Today In Your Surveillance State

They're going to want your laptop, please. For your security.

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

I think it was Digby who said that the security line at the airport is a massive psychological experiment to get Americans comfortable with having their liberties taken away. These days people take off their shoes without being prompted. The laptop removal will soon become commonplace as well. It's all to keep you safe.

And this principle then extends to wiretapping ("if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"), and those laws must be determined in secret, in a star chamber, without the prying eyes of civil liberties advocates.

The Department of Justice filed court papers yesterday seeking to block the ACLU -- and any other third party -- from submitting briefs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the classified forums that will be primarily responsible for translating the federal law signed last month into practice.

The DOJ argues that any briefs the ACLU might file would be ill-informed because its lawyers cannot access the classified information at the heart of many FISA cases, and the proceedings would just clog the flow of cases.

They want to keep everything secret for your protection, you see. Not to subvert the law and create the most expansive surveillance system possible.

But you know, it's the Chinese doing all that spying on reporters at the Olympics that we have to worry about. We're doing it to keep you safe.

When asked about the NSA's own warrantless monitoring of electronic communications in the United States and how that's different from the Chinese government's practices, Brownback responded:

"We don't put the hardware and software on hotels. If there is a targeted individual that seems to be a likely prospect of terrorists, they must go through the FISA court and ask for a court to determine that there is probable cause to be able to listen in on that information.

This is a blanket requirement of a hotel to operate a license in China. It is non-specific to anybody. It can be used on journalists. It can be used on athletes -- or, excuse me, they're at the Olympic village -- but on their families. It can be used on democracy advocates, human rights advocates, none of which is prohibited. It is real time.

I think there is a huge difference between these two that are taking place."

No mention was made, during the grandstanding, of the Bush Administration's monitoring of animal rights, environmental and poverty relief activists, as documented by files released in 2005 as a result of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union. (In those cases, the monitoring was done by the FBI.)

(We don't put hardware and software in hotels because we put it in a giant room in San Francisco that sucks up every communication imaginable.)

This really is a moment to fight back against these unnecessary takings of our privacy rights. The Get FISA Right movement that started on Barack Obama's website now has its own home on the Web, and they're pushing to incorporate FISA reform into the DNC platform, as well as holding those who voted the wrong way accountable and running this ad, using SaysMe TV to get it on television for as little as $6.00, to continue to raise awareness for the issue.



In addition, the Accountability NOW campaign, designed to punish Blue Dogs for their ignorance of the Constitution and the rule of law, is ramping up. August 8 is the date scheduled for a large money bomb to raise money.

Passive acceptance of these assaults on privacy and civil liberties will only yield more of them. We have to fight back.