Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country? If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye.

With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history.

And what happens if you refuse to let the agents download your personal photos? Or if you have encrypted your private information? Then Border Patrol -- which is now an agency of the Department of Homeland Security -- can simply copy your entire hard drive or even take your device and hang on to it indefinitely.

Tell Congress: it’s time to rein in travel abuses by the Department of Homeland Security.

Unfortunately, seizing laptops and cameras at the border isn’t the only travel security measure that infringes on our civil liberties.

Just last month, the U.S. government's "terrorist watch list" surpassed 1,000,000 names and is growing by over 20,000 names per month. The watch list includes the names of prominent people, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), plus hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans many of them with common names like Robert Johnson and James Robinson. Your name might be on the list. But there's no way to know for sure until you are delayed or even detained for hours in a back room. If you discover your name is on the list, it's nearly impossible to get off. It actually took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the list. No joke. An Act of Congress.

These abuses have something in common: They make all of us into suspects, with no rule of law and no accountability.

Tell Congress: it’s time to rein in travel abuses by the Department of Homeland Security.

It’s hard to know what surveillance-state bureaucrats will come up with next. For instance, many airports are using scanners that are so invasive that they are like a virtual strip search! See-through body scanning machines are capable of showing an image of a passenger's naked body -- an example can be seen on the right. Security measures like this are extremely intrusive -- and should only be used when there is good cause to suspect that an individual is a security risk.

And recently, the TSA expressed interest in having every traveler wear an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet that airline personnel or marshals could use to shock passengers into submission. Unless something is done, this plan may not be as far-fetched as one would think.

Traveling shouldn’t mean checking your rights when you’re checking your luggage.  It’s time for some sanity when it comes to security.  Please, speak out now.

https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=1011&page=UserAction

Traveling shouldn't mean checking your rights when you're checking your luggage.

Yet, more and more, the Department of Homeland Security is asking Americans to sacrifice their privacy for an illusion of security. I urge you to introduce legislation to protect the civil liberties of travelers and conduct vigorous oversight. Please:

1. Overhaul the broken terrorist watch list.

In July, the terrorist watch list surpassed one million names, and it is growing at over twenty thousand names per month, according to reports by the DOJ Inspector General. Congress needs to rip this list up and start again.  It should be limited to actual terrorists. Innocent travelers need a way to get off the watch list and real checks and balances if DHS is non-responsive.

2. Require reasonable suspicion for electronic searches at the border.

According to the published policy of DHS, the government reserves the right to look through any laptop or electronic device crossing the border, saying it is no different from any other luggage. DHS has even seized laptops, holding them indefinitely. The government should have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing before doing laptop searches.

It's time for some sanity when it comes to security. Yet, in addition to the above abuses, DHS has already started conducting virtual strip searches of travelers using new, invasive scanners. Remarkably, there has even been interest in having every traveler wear an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet  that airline personnel or marshals could use to shock passengers into submission.
 
DHS has shown that it cannot be trusted to protect the civil liberties of Americans. That's why I am counting on you. Please take action to protect the rights of your constituents.