New TSA Policy May Lead to Increased Scrutiny of Reading Material

> Kazakhstan is generally about one of the most secular countries in Eurasia)

Presumably this is one reason why Sacha Baron Cohen chose Kazakhstan to be Borat's hometown - if he had picked an Islamic country he'd be risking a beheading in the streets of London.

About 20yrs ago, I had a very different experience. While trying to leave Israel my traveling companion and I were detained and repeatedly questioned for 24 hours. The crossing by bus from Jordan into Israel was uneventful, however.

While detained, my journal was photocopied (including the contact information of a friend in Egypt who had only recently been released from prison (he was sent to prison because of his poetry), my 35mm camera was destroyed and the film exposed (but I didn't get it back to find this out until nearly a year later), some of our belongings were never returned, and they did not release our luggage to our next destination (Italy)-- we spent days in the airport in Rome before we finally found out that Israeli security had held our bags. When we finally got our backpacks, the Israelis had poured all the liquids-- shampoo, contact lens solution, etc. over everything inside).

I spoke with a Palestinian businessman while being detained who told me this treatment is the norm for him when he travels, "They are trying to humiliate you. Don't let them see that it is bothering you. It will only make it worse." (they were metal detecting my underwear at the time of this conversation).

The thing the Israelis obsessed the most about during the interrogations (so, I assume it was what made us suspicious after the initial cursory search of our things) was that we had US passports, but our guidebooks for the Middle East and North Africa were all in French (we left on this trip from Paris).

The rest of the middle east was truly amazing! Beautiful people!

Anarchist's cookbook?

The Anarchist's Cookbook?

PiHKAL

The Poor Man's James Bond, Guerilla Warfare By Che Guevara.

The art of the deal

All good suggestions. But, pthreads, they are unlikely to detect the satire in bringing Art of the Deal, and are more likely to be reassured than concerned. In fact, I expect all Jihadis to be carrying tAotD already.

Forgot to engage karma shields though and the anti-humor brigade is out in force! The book burners of HN!

6. Eclectic collection of gay porn

Thank you for this.

It was enlightening to go through the do not click link to see what this extreme viewpoint looks like first hand.

The point is not that the TSA wants to or even ever will use your reading material against you in some way.

The point is the slow and steady erosion of privacy rights one tiny inch at a time.

In the far future when a government DOES decide to use these things against its people, they will have no defense against it because the practice has become a long accepted fact of life.

Here's a time saver: Any news article whose title contains the word "could" or "may", is probably speculative and not worth reading. If the article is about a cure for cancer, it's 99.9% probably not worth reading.

This post details two possible justifications for this action. It then offers civil liberties-friendly recommendations for conducting such screening. That seems directly in-line with the ACLU's mission. It's cheaper to have policies implemented correctly from the outset than to rely on lawsuits when they're overly broad.

I think you have fallen victim to the news. Yes there are a lot of rumblings about things like the OP, but the vast majority of people pass through US customs with no issue. Even as you said. Last time I went to Mexico both my gf and I were searched. When I landed in Brussels last time the immigration officer was really rude to me for no reason. It's not unique to the United States. My view is that your comment, like many other similar comments, are more so about venting outrage at Trump and so this is a convenient straw man (despite the fact that these kinds of policies continued under Obamacare). I'm not saying there aren't horror stories, but they are very few and far between, and much more publicized than getting detained in Thailand for a day because you didn't pay off the customs officer (contrived example). The US is the big target, so everything is exaggerated. I've heard people from Europe say they wouldn't visit the US because they fear for their lives and other things like that too, but again that's because they heard about a school shooting and then assumed New York was a battleground.

"Sir, I'm going to need your Goodreads and public library login credentials."

Yes, there is just blatant, mindlessly ineffective infringement of privacy.

Nothing of the sort is described, or even suggested, in the article.

The USA is at the bottom of the slippery slope, has landed on it's arse and now rapidly sinks deeper in to the quagmire.

For example, in 2010 the ACLU sued on behalf of a man who was abusively interrogated, handcuffed, and detained for nearly five hours because he was carrying a set of Arabic-language flash cards and a book critical of U.S. foreign policy. We also know that the DHS database known as the “Automated Targeting System,” which tracks information on international travelers, has included notations in travelers’ permanent files about controversial books in their possession.

Talking about slippery slopes, it is more like this (I understand that security is needed) : 1. Nobody over dangerous caught - there are no bad guys that many and we don't need that big agency, need to be reduced 2. Bad guys became smarter (our research says that there are 99% bad guys lurking and etc...) - we need to increase scrutiny never know what they can do And now you are sitting in management, if you choose option 1 there are big probability that loose job, option 2 you can expect that you wage will be rising (bigger agency, more work). It is same as policeman catching all criminals and he will be not needed, of course if something happens government will be blamed...

From the post:

> The second justification is to search for something called “sheet explosives,” which are apparently thin, flat explosives that can be hidden within sheafs of paper or photographs. In a case decided by the 9th Circuit in 2011, a man was arrested after TSA screeners found child pornography in his checked baggage, and while a district court ruled that the agency’s search of a stack of the man’s photographs was invalid, the 9th Circuit reversed, in the process accepting as justification the need to check for sheet explosives.

Ditto for a book on the history and manufacture of nitroglycerine. It's fascinating, but I didn't want to try to explain my interest in the subject. I've also worried about carrying printed material obviously related to malware (e.g., "The Big Black Book of <whatever>").

Chilling effects, yeah.