Homeland Security...and Electronic Devices

Glenn Greenwald at Salon shines some light on something that most people have not heard too much about in the mainstream media.  However, since you are reading this on a blog, you obviously have at least a minimum level of comfort and experience with PCs, the Net, etc. So it seems logical that you should care about privacy, due process, reasonable suspicion, and the lack of redress.  Read on:

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it's sometimes easy to lose perspective of just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are. One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary. Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security's practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products -- laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like -- copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it. Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime. It's completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained. There's no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing. And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse -- not even to have their property returned to them.

Go ahead and read the rest.  The creeping erosion of freedom, in little nibbles, is turning into a bigger bite.