Feingold Fights Search And Seizure Of Our Laptops

Imagine you're on your way home from a family vacation or business trip and some border agent or Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener stops you or a family member at airport security and insists that you turn on your laptop. They then demand your password so they can browse around and they follow that by confiscating your computer until a later date -- with no charges filed and no reasonable suspicion.

Like air travel isn't dehumanizing enough, right? And would most of us have any idea how to even respond to such a sudden and arbitrary invasion of our privacy?

That scenario has actually been happening right here in the United States of America and it's the reason Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has authored S. 3612, the Travelers' Privacy Protection Act of 2008, which would ensure that American citizens and legal residents returning to the U.S. from overseas are not subject to invasive searches of their laptops or other electronic devices without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

"Most Americans would be shocked to learn that upon their return to the U.S. from traveling abroad, the government could demand the password to their laptop, hold it for as long as it wants, pore over their documents, emails, and photographs, and examine which websites they visited - all without any suggestion of wrong-doing," Feingold said. "Focusing our limited law enforcement resources on law-abiding Americans who present no basis for suspicion does not make us any safer and is a gross violation of privacy. This bill will bring the government's practices at the border back in line with the reasonable expectations of law-abiding Americans."

During the entirety of the Constitution-trashing Bush Administration, the American people have had no greater Congressional defender of their rights than Feingold and, as an aggressive member of both the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, the Wisconsin Senator has always been ahead of the curve in protecting citizens' rights in the face of an unchecked Bush-Cheney-McCain regime.

"There is a compelling and immediate need for this legislation," said Feingold, in introducing his bill on Friday. "Travelers have been forced to wait for hours while customs agents reviewed and sometimes copied the contents of the electronic devices. In some cases, the laptops or cell phones were confiscated, and returned weeks or even months later, with no explanation."

The bill would require all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching the contents of laptops or other electronic equipment carried by U.S. citizens. It would also ban profiling based on travelers' race or ethnicity, allow people detained to witness the process of their laptop being examined, limit the time officials can hold a traveler's hardware and provide compensation for damage to a traveler's computer.

And the DHS seems unlikely to cooperate. When Feingold chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue in June, the DHS refused to send a witness for the hearing and did not comply with the committee's request to produce answers to the questions previously submitted to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff before the hearing.

The bill is cosponsored by three Democratic Senators, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Ron Wyden or Oregon and Washington's Maria Cantwell.

"We need to strike the right balance of keeping Americans safe while protecting their right to privacy. When it comes to homeland security, this Administration time and time again has exceeded the boundaries of current law behind closed doors, without public input, and without oversight," said Cantwell. "The search and seizure of computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic devices of returning U.S. travelers at airports, even where there is no reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, is just the most recent example."

The Travelers' Privacy Protection Act is strongly supported by the American Civil Liberties Union as well as business trade groups such as the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), which represents the global business travel industry and has members in 82 countries.

"This bill introduces a much higher, and necessary, level of accountability to the laptop examination process," said ACTE Executive Director Susan Gurley. "It requires the authorities to seek a warrant, which makes it subject to judicial process. It puts an end to the indiscriminate ransacking of data."

And Feingold is betting that -- with so many other outrageous things the Bush administration has done being too nuanced to grasp -- the average American will find it easier to get indignant about being shaken down for no reason and having their personal data examined or confiscated.

Said Feingold on Friday to his Senate colleagues: "Try asking your constituents whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs, and examine the Web sites they have visited -- all without any suspicion of wrongdoing -- and see what they say."

"I think you'll hear the same thing that I have heard: 'Not in the United States of America.'"

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Comments

[CeciliaBertrand]

Thank you most generously Senator Feingold, WE are with you - SAVE our Constitutional RIGHTS..No Island formed against you will prosper; keep speaking for us, THANK YOU!

[westreal]

WOW. Didn't know that. This is disturbing.

[WhiteHat]

OK. For no reason at all some clerk at the airport can review my air travel history, cell phone records, email, browser history, bank statements, credit card transactions, credit history, traffic record, criminal record and medical records. They can examine my wallet, clothing, shoes, hair, medication, medical devices, photos, toiletries, soda, and even my crevices. They can make me dance in public, arms outspread and spinning in place. They can make me walk a straight line, and take a breathalizer or blood test. The can demand an explanation for why I'm traveling, as if I might blurt out something to keep me off the plane. OK.

A government clerk can keep me from flying because I'm on The List, which currently contains the names of over 2 million innocent people. They can view the results of an FBI investigation based on NSLs issued on an agent's whim. OK.

But they can't impound my consumer electronics! That would be un-American! Right on!

Bless his heart, I'm glad Russ is fighting the fight, and I guess any small victory is a step in the right direction, but...

[ProsperosMagic]

Damn, Dude, you hit it right on.

[lthuedk 1]

Nationalist socialism does not sit well with freedom loving people. That's why Homeland Security must be dissolved and it's current employees reassigned to other agencies. HS is undiluted totalitarianism in your face and wholly symptomatic of dictatorship-not democracy.

Start by repealing the Patriot Acts and Military Commissions Acts. They're acts of subversion and terrorism. The Constitution is more than capable of accommodating change. We don't need manifestos of extremist power to conduct business and run the military.

Investigate Chertoff out in the open. Present his credentials and purpose. Explain to him why terrorism is well within the purview of local and federal police and not within the scope of the military. Remind him how effective the Fitzgerald-prosecuted case was in the first Trade Center attack. Remind Mr. Chertoff that a likudist type security apparatus is precisely what our country must never have and that we the people will prevail to that end.

Sen. Feingold is spot on in his effort to tame the totalitarian beast.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/cut_n_run.html

[roninracer]

funny how repubs cry about socialism when it is they that have enacted it into our laws.

-------------------------------------
I recommend that everyone read:
"The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."
By: Andrew J. Bacevich

[newshawk14]

I like Senator Feingold, and suspect that he and President Obama will have an excellent relationship
on restoring the Constitutional protections, that were shredded by the Bush administration. I would
recommend that they enlist Libertarians in this endeavor. I don't agree with most of their ideology
but they are pretty strong on the Constitution.

[sposton]

We've traded our Republic for the Empire and our rights for some vague notion of "security". Our Constitution is now just a "just a goddamned piece of paper!" I admire senator Feingold for fighting but I am afraid our loss is almost permanent. Too many Americans were trained to worship their flag instead of what that flag is supposed to represent. If we were truly freedom-loving people as we often describe ourselves we would have never embarked on this fascist trip! We Americans have lost our soul and until we get it back we will continue to slide into the abyss.

[faith]

Feingold is terrific !! Thank goodness he is willing to stand up against unreasonable, and illegal searches. I think he believes in our U.S. Constitutional rights.

[WhoDoUTrust]

I applaud Senator Feingold for his efforts but I would go even further.
I would require TSA officials to create a list of all those people returning to the US with a laptop, using the passports of these citizens as the base. They already need to do this in order to return those seized laptops anyway. This is so easy. Just give everyone a form they would fill out in the plane on the way home.
If the TSA and Homeland Security suspects someone then they would be required to go to a traditional court, not that ultra secret court, to get a warrant for seizure of that laptop.
Why are Americans with laptops treated worse than drug runners and organized crime?
This steady erosion of one of our most important rights must be stopped now, absolutely, and without any equivocation or contradiction.
Computers are just one high tech device which can web browse and hold information. Many cell phones can web browse, can they seize them?
My digital camera has a Sans Disk card which can hold non digital, as well, as digital information, on top of it's internal memory. Why not seize either of them?
Can they seize my camera because I could have taken spy photos of documents?
What about my video Ipods which could be smuggling in Al Queda messages to hidden cells?
What about any video cameras?
When are we going to wake up and demand our government respect our Constitution and our rights????

[realpolitic]

Our reactions to a perceived terrorist threat is often more anti-American than the threat itself. Travellers should be able to come home without having laptops seized and searched for no reason. It is humilating and unnecessary. It is unAmerican!

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Where's Cntrl-Alt-Delete on this dictatorship?

Keep it up Senator!

[protagonia]

So the "I don't want more government" people want to do what???

[GolfingDevil05]

If this bill doesn't pass, incumbents will have a difficult time explaining that to their constituents.

[Kindheart]

How many more constitutional rights will they take away from us? The GOP are worse than the outlaws of the old west. They need to go away, sooner than later. The sad part is that they blame everybody else for the ills of our country while they have singlehandedly ruined our country.