Bush gives customs workers right to seize documents from travelers even without suspicion. (enemies, legal)

[18Montclair]

Like I've stated in the past, to this Administration, our bill of rights are their toilet paper.

Feds give customs agents free hand to seize travelers' documents (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/23/BA9P133LEA.DTL&tsp=1 - broken link)

[ZGACK]

Please list all the rights that Americans have lost since 9-11.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by ZGACK

Please list all the rights that Americans have lost since 9-11.

Every single provision of the entire patriot act.

The right to open a bank account without showing photo ID. My bank just informed me the other day that, in accordance with the Patriot Act, the bank must demand photo ID from any person who seeks to open a bank account. Formerly, any person could open a bank account, and if it was a non-interest-bearing account, it wasn't even necessary to provide your social security number. All you needed to do was state your name, provide an address if you wanted statment mailed to you, sign a signature card. Thank you , have a nice dayl

If you really meant "What right that I valued was taken away from ME", I can't answer that question for you.
If you say none, then you are exactly the kind of citizen that made the holocaust not just possible, but inevitable. But if a person formerly enjoyed the right to open a bank account on his own recognizance, then that right has been taken away from him.

Thje right to get on a commercial airliner with a pair of nail clippes in your pocket.
The right to check a book out of the library without that information being placed in a FBI dossier.
The right to send an email that is not being saved in a big memory bank in McLean, Virginia where it can be mined for red-flag words.
The right to register to vote without the Ku Klux Klan looking over your shoulder.
The right to stand on a public sidewalk holding a sign that criticizes the president's foreign policy, without getting permission from the local police.
The right to walk down the banks of the Rio Grande River and look at it.
The right to drive to Canada for the afternoon, just for the drive, without first getting a permit that costs $100, to prove that you are not Osama Bin Laden.

[swagger]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Every single provision of the entire patriot act.

The right to open a bank account without showing photo ID.

What right? What legal document guarantees that right?

You can say this is not a denial of rights

Ok, it's not a denial of rights.

Thje right to get on a commercial airliner with a pair of nail clippes in your pocket.

Again, not a right. (BTW, nail clippers are ok).

The right to check a book out of the library without that information being placed in a FBI dossier.

It's not.

The right to send an email that is not being saved in a big memory bank in McLean, Virginia where it can be mined for red-flag words.

It's not.

The right to register to vote without the Ku Klux Klan looking over your shoulder.

WTF are you talking about?

The right to stand on a public sidewalk holding a sign that criticizes the president's foreign policy, without getting permission from the local police.

No problem.

The right to walk down the banks of the Rio Grande River and look at it.

Eh?

You're kind of "out there", aren't you? I'll be you're one of those 9/11 truthers, too...

You know, you can download and read the PATRIOT Act. It's over 300 pages, but you might learn a few things that you didn't know, and also that some of the things you think you know are wrong.

[tinman01]

This is a common security practice in many many countries. I have no issue with them making copies of my documents when I travel. They should not have an issue when traveling here.
I believe in Japan Retnal scans have become mandatory. No big deal.

[Who?Me?!]

"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :
From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)