I think everyone has heard this at some time: “This call may be monitored to ensure quality of service.” Ah, such an obvious, thinly veiled breach of privacy and wiretap laws. Rather than slogging through the mountain of paperwork required to obtain a court order to listen in on private conversations they perceive as a potential threat to National Security, Law enforcement agencies can simply have one of these many companies ‘randomly’ monitor a number of interest. No evidence, no due process, just nice, legal invasion of privacy. In the U.S. alone, over 10,000 of these ‘random quality checks’ are carried out each day – I wonder how many of them are legit?
And while I’m still wound up on the topic of breaches, let’s take a run at my all time personal favorite. In ancient 1982 Canada, before the enactment of the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, police would engage in a jolly little game called the ‘routine search’. The rules were simple – pick a car or pedestrian you don’t quite like the looks of, pull them over and just search the Hell out of them right then and there. The Charter sought to remove police ability to do so in the section covering Legal Rights, which I quote here verbatim:

8. Search or seizure – Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Well, that sure stopped them. Nope, it barely even slowed them down. In a totally out of character fit of smarts, the Pork Soldiers cleverly goose – stepped right over the entire issue with one simple phrase: “You match the description of…” By claiming that you “Match the description of” someone who was allegedly seen committing an offence, they can now, under the pretense of ‘Belief on Reasonable Grounds’, proceed with their beloved illegal search. All it took was some swift, jack-booted stomping on the Charter when no one was looking. Here’s my own personal experience with that blatant disregard for one of the few documents that actually tries to work in our favor.
I was leaving my apartment building to do some shopping when I was approached by a law enforcement creature known to everyone as ‘ROBOCOP’. He explained that I was being stopped because I “Matched the description of someone seen walking through the halls of the building”. I told him that was because I AM the description of someone seen walking through the halls of the building, and have been for the 4 years that I’ve lived here. Not finding my response particularly satisfying, he took another angle and demanded to know where I worked. I could see that he was quite pleased with my reply this time, as it gave him the opportunity to exercise his authoritative, no nonsense outside voice. “Oh, I don’t work anywhere…” I let it trail off.
ROBOCOP was well into a loud, insulting tirade, righteously indignant that he should be supporting “Low life scum of the earth” like me, when I finished my sentence with “I don’t really have time. Got a full course load at university.” Good, let him squirm just a tad, then SMACK him with the Grand Finale! “Yep, 4 years of Criminology and Canadian Law doesn’t leave much room for the job search.” I swear his voice went up three octaves as he warbled out “So, how do you like living in Surrey, sir?” How’s about that? I went from ‘scum of the earth’ to ‘sir’ in under seven seconds and I silently thanked Hollis, my first Crim Prof. His opening words to our first ever Crim class were “The best thing about taking Criminology is watching a cop’s face collapse when you tell him you’re taking Criminology.”