If you stand with the official Customs and Border Protection, the personal passport booths at Dulles Airport near the capital of the nation, their task seems daunting. As a huge crowd of weary travelers shuffle along serpentine lines, inspectors take quick decisions to ask some questions (often through language barriers) and looking at computer screens that go far beyond name, date of birth and the codes for a previous issue of customs or a warrant of arrest.
Officers are supposed to collect the smugglers, terrorists or child pornographers and send them to secondary screening.
The chosen few — 6.1 million of 293 million who entered the United States in the year ending 30 September 2010 — get a great letter written on their declaration forms: agriculture control on foods, B for an immigration problem and c baggage for inspection. In computer Passport officers enter the reasons for selection, a heads-up to their colleagues in the back room, where they are accessible more extensive databases.
And there is where they have developed concerns about invasion of privacy, for the most comprehensive documentation for passengers being those who are bringing: their laptops, full of personal e-mail messages, photographs, diaries, legal documents, tax returns, by visiting the stories and other Windows into their lives well beyond anything that could be, or would be, stuffed in a suitcase for a trip abroad. Those revealing digital portraits can be immensely useful to inspectors, who now Hunt of criminal activity, and threats to security, search and copying popular hard disks, cellphones and other electronic devices, which sometimes are held for weeks.
Digital inspections raise constitutional issues about how robust the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures "should be on the border, especially in a time of terrorism. A total of 6,671 travellers, it makes their American citizens, had sought from October 1, 2008, through June 2, 2010, only a small percentage of arrivals of electronic gear.
"But the duty of Government is to respect the Constitution all the time," said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Also, controversial government programs often begin small and then grow," after "the Government maintains that it is simply doing the same policies that it has been making for years."
One of the objectives of regular is Pascal Abidor, born in Brooklyn student get a PhD in Islamic studies, who reported to be frisked, handcuffed, taken a train from Montreal and blocked for several hours in a cell last may, apparently because her computer contained research material in Arabic and news photographs of gatherings of Hezbollah and Hamas. He was interrogated about his religious or political opinions, and his laptop was held for 11 days, he said.
Another is James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay prison, who gets what he wryly calls a "Commons v.i.p." every time he flies in the United States. In 2003, Mr. Yee was jailed and therefore exempted from the army after he had transported prisoners of abuse complaints, urged respect for their religious practices and reported obscene caricatures anti-Muslim be shipped between security personnel.
Years later, he obviously remains on a list of "alert". A federal agent is located on the doorstep of incoming air of Mr. Yee, and escorts him to the front of the line passport and secondary screening.
Arriving in Los Angeles last may by speeches in Malaysia, was thoroughly interrogated and tried, he said, and his laptop was taken for three or four hours. He was not told why, but after that he returned and was waiting for a connecting flight was lost, a customs officer rushed up to the counter. "We left our disk inside your computer," she was quoted as saying. "I said," is my now. " You said no, and sure enough when I took the machine out, there was a disk.
David k. Shipler, a former journalist with the Times, is The author of "The rights of the people: how our research for our Liberties security invades," to be published in April.
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