On Oct 31, 10:39?am, "Eisboch" wrote:
"Chuck Gould" wrote in message

ups.com...



One of the challenges is that under existing law, a USCG boarding
officer cannot ask anybody aboard the boat for identification, but
only for documents identifying the boat.

Some additional insight on this issue:

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...mber/Gov.Lacks...

That doesn't make sense. The USCG is the only branch of the service that is
empowered to arrest a civilian. Seems like they would need to know who they
are arresting.

Eisboch

I'm far from entirely informed on the details of USCG arrest powers
(thank heavens!), but they may be allowed to ask for ID when making an
arrest but not when conducting a boarding.

A failure to identify the person being arrested would be contrary to
the Constitution on an extremely fundamental basis. How could anybody
rely on the right of habeus corpus if the government could factually
claim "We have no idea who we have in custody!"?