U.S. Customs to blogger: "Do you write anti-American material"?

[kpete]

U.S. Customs to blogger: "Do you write anti-American material"?
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2007-08-15 22:33.

Here’s a new one, from Matthew Good:

Hot/Live that’s what the US customs officer at Detroit Metro Airport wrote on my customs declaration form as he asked me to follow the blue line.

They were actually very polite and I wasn’t really bothered until they pulled out my laptop. At first I thought they probably want me to just turn it on to make sure I wasn’t hiding a bomb in it. But then I was asked to put in my password and soon one of the customs officers was going through my personal files and photos. Something that really bothered me, I felt a complete invasion of privacy.

I was questioned behind the reason I had a document saved from a Lebanese newspaper, I then explained my interest in middle east politics and that I used to write for Dose and I blog occasionally. This was followed by the question “Do you write anti American material”.

And it keeps getting better:

I said I didn’t, that I mostly concentrated on Middle East politics but for some reason one of the officers said that sometimes even Americans wrote anti American material. I really wanted to say that those are probably the ones that are in jail. They then asked for the websites addresses that I blog on (So Matt, you might get a couple of extra fans) …


http://www.correntewire.com/u_s_customs_to_blogger_do_you_write_anti_american_material

[baldguy]

1. "No, I attack George Bush every chance I get."

[CrispyQ]

8. Harr!

:rofl:

[EVDebs]

21. ...and I own an Almanac ! You will be REPORTED !

http://cryptome.org/fbi-almanacs.htm

This information could potentially be used to TELL THE TRUTH and that could harm the current administration's war/bullshitting efforts.

[babylonsister]

2. Marcy Wheeler also got harrassed by airport personnel, but not

to this extent:

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/08/behavior-detect.html

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. Going through personal files and photos on the laptop? Sounds like

the TSA is providing closet voyeurs a chance to get paid for their fixation.

In response to the question of writing anti American material, I could confidently reply, "Hell, no. I love and defend the very Constitution upon which it was founded."

I wonder how that would go over? MKJ

[here_is_to_hope]

14. They would probably ask....

"Whats a "constitution?"
:scared:

[gratuitous]

4. Do I write anti-American material?

No, but I might have incurable, communicable tuberculosis, so I can go now, right?

[Vinca]

5. This is frightening. Are they allowed to search the writing in your

computer without a warrant? I don't think so.

[Karmageddon]

13. Don't worry about the writing - that involves them "reading". Just be careful with the pictures

[mmonk]

20. Warrants are so 20th century. I believe warrants

aren't "needed" anymore, at least according to the bush administration, the congress, and some of the "new" justices. You must be a liberal extremist.

[marmar]

6. Stalin would be proud......

:mad:

[rosesaylavee]

7. This follows that entry at that link...

Submitted by bringiton on Thu, 2007-08-16 05:37.

...

The blogger you cite is not actually Matthew Goode but one Samar Mazloum, Lebanese born with dual Lebanese-Canadian citizenship. She is not a US citizen, nor does she hold any US residency or work permits. Both Customs and Immigration have every right to question her at the time of attempted entry into the US with or without other justification, including any contacts she may have made in advance or plan to make in the future and to examine everything she has with her including documents of any sort. This is well established law, nothing new.

Hot/Live flags were applied to her because she has recent passport stamps from a “high-risk” country (Lebanon - Hot) and she speaks good English so no translator would be needed - Live.

...

I once spent four hours being grilled in Toronto by Canadian Immigration because I was an American and that day our governments had gotten in a spat over salmon quotas, nothing to do with me. Shortly after 9/11 a German airport security officer in Frankfurt made me take everything out of my carry-on including disassembly of ball point pens and opening my 35mm SLR and exposing the film, just because he could. Compared to being held for half a day in a windowless room guarded by men with submachine guns, as a colleague of mine once was in Tunis because his papers were not in order (I waltzed right through in front of him with the same visa deficiency), Ms. Mazloum had a pleasant encounter. By her telling of it the US Customs people were polite. In my experiences above, I assure you, the Canadians, Germans and Tunisians were not.

...

So maybe its not as bad as we may think it at this point. It is as dependent on the individual security person as it ever was.

[krispos42]

9. "No, sir, I'm a patriot. I write anti-Republican material."

Would have been my response.


As to letting them crawl through my laptop... "No, sir, not without a warrant."

[tom_paine]

10. Wow, following this just lead me to a series of articles illustrating just how far gone we are as a

nation.

We are now firmly ensconced in Middle-Phase transition to the New Totalitarianism and Tyranny. The controls are now beginning to be more routinely applied everywhere and the infrastructure for internal passporting is now legally in place and has long been technically possible.

Things are getting MUCH worse out there (Google VIPR and "behavior Detection Officer"), and with Bush-Cheney poised to hit us again as their pals did on 9/11, probably MUCH worse as the shock will have to be MUCH WORSE if they wish to get to the REAL PLAN, the Nazi-Soviet Stage, the "Fahrenheit 451" stage, or the Final Stage or the Endgame Stage or whatever the hell you want to call it when this grotesquerie and affront to the Founding Fathers is finished being constructed by the Royal Bushies, may be as near as two to five years, though I still hold out optimistic hope that when though these first stages have proceeded astonishingly fast, that last leap to true evil will be very difficult for the Imperial Amerikan Subjects to bridge, since most still remember WWII, the Cold War, and the real good Old America did...yes I know it did bad, too, no nation is perfect..in the service of freedom by example.

My point is that I still hold, perhaps a vainly optimistic hope, that the process will take at least 10 more years before the Truly Evil Shit Begins. This of course, is creepily similar to a Jew in Nazi Germany, circa 1935, saying the same thing, yet only having 2-5 years left before the Truly Evil Shit Began.

[kenny blankenship]

11. I've been told that what this country is going through is NOT fascism, and not to call it that,

so this report must be some kind of deliberately malicious fabrication, or else a meth-fueled paranoid tirade.

[Javaman]

12. this is why I write in a journal when I travel. They never check those. :) nt

[porphyrian]

15. Good. This shows how scared they are, and they should be.

Americans are going to have America back, you tyrannical pieces of shit.

[Liberty Belle]

16. Can you claim a shield law as a journalist?

California and some other states provide them. (We need a federal one!)
I would say that I do not write anti-American materials, ever. But as a journalist I have the right to protect my confidential sources' identities under the shield law and therefore nobody has the right to go through my computer files, period.

[CoffeeCat]

17. It's not 'anti-American' to criticize...

...the Fascist thugs who are currently sliming up the White House.

Those bastards are about as "unAmerican" as it gets. It is very
American to fight for the Constitution and to be outraged when
a group of perverse psychopaths tries to trample on the foundations
of liberty and freedom that our Founding Fathers crafted and instilled.

Maybe those in US Customs should arrest every member of this
administration for being Anti-American---because they are
destroying our country and every good and decent thing for which
it has stood--during the last 200 or so years.

Tell Mr. Customs, "No, I've never blogged on PNACersRus.com so
you have nothing to worry about. I'm for peace and freedom
and I don't believe that our country has the right to invade
nations so my associates and I can play out, "Masters of the Universe"
with innocent peoples' lives...thank you very much".

[kerry-is-my-prez]

18. One of the scariest things I've heard in a long time....

Guess I've never gotten nailed because I don't bring my laptop with me.

I'm always holding my breath every time I fly - especially internationally.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

19. Someone else posted they were hassled for having "left-leaning" books.

Which I've had with me many times while flying.