BlueBloggin

More and more people travel with laptops, BlackBerrys and cellphones.

The US government’s laptop-equals-suitcase position is raising red flags.

… her cellphone was taken from her purse.

… A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. “This laptop doesn’t belong to me,” he remembers protesting. “It belongs to my company.” Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

… “I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight,”

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, said officers do not engage in racial profiling “in any way, shape or form.” She said that “it is not CBP’s intent to subject travelers to unwarranted scrutiny” and that a laptop may be seized if it contains information possibly tied to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child pornography or other criminal activity.

The reason for a search is not always made clear. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said it has tracked complaints from several members, including Udy, whose laptops have been seized and their contents copied before usually being returned days later, said Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE. Gurley said none of the travelers who have complained to the ACTE raised concerns about racial or ethnic profiling. Gurley said none of the travelers were charged with a crime.

“I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days,” said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE’s help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

ACTE last year filed a Freedom of Information Act request to press the government for information on what happens to data seized from laptops and other electronic devices. “Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?” Gurley asked. “People are quite concerned. They don’t want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going. It increases the anxiety level.”

Well, there ya’ go. Just what our founding fathers were afraid of. The First Amendment was a wonderful idea at the time. But, like all good things, it had to pass. What were our Founding Fathers thinking anyway? This is the new Right Wing interpretation of FREEDOM! This is the same FREEDOM that Hitler was so proud of when he decided that Jews were the enemy of the state. We are still stumbling upon the results of HIS searches and seizures 60 years later. Every intrusive move that Hitler took was justified to protect his precious Super Race of exclusives. Hitler also thought it was necessary to invade and make preemptive strikes on potentially threatening countries. History now labels Hitler a power drunk delusional madman. His Nazi state is now a grim example of wrong! Today, when this history seems to repeat, America willingly reinterprets freedom to mean ‘generously give away everything our Founding Fathers fought and died for’. Oh yes, God Bless the USA! “What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.” –Adolf Hitler

Filed under: 1st Amendment, Democracy, Nazi, Orwellian, civil liberties, civil rights, coersion, conspiracy, contradictions, domestic spying, profiling, search and seizure