This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 24th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown. Retaining your rights on the road can be made more difficult when you've been pulled over on a lonely night in the

middle of nowhere. While he's not offering legal advice, Tim Lynch, the director of the

Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, has a few tips on when and how to assert your rights when you're out on the road.

Well I'm happy to share my personal views on how one should handle oneself when you're in a police

confrontation but I should say that what I'm about to the things I'm going to say are my

personal views I'm not going to be giving any legal advice.

And why is that?

Well, there's just too many different situations, and there are dozens and dozens of legal

jurisdictions in the United States.

We have federal laws, state laws, county and city laws, and these politicians are passing rules every month and the courts are issuing rulings each and every week.

So it's impossible to tailor a specific answer to a specific question.

There are just too many out there.

But what we can do is talk about some very common situations

that people find themselves in and some useful pieces of information for people to keep in mind.

The main thing to keep in mind when you're asked by a police officer, like whether he wants to search your car or search your purse or

something on your person like a backpack or your jacket, you're not in any position

to know like whether he has the power to do that or not.

There's just dozens and dozens of situations.

Sometimes they have search warrants.

Sometimes the law allows them to demand a search,

like if you're in an airport type of situation. But when we were talking about like when you're in an airport type of situation.

...