Feds monitored air passenger lists to catch friend of Manning

[thewayne]

David House met (then) Bradley Manning and helped set up financing for his legal defense and also visited him in prison, reporting on the harsh conditions of his jail time. The Feds waited for him to leave the country, in this case going to Mexico for a vacation with his girlfriend, then when he returned in November 2010 and went through Customs at O'Hare they seized all his electronics and subjected him to an extended secondary interrogation.

Since entering the country places you in a Constitution-free zone, the Feds were free to search everything without a warrant.

They kept his electronics for 49 days, almost double the legal max of 30 days, and only released them when the ACLU sent a letter.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/manning-friend-database-stalked/

Comments

[silveradept]

That's despicable. One would think, at the very least, that the privacy laws of the place you are leaving would apply until you have actually officially entered the country.

There needs to be an ultraviolet lamp shown in on government secrecy, so that all the vampires hiding in the dark get burnt up and we can get back to the business of only spying on people with appropriate warrants served in open courts where possible.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

They basically were admitting "we don't have the grounds for a search warrant, so we'll just use the border search exemption". Very sleazy tactic.

I just don't see what can be done. They're not going to disband the NSA, they're not going to disband the FISC. Part of the problem is that the laws that created the NSA give Congress very little oversight, so it's easy for them to be wielded for less than legal activities. They've talked about adding a so-called advocate to FISC so that at least one person would be able to argue against the government when they want something, but because of the classified information that advocate would be probably a Justice Dept. employee and the presentations and deliberations would still be secret.

We've received an object lesson that those who gain power will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

[silveradept]

And then some. There would have to be effort from both the executive and the legislature to change things, neither of which wants to do anything to change, because their opposition would scream at them about not being tough on security.

Guess we need to fund a way to make the people quit collectively panicking, and disincentivize fear mongering from the politicians.