604

By now, after witnessing assault after assault on our Constitution by both the administration and its Congressional rubber stamp, I would have thought I'd be pretty well numbed to seeing our rights to privacy passing through the shredder. But somehow this bit of info found a live nerve (indignant emphasis mine):

For the past 18 months, immigration officials at border entries have been searching and seizing some citizens’ laptops, cellphones, and BlackBerry devices when they return from international trips.

In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what happens to the data.

Have we really come to this? Is there a clearer violation of our right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects?

Computer technology makes it easy to violate copyright protections on, say, music and video. But that doesn't make it right. The law is clear on that. The same protection should apply to a person's or a business's private, electronic "papers" stored on laptops. Or is that just quaint nonsense in this paranoid, post-9/11 world?

That distant rumbling sound you hear is the thousands of 18th-century winter soldiers, who cut their lives short to give future Americans quaint nonsense like this, turning over in their graves.