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."

Comments

Re:The End of the Republic

[Doc Ruby]

Here's one very good example, just from today.

Democrats are trying to restore Habeas Corpus, to protect the Constitution, as they swore to do. At least they're doing the minimum to sustain the republic.

Republicans voted to suspend Habeas Corpus, violating the Constitution, and just voted again to keep it suspended.

Perfectly demonstrating Republican attacks on the republic: every Democrat voted to restore it, every Republican voted to keep it suspended.

FWIW, note that I didn't say to vote for Democrats. But voting for Republicans is suicide by politics.

Re:The End of the Republic

[Sciros]

Yeah well those last things you mentioned aren't regulated by the Constitution, just so you know.

Your copy of the Constitution isn't the U.S. one, maybe, if you think it applies to non-residents/immigrants. It sometimes mentions citizenship explicitly (as in who can run for president for instance) but generally doesn't. Nevertheless please don't assume it's a Constitution for the Solar System or something. Just USA.

Dismantle the government.

[roman_mir]

The idea behind dismantling the government is that the current government became useless for the people of the country and now stands on the way of any progress at all. I support this idea in principle, of-course implementation is not very clear. Formerly all revolutions ended up creating even worse situation than that prior to them. So how do you dismantle the government?

Another issue is this, what principles would you build the new system upon? I'd think most people would agree that the federals should be given much less power than they have now and that the local governing system should be the most important system. The local system should be responsible for its own infrastructure, but how do you decide what is 'local' in the first place?

Of-course a more fun idea than others is to have a shoot out and divide everything from scratch. On the other hand this will not go well with property owners. Well then, maybe the most important local government should start from everyone's own place of residence. Wouldn't that be fun? If everyone lived by their own laws in their own house and those laws would trump any externally imposed laws. The problem is that there is no way to stop one household from cooperating with other households. Once two households cooperate, they are more powerful than any one single household. That's the problem with people - they like to cooperate while they really should be trying to survive on their own. How do we turn off the cooperation gene once again?

Ok, so given that people will cooperate and form alliances and thus will create the job of a politician, who will become more powerful and will always have more voice than a non-politician, how do we ensure that the politicians don't create the same problem that is observed at this time right now?

How about a meta-democratic system, requiring the voters to display good understanding of the issues they are supposedely voting on and displaying good logical sense and understanding the difference between a faith based and a scientific process of dealing with the world? So these people become an elite really, but anyone can then enter this elite by becoming more informed.

Of-course some masses that are not and are incapable of becoming the elite, will stop trusting this elite, but then who cares about those people right? But the truth is that those people also should be able to make decisions in their own lives, no matter how uninformed and mentally incapable they are.

Maybe different states should have different voting processes, while limiting the feds from real power over the states. Some states should only allow the abovementioned elite to vote, some states should allow everyone to vote, some states should not allow voting at all, etc.

Then, every 3 years or so, the states should get together and look at the results of this experiment and adjust it accordingly to the results.

So this is it, the system should constantly change and adopt, we should only create laws and systems to direct these changes onto the path of progress, efficiency, happiness and such. Maybe it is something like the original intent, but better, because the political systems in each state would have a choice rather than be dictated to the same political system.