Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented: U.S. Effort More Extensive Than Previously Known
The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials. The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department’s Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country. But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.
Someone once told me that this is a free country. In some respects, I suppose that’s not inaccurate. Really, though, can it really be called “freedom” when the mere act of travelling allows our government to feel it has the perfect right to collect all sorts of (likely completely meaningless) personal data? How long before Americans are being vetted for political realiability or hints of impure thoughts? OK, so perhaps that’s a stretch (or maybe not). Perhaps I’m being paranoid. But what if I’m not? Given the power-hungry band of thugs currently occupying the White House and populating the federal government, I don’t think my fear is completely unjustified or unwarranted.
Yes, 9.11 changed everything. I understand that, but I’m also sick to death of that tired canard. 9.11 may have brought terrorism to our front door, but it also loosed the dogs of statism upon the land. We’re now ruled by a cabal of thugs who seem to be able to justify every overreach, every incidence of oppression with the same magic words- “9.11”. Because of the need to “defeat terrorism”, the previously already onerous and demeaning process of boarding an airplane has been made into something just short of a strip and cavity search.
Politicians have been cowed into acquiescing to this creeping quasi-McCarthyism, because they’re terrified of being painted as “soft on terrorism”- whatever the Hell that means. Before long, in order to board a plane, we’ll have to strip naked prior to being screened by TSA, and before we’re allowed through, we’ll have to bend over, grab our ankles, and cough. Yeah, I know; it sounds silly…but then so does not being able to take a bottle of water through a security checkpoint.
Somehow, I don’t think this is the America I was told I’d be living in when I grew up….
