August 1, 2006 7:03 AM

Welcome to the People's Republic of Amerika

‘No right to privacy’

Storm troopers bust cellphone photographer

The average American business traveler now has less legal rights than Islamic terrorists. In August 2001, “20th hijackerZacharias Moussaoui was arrested for immigration violations in Minnesota, but the U.S. government was so concerned with his privacy rights that they wouldn’t let FBI agents search his laptop computer — a computer that held information about the hijacking attacks that would take place a month later.

While we’ve been merrily going about attending to the minutiae of our lives, you might just be surprised to discover what our government has been doing on our behalf. In the name of protecting the Homeland from another 9.11, rights that we’ve previously taken for granted have gradually disappeared. Have you been to a sporting event lately? Were you able to enter the venue without being patted down? Was you bag opened and the contents examind?

How about flying? Did you have to take your shoes or sandals off? Can you imagine what the security checkpoints would be like if Richard Reed’s bomb had been in his underwear?

I could cite many other examples, of course, but one thing seems clear: in the effort to ensure that the terrorists don’t win, we’ve completely ignored the reality that the terrorists have already won. By enforcing the idea that we must give up certain liberties in order to preserve our liberties, the terrorists have already had more of an impact on everyday American life that anyone seems willing to admit. By allowing ourselves to become a prisoner of our own fear (and by allowing our government to exploit that fear), we have in many respects become prisoners within our own borders.

For generations, people from around the world have come to America, in many cases because they wanted to be free, to be able to enjoy the freedoms that so many Americans take for granted. Well, y’all might want to rethink that canard. I hear Canada’s still got a lot going for it….

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on Monday that “border police may conduct random searches of laptops without search warrants or probable cause.”

The 2004 case involved U.S. businessman Stuart Romm, who was interviewed by American immigration cops after he was denied entrance to Canada for a corporate seminar. Homeland Security agents searched his notebook computer.

Using forensic software, they reportedly found 42 child pornography images deleted from his web browser’s cache. (“Deleting” files doesn’t actually delete files.) Romm got a 10-15 year sentence, despite his lawyer’s pleas to have the evidence thrown out because warrantless searches are supposed to be illegal in the United States. In denying his appeal, the 9th Circuit judges ruled that “American citizens effectively enjoy no right to privacy when stopped at the border.”

It’s just the latest evidence that Americans effectively enjoy no rights whatsoever.

Welcome to post-9.11 America, where your government can do whatever it deems necessary, and it can silence opposition by citing the need to protect us from terrorism. We used to think that as Americans, we were due things like due process and habeas corpus if the government were to arrest us. Well, guess what, y’all? You might just want to forget all those rights you thought you had, because under the right circumstances, you can be disappeared in almost the same way as you could have been in Pinochet’s Chile.

Instead of being outraged by the White House’s flagrant disregard for the Constitution it is supposed to honor, this week Congress is rushing to pass laws that make the Bush administration’s crimes totally legal. It’s as if Congress made burglary legal in 1974 rather than start impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon.

Across the country, cops are arresting and jailing people for taking pictures with cell-phone cameras.

“Today in the U.S., the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely,” says Reagan Administration assistant treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts. “Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.”

Yes, if you’re someone the government deems as a threat, whether real or perceived, you may find that the rights you thought you had have mysteriously disappeared. And that whole Bill of Rights thing? Well, we’re fighting a war, damnit, and extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Amazing what can happen when you’re not paying attention, isn’t it?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 1, 2006 7:03 AM.

No good deed goes unpunished was the previous entry in this blog.

Can't we stop the suffering??? is the next entry in this blog.

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