A quarter of a century ago, President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, criticised
the old Soviet Union for its system of internal passports which restricted its
citizens' rights to travel freely and anonymously.  Ironically, the United
States has in effect dupicated this system.

Travelling shouldn't mean surrendering your rights when you're checking your
luggage.  Yet, more and more, the Department of Homeland Security is asking
travellers to sacrifice their privacy for an illusion of security.  I urge you
to introduce legislation to protect the civil liberties of travellers and
conduct vigorous oversight.

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 shred this list and start again.  It
should be limited to actual terrorists.  Innocent travellers need a way to get
off the watch list, and real checks and balances if DHS is non-responsive.

A year ago the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on "Laptop
Searches and Other Violations of Privacy Faced by Americans Returning from
Overseas Travel."  I often travel into the United States with a laptop
computer, as do many of your constituents from Boston's technology industries
and universities.  As your colleague Senator Russ Feingold observed at the
outset of the hearing, the Bush government's suspicionless searches and
seizures of laptop computer and other mobile electronic devices differ
fundamentally from searches of paper notebooks and other records, since
electronic devices hold so much data, including very private and personal data
in which the government has no business snooping in the absence of any cause
for suspicion -- even in the context of border protection.  Tales of arbitrary
seizure of laptop computers abound, with consequent disruption to work and
loss of use and value.  I hope that you will work with Senator Feingold to
introduce legisalation that will forcibly and explicitly curb the government's
suspicionless searches and unwarranted seizures of mobile electronic devices
at borders.  The government should at minimum have a reasonable suspicion of
wrongdoing before searching the contents of electronic devices.

In addition to these 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.  Interest in such a use was mentioned as an aside even as early as
July 2006, in a letter from Paul S. Ruwaldt of DHS's Science and Technology
Directorate to a company devloping such a device (see
"/media/img/blogs/entry_img/2008/Jul/08/Homeland_Security_Letter_1_-_JUL2006.pdf"
and
"http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/aviation-security/2008/Jul/01/want-some-torture-with-your-peanuts/".)

DHS has shown that it cannot be trusted to protect the civil liberties of
travellers. That's why I am counting on you.  Please take action to protect the
rights of your constituents and visitors.