Got My Eye On You
Sep 22nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm by Susie
As it turns out, we were never quite paranoid enough for these people:
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.
I have from last year a badly drawn illustration of a hatrack with tinfoil hats and the caption “Because in this political climate one cannot be paranoid enough.” I could send it…
It is too difficult to monitor foreigners in foreign lands. Although it is most likely that is where threats would emerge, witness 9-11. Language and cultural barriers as well as the sheer numbers involved make efforts too formidable. It is much much easier to police on basis of imagined scenarios involving local threats. When political threats are confused with national security threats, there’s your police state. The cynics who run security agencies and the idiots who work for them should not be given the means of budget, equipment, and legal/secrecy cover to run amok.