Back on March 7, 2008 I posted on a subtle, but growing wave of Big Brothery behavior flowing across the US (read about it here: http://thepete.com/…g-brothery ). Back then I wrote, in part, about a woman I know who had her thumb drive scanned by a cop who had puled over the car she was in (she wasn't even driving, yet her personal belongings were subject to a search).
Well, here comes a supreme court ruling (as reported by an LATimes Blog post here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/…lapto.html and an SF Chronical article here: http://www.sfgate.com/…rticle.cgi ) that allows your laptop to be scanned any time you fly. Turns out some dude was on his way back from the Philippines and had some child porn on his laptop. He was pulled aside for a random search. The TSA dudes turned on his computer and started searching the directories and found the porn.
Forget that data can end up on your computer without your knowledge, thanks to hackers, bots and viruses--or even something as simple as stumbling across the wrong kind of porn site.
Forget that under the Constitution every human alive has the right to be free from unlawful search and seizure.
The United States government has now decided that every one of us is a criminal, without the right to a lawyer or a warrant before our data is searched. This is also an abridgment of our free speech rights since I might not want the government to know what I wrote about them in my private diary.
Now, when my friend got her thumb drive searched, she said it was because the cops were looking for evidence of involvement with Al Qaeda or child pornography. So, do cops just assume every person who gets pulled over might be Al Qaeda or a fan of child porn?
Apparently, it's now legal for the TSA to do exactly that. Now, I can almost accept them searching my computer for AQ-related stuff (hell, they search our bodies for weapons and anything that could allow us to hijack or blow up the plane already), but looking for evidence of other crimes? Why should that be relevant to flying? And what if the TSA person isn't trained to know the difference between pictures of one's own children in the bath and actual child porn? What if, for a joke my friend emails me an attachment with the file name "teensexring.jpg"? What if I have mp3s or movies on my hard drive? Will the TSA guy assume I've bootlegged them, even if I didn't?
This is what oppression feels like, folks. Oppression doesn't always come in the form of Nazis or uniformed men goose-stepping down the street. sometimes it's much more subtle--subtle but nonetheless, effective. Anyone of us who flies is now officially having their rights abridged.
Pretty fucking sad, if you ask me.
Sorry for the F-bomb, but I think our Freedoms are worth it. :)
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Orignal From: Big Brother is My Co-Pilot
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