California Libertarian Alliance

“Laptop seizures are a growing menace in America today and it’s not about your computer software having a stroke. It’s about the Department of Homeland Security, without warrant or even “reasonable suspicion,” (aka “probable cause”) seizing computers, cell phones, Blackberries and other electronic properties from Americans returning to their “homeland.” ”

“Glenn Greenwald reports in his Salon.com column that a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union has revealed that in an 18-month period beginning in October, 2008, DHS subjected more than 6,000 people, half of them American citizens, to electronic searches when entering the country. The agents go through the data, copying it as they see fit and storing it for possible distribution to other agencies throughout the government. The unhappy traveler may not get his equipment back for months or, in some cases, never gets it back at all.”

” “Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime.” Greenwald wrote. ”

Full column by Jack Kenny of The New American @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/5944-dhs-laptop-seizures-harass-travelers

“No matter how many times I go through an airport, which is almost daily, I am outraged each and every time. Whether it is the disgusting thought of a “full-body scan,” being touched in ways nobody should be touched, or having a guy in a uniform confiscate my one ounce of toothpaste because it’s in a six-ounce tube, I ask myself what has brought us to the point where we let the government do the kind of stuff to us that we wouldn’t let anyone else do?”

“My friend Congressman Ron Paul has introduced legislation to make it clear that TSA officers are not immune from basic laws regarding unwanted physical contact. I commend him for doing so, but cannot help but point out how unbelievable it is that such a law might even be necessary. How is it that we line up like sheep at the airport and let the government grope us in ways that would get anybody else in the country fired or arrested? I say enough is enough. Let’s stop being sheep.”

“Instead of trying to fix or adjust or moderate TSA airport screening procedures to make them less abusive or slightly more tolerable, I say it is time to turn airport screening and security over to those who should be doing it in the first place: the airlines.”

Full column by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson @ http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/19/why-do-we-have-a-tsa/#ixzz16otQa1Or

Over the weekend, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel posted something that sort of resembled an apology for the whiff at investigative journalism Mark Ames and Yasha Levine attempted at the magazine’s website last week. Ames and Levine, remember, wrote a meandering, conspiracy-mongering, wholly unsubstantiated article trying to link the anti-TSA backlash to the Koch family.* All the piece was missing was Glenn Beck’s blackboard.

True contrition would have included apologizing to the The Nation’s readers for the article’s inexcusably shoddy journalism, to the many legitimately outraged activists and TSA victims that the article maligned as hired guns, and to the general public for providing a forum to an “everyone should spit on libertarians”, “lets murder the people we disagree with” nut like Ames. Instead, vanden Heuvel delivered a heavily conditioned apology only to John Tyner, aka The Don’t Touch My Junk Guy, while standing by the broader theme of the Ames/Levine smear. That theme, basically, is mindless D.C. tribalism.

The priorities on display here tell all. Both vanden Heuvel and Ames/Levine concede that the TSA’s new policies are worrisome. But civil liberties violations and the encroaching security state take a backseat to a more important task: Smearing the people they’re programmed to hate

Full post by Radley Balko @ http://reason.com/blog/2010/11/29/the-nation-posts-a-narrow-apol