article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02cars.html
There are a number of other articles you can find quite easily that talk about this situation. If your home is your car, do your privacy rights get extended to your choice of domicile? Or are they lost? What if you’ve sold your house and are travelling the country in an RV? Same thing?
That is an interesting question and one I haven’t thought about before. I’m certainly for privacy, but I do understand the reason behind the case law that governs this. As for the RV, that one is tricky. As I understand it, if the RV is plugged up and dumping sewage/charging the electricity/etc., then it is considered offlimits without a warrant. However, if it is moving, then it is considered mobile and a warrant is not needed. That’s how I understand that part. But like I said, RV’s are tricky.