In the Name of the Children and in Order to Fight Terror...

I heard the toilet flush as I read this Buffalo News story about the ability of Customs Agents to confiscate your laptop, MP3 player, or phone without suspicion of wrongdoing. Nice!
What the article neglected to say is that print materials are subject to review! The details of the policy can be found here. It's five pages long. Apparently, this sort of scrutiny has been a "long-standing practice" according to the document. Terrorism, child p*rn, and intellectual property violations are a few of the reasons to essentially crawl into your electronic underpants and see if you have any dingleberries.
Let's break this down. Terrorism is probably the most common reason that people will give up their rights. The public has been brainwashed to be scared of a convenient bogeyman--one that our leadership pulls out whenever they sense people's resistance to new nonsense rules. Child p*rn is another reason. Let it be stated that I in no way endorse this material. Yes, I understand that there are horrible international rings that pass this garbage across borders. But I wish authorities would stop pretending that their overreaching investigations will completely and fully eradicate that scourge! Whenever a loss of a right happens, quite often "the children" are invoked to justify the loss. No one has a right to kiddie p*rn but our possessions should not be randomly searched without cause!! Watch this video where Cynthia "Can of Whoop Ass" McKinney gives it to Donald Rumsfeld over Dyncorp and its sexual abuse of women and little girls. Forgive my deliberate censorship of the word p*rn but I know that search engines have crawlers and I don't want a knock on my door because I'm exercising my First Amendment rights.
Anyway, the Intellectual Property violations aren't a life or death matter. So someone swipes a designer's logo and they're selling ripoffs as the real deal? Yes, that's wrong but no one will lose their life. There are other ways to investigate!

I have always been careful of what sort of reading material I have when I travel. I realize that the assclowns who take away our fingernail clippers and regular sized bottles of shampoo, etc. are indoctrinated to watch for "certain" kinds of print items. Your right to read is protected by the First Ammendment**except at border crossings into/out of the U.S.

For what little good it will do, I'll be on the blower/e-mail to my representatives to do something because this is re-godamndiculous! Even rollover Congressman Brian Higgins sees the overarching practices as wrong. That's got to tell you something.

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