The Court long ago acknowledged that effective use of consent searches by the police depends on the ignorance (and powerlessness) of those who are targeted. In Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, decided in 1973, the Court admitted that if waiver of one’s right to refuse consent were truly “knowing, intelligent, and voluntary,” it would “in practice create serious doubt whether consent searches would continue to be conducted.”21 In other words, consent searches are valuable tools for the police only because hardly anyone dares to say no.
