U.S. Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read

boarder8925 writes "Be careful what you read when you fly in the United States. What you read is being monitored by airport screeners and stored in a government database for years. 'Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore's choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he'd packed for the trip. The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government's screening program at the border is actually a survelliance dragnet."

Re:So they know that I'm a fan of Alan Dean Foster

[phoenixwade]

Dresden Files, Harry Potter, Arthur C Clarke, and Bob Mayer

whoop-de-fucking-do.

..... And You don't care if they look, 'cause you've done nothing wrong......

Re:The End of the Republic

[BlowHole666]

ATS was started in the late 1990s, but was little known until the government issued a notice about the system last fall.

FTFA...late 90's, that would be...Clinton.

Re:You've Got the Wrong Guy!

[PlatyPaul]

Unless you're carrying something like the Anarchist Cookbook [wikipedia.org], it seems unlikely that additional suspicion should be warranted. Given this time of year [ala.org], it seems ironic that security would be judging others by the cover (and content) of their books rather than their actual threat, if any existed at all.

is it time for americans to stop lecturing...

[Anonymous Coward]

the rest of us about 'freedom' and 'democracy' as your country clearer has neither.
Cheers.

Re:The End of the Republic

[gregoryb]

And if you voted for a Republican sometime in the past dozen or so years, but haven't learned to change your ways, stay home.

And the democrats are better how? Both parties are working for the same ends. The only way we'll have any hope of a shift away from the coming police state is if a couple/few third parties rise up and kill off the current bi-factional ruling party.

Re:The End of the Republic

[Quiet_Desperation]

But voting does not work anymore.

At the state level (both state and Congressional elections), the districts have been so gerrymandered, you get extremist after extremist. Do you live in California by chance? The extremism is destroying this state.

At the presidential level, any sane people get culled out even before the primaries. It's the media's fault here. Any sane person will occasionally suggest a solution that is diametrically opposed to the status quo, and the media will make that person out to be a lunatic when the exact opposite is true. What were left with is a choice between a small number of sociopathic megalomaniacs.

And I'm no Republican, but you don't *really* think the Dems have any solutions, do you? I go to their web pages, and it's the same old broken crap.

Go look at Edwards statement on energy. The first half of it is "No nuclear power! It's scary! Don't care about technological advancements. No nukes! Naaa naa naaa! I'm not listening!"

Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Dems are just as close-minded as Rep, but on different things.

And, no, I don't have any answers, hence the frustration. :( Retire overseas, I suppose.

That's not what I was taught in the fifties.

[dpbsmith]

Actually, I thought the ability to travel freely within one's own country without passports or border check was a very fundamental right of a free people.

At least that's what they taught me during the fifties... when Soviet citizens did not have that right but U. S. citizens still did.

Re:The End of the Republic

[mpapet]

But voting does not work anymore.

You know when it stopped working? WHEN PEOPLE STOPPED PARTICIPATING!!!

I know political agenda is a bad word, but damn it all to hell how else is a representative democracy supposed to work if you don't have a political agenda and make an effort to see that agenda through?

Re:So they know that I'm a fan of Alan Dean Foster

[Rob T Firefly]

There's a big difference between sharing your choice of reading material with a couple hundred strangers in an airport you'll probably never see again, and having your choice of reading material noted by authority figures who then log it along with their impressions of you in a permanent database of questionable merit for the Department of Homeland Security.

Additionally, it seems this procedure also applies to books in your luggage, which you may have deliberately chosen not to read in public.

You've Got the Wrong Book!

[Neo_piper]

If you believe half the things in the Anarchist Cookbook then you are probably just a teenager looking for trouble anyway and having the T.S.A. confiscate your book before you try and make "fire fudge" or whatever and end up blowing your thumbs off, is the best possible ending anyway.

Re:Statanic Verses is always an airline favorite..

[statemachine]

If anything, that book would have lessened any scrutiny (as it was banned in many Islamic countries, and the author received death threats from Iran).

You might as well have been flashing around the King James Bible.

Re:Privilege not a Right

[Red Flayer]

It is a privilege to fly. However, it is a RIGHT to be free from UNREASONABLE SEARCH... regardless of whether you are flying, walking, driving, or sitting like a lump of bituminous.

Re:The End of the Republic

[The Angry Mick]

FTFA...late 90's, that would be...Clinton.

Jesus Christ. It doesn't fucking matter who started it. It's stupid regardless of which side of the aisle!

Stop to think for a minute. Suppose we do have this massive cross referenced database of interesting facts about people who act like they might be a terrorist. What can we do with it?

Absolutely nothing!

Are we going round these folks up and vanish them for fear of what they might do? Not bloody likely.

The cold hard fact of the matter is there is no possible way to prevent crimes ahead of time. If someone wants to become a terrorist, they're going to make the leap and blow something up. No amount of data collection beforehand will prevent that. Ever.

Re:Oh the Irony

[gstoddart]

The last time I flew I took with me my copy of 1984...

Funny, so did I (as well as Huxley's Brave New World and a book by the Dalai Lama).

I'm afraid, I am no longer willing to travel to the US. The current situation scares me, and I refuse to consent to being fingerprinted without cause. I think more countries should start fingerprinting Americans. :-P

Cheers

Re:That's not what I was taught in the fifties.

[SwordsmanLuke]

Are you serious? I have an out of state business trip in three weeks time halfway across the country. My company is sending me by plane. You *don't* always have a choice.

Besides, what happens when they decide to place cameras every 100 yds along major roads, scanning for "suspicious" faces? Are you going to tell me then, "Well, you can always just walk." The question is not whether or not we can *travel*. The question is whether or not anyone has the right to collect and maintain detailed information about me (as a law-abiding citizen) without my knowledge or consent. The circumstances under which that information is gathered is immaterial.

Or, on Nov 4........

[Zorbane]

you can go out, discard your tin foil hat, stop preaching at people as if everyone who does not agree with you is an idiot or duped, get a good dose of proportion into your cup of reality........and then go for whom the heck you think will do the best job, and voice your concerns with perhaps a touch less alarmism and hyperbole...

Re:The End of the Republic

[Jarjarthejedi]

Geez. People like you are annoying, you know that? Police State? Where do you live? Comparing the current state of America to a Police state is complete and total hyperbole. Last time I checked we did still have free speech, just look at the University of Florida incident (the one that everyone's jumping all over as police brutality, yeah that one). The student was allowed to say what he wanted to say, he was not blocked from speaking up at all. In fact he was allowed to keep saying what he wanted to say long after he had broken the rules of the debate (and a Florida law, but that's less important).

In a true police state he would never have been allowed to speak at all. America is not a police state. America is a country where a small amount of freedom has been removed from the people in order to insure their security. A large number of American's (myself included by the way) believe that that is wrong but calling America a police state just makes you seem like a crazed fanatic, someone completely out of touch with reality. Calm down and think rationally about the freedoms you have right now. Now think about the freedoms allowed to people in a police state. Once you understand the difference between the two then you will stop looking like a fanatic and start looking like a rational individual.

Re:Privilege not a Right

[Elfboy]

Yep, and it's a privilege to drive a car
and it's a privilege to use buses and subways
and it's a privilege to have electricity
and it's a privilege to have running water...

So at what point does a privilege become a right when we are talking about being a functional member of society. Do all our 'rights' guarantee us is living in a shack outside of town? (ignoring of course the privilige of property ownership.)

I'm not saying it's a right to fly...but where do we draw the line?

Re:The End of the Republic

[Archangel Michael]

I vote, but without any hope that the candidate I'm voting for will ever win in my lifetime because they don't belong to the Republicrat Demican party.

When somewhere above 2/3 of the American Populace wants to close the southern border (regardless of whether or not you want to) and yet it STILL doesn't happen, there is a problem. Then there is this article about people LEGALLY coming into this country being tracked while Millions are streaming over the boarders are not.

It is all a matter of perspective I guess. More people have been murdered by illegal aliens than the 20 guys who happen to hijack 4 planes. Part of living in a free society is that sometimes bad stuff happens, by bad people. Stuff happens. We cannot protect everyone all the time.

The best we can do is take reasonable precautions. Keeping track of who is reading what isn't reasonable on any level. It's not going to stop anything or anyone doing a bad thing. It just is annoying noise.

Re:The End of the Republic

[Mr. Slippery]

FTFA...late 90's, that would be...Clinton.

And as many (including, recently, Alan Greenspan [ianschwartz.com]) have observed, Clinton was the best Republican president that the country has seen in a while.

It was Clinton and his cronies who made the Democrats into GOP-lite, performing the spine-ectomy that leaves them unable to mount significant resistance to the neocons today.

Re:Privilege not a Right

[b0s0z0ku]

Well they can check whatever they want AND keep records on it because it is a PRIVILEGE not a RIGHT.

Nope, that's why we have a thing called the "Bill of Rights" in the USA. Reasonable search and seizure is looking for explosives and weapons. Unreasonable search and seizure is a fishing expedition and keeping of records about everything. Once the current hysteria about terrorism dies down, the courts are sure to see it that way. And "conspiracy to deprive constitutional rights" is a serious Federal felony (18 USC 241) -- punishable by up to 10 yrs in jail or death if someone dies or is seriously injured. Haven't heard of a death due to airport screening, but it only takes one cop messing up...

-b.

Re:Privilege not a Right

[Deadstick]

the other 199 people are glad you got checked

The other 199 people didn't have the balls to complain.

Fixed that for you.

rj

Re:Good.

[BoberFett]

In a free country it doesn't matter why you're carrying "a number of small flashlights" because it's nobody's goddamn business. This hyper-sensitivity some people have now to anything that's even slightly out of the ordinary is ridiculous.

Re:Good.

[Arthur Dent '99]

The quoted statement is misleading. The flashlights were emblazoned with pot leaf logos, and the book was also about marijuana, so it's not like they were concerned with the number of flashlights he had, but what was on the flashlights. He also stated to them that he was "self-employed", which isn't bad in and of itself, but when combined with his apparent fascination with drugs they would have been foolish not to have tagged him as a possible drug dealer. He's just lucky that they didn't do a body cavity search.

Given his blatant interest in illegal substances, do you really think that the security personnel should have looked the other way? If you know your stuff is going to be searched by security, maybe you should leave your bong at home. Isn't that just common sense?

If he had a copy of "Terrorist Magazine Quarterly" in his bag with a big picture of Bin Laden on the cover, should security ignore that just because it is published material? It seems that people are crying "that's not fair" just because security logged information on his book, as if books are off-limits to investigators or something. That's just silly.

re: but voting doesn't work anymore....

[King_TJ]

I think reality is, things are broken from the top down... Unfortunately, most of us are so concerned about the "big elections", we make the "feel good" attempts to go vote for our new president every 4 years, and possibly go a time or two in-between, specifically to vote for or against some tax measure or issue that's of great personal importance to us for whatever reason.

Meanwhile, we don't bother with much of the "smaller stuff", when in reality, THAT is precisely where one's vote really counts!

You may have noticed, it's not too often someone comes out of nowhere to take on a high-profile political career as president, vice-president, or Supreme Court justice.

These people "grow into" their jobs, after getting elected first at a local level and working their way up the ranks over the years. By the time they've made all the political connections and accepted all the bribes in a higher-ranking position, your "say so" in keeping them around (or even expecting them to do what they initially promised you) is pretty much zilch.

Where you STILL have control is at the bottom of the pyramid, instead of up near the peak. I know not everyone has time to research all the candidates for judges in their district and so on ... but at least you can make an effort to weed out known corrupt ones. (If I don't know better, I just vote out all of them whenever I get the chance. I figure, worst case, I have better odds bringing in fresh, new people for the job vs. letting the existing people stick around, potentially getting more crooked over time.)

Just by going to the occasional city/county council meeting, you're able to have say-so in issues that directly affect things right near your own home and workplace - and you may be one voice out of only 10 or 20 taken into consideration at that meeting.... Not 1 vote out of hundreds of thousands or millions!

Re:The End of the Republic

[Mr. Slippery]

Police State? Where do you live? Comparing the current state of America to a Police state is complete and total hyperbole.

The United States is a mostly benign police state.

While they will usually leave you alone (if you're a white middle class member of a mainstrem political party and a mainstream church), the government can, if it wants, disappear you.

All they have to do is call you an "enemy combatant", and boom! Non-person.

Not that Bush started it, of course; the slide into police state begins with Nixon and the "War on Drugs", which slowy eroded the protections of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. Civil forfeiture, "no-knock" warrants, mandatory minimums, censorship of messages that don't toe the party line: police state tactics have been business-as-usual for a long while now.

Re:The End of the Republic

[tkw954]

NO, it's *not* the Constitution that binds the U.S. government in that case, it's international Conventions!! By your logic every country's international activities are simply regulated by their own constitutions. That is not the case. Anyway you can repeat yourself all you want, reality won't change.

You're both right (or both wrong). Constitutions and international agreements BOTH bind governments. Although there doesn't seem to be anyone out there willing or able to enforce either when it comes to the U.S.