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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."
I swear those books on kitten huffing & freedom hating are purely for research on my next acting part in a play!
My work here is dung.
I only read Catcher in the Rye.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
"Chuck, have a look at this one."
"So he's reading something on a laptop, is it a document or the internet?"
"Use the higher magnification, it's a website."
"Ok, I see it now. Something about Patenting a knife and fork... he's typing something."
"Looks harmless enough."
"Oh, my god, he's making some reference to life in Soviet Russia! Security security move on I-424, Victor section!"
"Code yellow! He's obviously some kind of subversive."
"Wait! There's something about a Beowulf Cluster, sounds like a cell!!!"
"Code Orange, Code Orange!"
"Holy sweet mother of Jesus! He's welcoming his new overlords!"
"CODE RED!! CODE RED!! Take that m**********r down!"
[NO CARRIER]
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It might expose some government employees to some good books.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Go Go Gadget editors!
Someone steals the text of the actual article (not unusual, I know), instead of providing an actual summary... but leaves out the hyperlink that's actually IN the stolen text for the Identity Project referenced in the article.
Why bother with editors?
I had to fly commercial on the day they reopened the skies after 9/11/2001 (I think it was the next Monday, can't remember the exact date).
The events of the past week made me decide it was time to re-read "The Satanic Verses." I took it on the plane with me and made sure to hold it prominently in the waiting/boarding areas, etc.
Nobody hassled me. Too bad, I wanted to make a big "Don't Taze Me, Bro" scene.
In other news, be careful what you post on the internet. Whoops, I mean our beloved Government is there to protect you from yourself. Amen.
Soon this will all be a faded memory as the government will require everyone to board planes like this
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
whoop-de-fucking-do. ..... And You don't care if they look, 'cause you've done nothing wrong......
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
I travel a LOT, sometimes internationally, and I've always been paranoid enough to print my own book covers. I own a print shop, but I'm sure anyone can crank out their own book covers for under $1.00 at work or at home.
My typical book cover usually says "Word of the Day" with other harmless jargon under it, and on the spine. When those morons/monkeys (not ad hominem attack, the employees really are morons) go through my bags, they only look at the fake cover.
...an economics student reading both Adam Smith and Karl Marx? divide by zero error?
A copy of The Constitution and The Bill of Rights
I would like to share a very uncomfortable moment I had related to this....
:)
I was returning from a trip abroad to England and Sweden. On the way back I was reading a copy of the Phillip K. Dick story "The Man in the High Castle". For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a story set in an alternate world where the Axis won WWII, and American is evenly divided between the Germans and Japanese, along the center of the country.
The cover art on this particular printing was an American flag where the start had been replaced with Swastikas. As I went through customs I was pulled aside for a little of the ole' extra screenin'. (Damn you again, full beard and being under 30!)
Things were going smoothly until he came across the book, at which point things became extremely hostile and many questions were repeated until I started to explain that the book was sci-fi, and about a postulated alternate universe. I think as soon as I said 'alternate universe' his eyes glazed over, and he began to loose interest in me and I was let go. So based on this article, I guess the government knows I'm a PKD fan. I hope Space Nixon doesn't get word of this, or I'm in real trouble. I'll probably just end up informing on myself to the government anyways.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
the rest of us about 'freedom' and 'democracy' as your country clearer has neither.
Cheers.
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.
"...perhaps a selection of DIY PDF pamphlets which you print out yourself and carry through security, with titles like 'These Security Measures Aren't Doing Much For Your Public Relations, You Know' and 'Could You Work Harder At Making This Screening Process More Efficient And Effective Please?'
Sort of like a bug report."
And then:
"Here's a selection of DIY pamphlets:
[Link]
Why not make your own, print out some open source book you've been wanting to read? A flight, and the necessary long wait in a security line, is the perfect opportunity."
The last time I flew I took with me my copy of 1984...
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
But voting does not work anymore.
:( Retire overseas, I suppose.
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.
-b.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
... of Ann Coulter's latest book and Atlas Shrugged.
Come on. What kind of bullshit is this? Wouldn't it be easier to be "classified" as "safe" just by carrying the right book?
Radical Muslim extremists could just walk through security with a copy of the Torah while wearing a kippah/yarmelke.
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?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
...sometimes I get real pissed off about this stuff. But other times I just say "fuck it!" I mean really, what do I care really about if some government peon wants to jot down in the big brother database that I'm reading Muscle & Fitness on my flight? I mean compared to the C4 bomb hidden in my MacBook, it's really of little consequence. ;)
[Note to all federal eavesdroppers: THE ABOVE IS A JOKE! CHILL OUT! I'VE NEVER EVEN BEEN ON AN AIRPLANE BEFORE!]
Sugapablo
"Dear Bookseller, it begins. Last week, President Bush signed into law an antiterrorism bill that gives the federal government expanded authority to search your business records, including the titles of the books purchased by your customers...There is no opportunity for you or your lawyer to object in court. You cannot object publicly either. The new law includes a gag order that prevents you from disclosing 'to any person' the fact that you have received an order to produce documents...because of the gag order...you should not tell ABFFE that you have received a court order... you can simply tell us that you need to contact ABFFE's legal counsel."
That is a letter from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) sent to its members shortly after the PATRIOT Act was signed into law. The PATRIOT Act gave the federal government powers to search records of any business selling books and any library. Then they slap a gag order which makes it illegal to tell anyone for up to a year.
It just sickens me to have to be paranoid about the things I read, or having to avoid using a credit card when paying for a book.
Any terrorist who reads on an airplane isn't going to be reading a book on bombs, explosives or how to be a terrorist. If a terrorist were dumb enough to do that, it sure as hell wouldn't be in english. This is just another example of the government amassing data on ordinary citizens all in the name of national security.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Here's the silly thing. Everyone looking all of these nickel and dime privacy issues always forgets that the Dept. of Treasury has everything. I knew a guy whose son worked at the IRS, and he would never fail to pull his Dad's VISA transactions and comment on where he was at in the store. So, the IRS knows everything you've bought, how much you make, how much you are worth, AND, the Dept. of Treasury also knows if you have any dangerous things, due to gun checks, etc.
If that were not bad enough, every major corporation has similar information, if they want it. Those little convenience cards at supermarkets, for example, allow the likes of Joe's Market to sell the knowledge that middle age men who buy a certain kind of beef on fridays also prefer a particular magazine.
The privacy thing is so out of hand, one has to wonder if we would wind up being an overall better society if we just made all this information public. That way, no one could have a monopoly.
This is my sig.
The problem is nobody really knows what is significant. So, they are scooping up whatever information they can find with the hope that someday there will be an important correlation.
Could this be used for other purposes? Probably not, because of the volume of the information and what it is going to take to really get down and start mining it.
The biggest single problem in the US today is there are indeed terrorists and we have had some incidents blocked. But almost no information about what has been blocked has leaked out. So everyone thinks it is all nonsense. As some people have mentioned, it would be the best thing all around if 3 or 4 indicidents were not blocked and successfully killed hundreds of people. Better yet, if a bunch of foreign nationals got blown up at the same time. Perhaps people would realize there is a problem and we're not anywhere near as isolated as we were in 1850.
So when would all this collected information be of value? After something big happens. What if it doesn't? What if everything is successfully (and secretly) blocked in the planning stages as it has been so far? Any program like this would be considered foolish and pointless, and invasion of everyone's privacy for no gain whatsoever.
But let one incident happen and the newsmedia will be all over the government for "not doing something." Today the criticism is for doing seemingly pointless things when still nobody can figure out what would be (a) acceptable and (b) useful. Would El Al style interrogations before boarding a plane produce useful results? Probably not - we're not looking for hijackers now. What we are certainly going to see is some kind of different attack vector. What would be useful to know about the (dead) perpetrators of that event? I don't think anybody knows.
The other approach that doesn't have much favor in the US government right now is to treat terrorism-related attacks like a tornado. It just happens and messes up a lot of stuff but there isn't anything that can be done about it. As far as I know, no government is taking that attitude - certainly not UK, Germany or Israel where attacks have ocurred. Would this work in the US? Sure - until the first attack. It is difficult to play the role of standing up and saying "it just happens" to a crying mother/father/brother/sister on TV. So incredibly difficult that no elected or unelected member of the government is ever going to do it.
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.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
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.
Although the both work for Homeland Security, their roles are different. When you enter the country at the airport you don't pass any airport screeners (unless you transfer to another flight). If you take a domestic flight you will never see any border inspectors.
That collection is likely to drive security people nuts, yet those are must-read books for anyone who wants to have an informed opinion on the current wars.
Heck, about a year ago, I was coming back from a trip to San Francisco. My wife and I were waiting in the departure lounge for our plane. She went off to the bathroom and to look in the shops. I got bored just sitting there. I'm a student pilot, so I dug out my big red Gleim "How to Fly a Plane" book, and my ham band handheld radio, with headset. I tuned into the ground control traffic, hoping to get some experience with a big airport's procedures, and commenced reading my book. When my wife came back, she looked shocked, and asked me if I knew what I looked like. She told me to get that radio off and put that book away before the TSA sees you and things you're a terrorist. I hadda laugh...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I was reading a 2600 article about breaking into secure and staff-only areas in an airport while waiting at the gate to board my flight. I was given no trouble with my reading materials whatsoever.
Truth be told, we were given more grief at customs regarding the wax-encased gouda in our suitcase than the bubblewrapped bong in my carry on.
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.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
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.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
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?
* We dance where angels fear to tread *
Not much, but seeing as how the Republicans have never held a 2/3s majority in Congress, passing anything over a Clinton Veto would require a fair number of democrats to cooperate.
Even after the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 the republicans only held 53% of the House, and 54% of the senate. They managed to get upto 55% of the senate in '96 and 98', but lost ground in the House.
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.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Take a different issue (say, gun rights - you know, the one with which you can theoretically protect your other rights) and it's just the opposite - Dems violating the Constitution at nearly every turn. Fact is, both major parties routinely ignore it whenever convenient. If you're not voting third party, you're wasting your time. The country needs a reboot, and we won't get that by voting status quo.
Constitutionally Correct
And as many (including, recently, Alan Greenspan) 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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"...every Democrat voted to restore it, every Republican voted to keep it suspended"
Your link shows that this is false.
Hagel (R-NE)
Lugar (R-IN)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Sununu (R-NH)
voted for restoring habeas corpus.
On the other hand the following senators voted against the constitution despite the example of their fellow senator of (supposedly) the same party and state:
Lieberman (ID-CT) (former Dem., lost primary)
Collins (R-ME)
Gregg (R-NH)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Damn guess I wont be able to read the lastest version on this during my next flight to the US.
I had an acquaintance (buddy from school) that worked for the TSA.
His jobs before that in order were
1. Fry cook (fired)
2. Fry cook (fired)
3. Mobil Lube Tech (fired)
4. Convenience store clerk (fired)
5. Fry cook (fired)
6. Drywall hanging (way too hard for him hence, fired)
And finally, a TSA screener.
Take that for what it's worth.
I don't see where the Constitution says that Habeas Corpus does not apply to U.S non-residents (whatever they are).
The Constitution actually says:
Section 8 - Powers of Congress -- The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
Next time go RTFM before you spout off about what is in TFM.
FreeSpeech.org
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.
The other 199 people didn't have the balls to complain.
Fixed that for you.
rj
You need to consider context. The Constitution does not apply to, say, Burmese living in Burma (an example of someone who does not reside in the US; I can't believe you didn't comprehend at least that bit). "Powers of Congress" has no bearing there in the first place. It's the Constution of the United States, after all.
I like basketball!!1!
Agh bro if they are being detained *outside of the US* then they are bound NOT by the Constitution of the United States but by various conventions: the Geneva Convention in some cases, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) in others, etc. That's just how it works. The law as outlined in the Constitution does not protect nor bind you if you are not in the US.
I like basketball!!1!
If you think the Anarchist Cookbook is a danger to the public then I have a real danger for you!
I have PC support techs that travel everywhere in the country and one thing they carry is an IDE HD with the standard images of all of the different models of computers we support. This is an amazingly scary source of danger for the American public! (apparently...)
The TSA in LaGuardia confiscated one of my tech's drives because it looked suspicious: He had affixed an orange DHL "10:30 AM Urgent" sticker on the drive so he could make sure it wasn't overwritten by mistake. Apparently those orange stickers are either a powerful explosive or an extremely efficient oxidizer. (In that case we should all cringe when we see a DHL cargo plane go overhead.)
. . . or maybe the TSA's airport security is one of the stupidest things to ever be seen on this planet.
As a rule: Security is a logical exercise. If it doesn't make sense then it can't be an adequate security model!
(so there!)
The real point is do they need to spy on what people are reading to figure that one out. They have dogs that can sniff out drugs and bombs why do they need to know if people are reading about drugs.
When it is dangerous to read something controversial in public you are entering an era of thought crime.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
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.
... 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.)
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
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!
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The whole idea was throughoutly debunked. So no more liquids on you although the threat doesn't exist.
The reason they banned liquids was some idiot high up happened see a re-run of Die Hard with a vengeance where they used some kind of two part liquid explosive. After they saw this movie they noticed people carrying bottles of liquid through the check points and freaked out.
Either that or someone figured out that if they banned liquids over a certain size they could make a fortune selling the little travel size shampoos and other toiletries.
With the first link, the chain is forged.