Nothing makes you paranoid like knowing the government is carrying a catalog of which Nora Roberts paperbacks you buy at the airport on your trip to grandma’s house.:

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials… The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years…

The government has collected information on travelers for well over a decade, but this story indicates that the breadth of information, and the targets the government watches, has been expanded under the Department of Homeland Security.

The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf…

Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government’s ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.

Damn, this is paranoia-making. Last summer when I went to BlogHer, I brought along copies of “Thank You For Smoking” and “Reefer Madness,” one a satire of the tobacco industry and the other a muckraking expose on the government’s role in simultaneously sustaining and oppressing the black market economy. Chef and I are about to embark on a very cool vacation next weekend, and if it wasn’t enough with concerning myself over what constitutes a gel-based substances, the travel capabilities of one’s vibrator, and whether or not the grommets in my belt will set off the metal detector and subject me to a strip search, I also have to worry about what kind of magazines I’m carrying. For all I know, my previous intellectual enterprises make me a candidate for NORML. And a terrorist!

Should I find a brick of heroin to take with me on my honeymoon?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Crazy Conservatives, Guest Blogging, Law, Travel, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.