Shocker! ACLU Upset Over Laptop Searches
Posted on August 27, 2009
The Surrender Monkey makes a brief foray out of retirement (he won the lottery), and he says you should wait for the punchline, though
The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday sued the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to uncover documents related to laptop searches at the border.
“The ACLU believes that suspicionless searches of laptops violate the First and Fourth Amendments,” the group wrote in the suit, filed in a New York District Court.
In July 2008, the Customs and Border Protection agency within DHS published formal guidelines for laptop border searches that gave CBP officials permission to search laptops and electronic devices at the border. Court cases on the topic have generally found that citizens should have diminished expectations of privacy when re-entering the country because the U.S. has a right to protect itself and control what crosses its borders.
I actually tend to agree with them, at least when it applies to American citizens crossing back into the United States. But, here it comes…….
Critics of the policy claim that laptop searches are an invasion of privacy – a personal computer holds a lot more information than a suitcase full of clothes or briefcase full of paperwork. What’s to stop CBP from copying the contents of your computer and keeping it on file indefinitely, they have argued.
Yet, the ACLU still has no problem with Obama’s snitch mail program, the collection of email addresses by Democratic operatives, nor any of the intrusive methods proposed in the Waxman-Markey cap and tax bill as well as the health system destruction bills. Apparently, giving an unknown amount of unknown people outside of the IRS access to your tax records is no big deal to the ACLU. Their view, which from 1/20/2001 to 1/19/2009 was “never trust the government,” has changed to “aww, Barry’s so cute, how could we not give him the benefit of the doubt?”
“Traveling with a laptop shouldn’t mean the government gets a free pass to rifle through your personal papers,” Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, said in a statement. “This sort of broad and invasive search is exactly what the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches are designed to prevent.”
Being an American forced to swallow the government option poison pill shouldn’t mean the government gets a free pass to your tax records and bank account information, either. Hello, ACLU? Beuller? Beuller?
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, ACLU, Border Control/Homeland Security, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, National Security, News
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2 Responses to “Shocker! ACLU Upset Over Laptop Searches”
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In yet another example of ACLU hypocrisy they also have no problem with having a list of people who have purchased guns maintained by the state and federal govt.
The ACLU is making things up since protecting the U.S. is considered to be reason enough in itself to conduct a search according to case law. That is if my memory is correct.
I would have to refresh my memory on the details to make sure what I stated applies but I a pretty sure it does.