I know of no article, clause, or paragraph in our Constitution that grants our government the right to suspend any part of it for any reason; not even during wartime. Although, that hasn’t prevented it from happening now, nor in the past.

However, restrictions on the guaranteed civil rights of the citizenry have been implemented in the past during times of real war, with real enemies, with real armies, with real power to inflict devastating, nation-wide destruction and the ability to cripple our armed forces and national defenses (World War II, specifically).

I don’t believe that the current situation, as dangerous as it is, qualifies.

Please post info on what measures other countries take regarding security at the borders, if you know of any.

I know that at Heathrow, there are thousands of cameras and faces are stored in a large database.

This is not just about the invasion of privacy of foreign visitors, but about the gutting of the basic guarantees in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that were put there to protect our citizens from their government (and which also extend to any individual while on U.S. soil).

Those are the very same rights and protections that nativists wave in your face when they feel their rights are being violated.

Let’s hope that when some would-be terrorist attempts to smuggle the plans for a “nookuler” plot Mr. Bush’s Goon Squad are up to the job.

This is a serious privacy invasion. I don’t want to give some border agents access to my private files, be it love letters, pictures, videos, email accounts, forum posts, business correspondence and everything else that is related to my life.

That’s the problem. Oh and yes, I won’t come to the States (although I would like to one day) and that is one of the reasons.

In the meantime, they give every petty official with a peaked cap and delusions of grandeur a field day.

We’ll never beat terrorism by ticking squares on bureaucratic forms or treating our own citizens as criminals until proven otherwise - but that’s what much of Western ‘anti-terrorism’ has descended to.

Hmmm .. lesse… cut everything you’ll need there (in encrypted form, of course) to DVDs and mail them to someone you trust before you enter the country? That way you know all your data is there waiting for you, you don’t need to worry about using other people’s PCs and you can take an clean lappie along!

Tip: To be invited for coffee and donuts with the immigration officers try using a huge American flag as your wallpaper.

I agree with you on this. US is one of the toughest countries around which deals with issues like piracy, security issues, surveilance issues and terrorism issues. Maybe they have a good point in entrusting border agents with such rights and powers because they have learned it from their situations and happenings. If they have taken this up for countering terrorism issues or something which is really illegal which harms them, then its a valid point and its a noteworthy thing. But if they have undertook this for something else, then I reckon this is not fair enough. People who travel to US can belong to many categories like tourists, business people, diplomats and who travel for work or for any other valid reasons. The fact you pointed out like leaving the notebook at home is not a viable proposition because many people who travel to US require their notebooks for many valid and justifiable reasons. About encryption, its one of the best things to do as long as you do not have anything in your notebook which concerns them about their own security or which they think compromises their internal security or anything which they think is not fair enough.

Every country in this world has their own rules to tackle issues which really concerns them. So when you travel to another country, its in your own interest to abide by the laws that they have and to be scott free.

I hope you understand what I mean, and thanks for writing an article which is so important in the current scenario.