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

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.