Travelers: Homeland Security is Googling You
October 29th, 2007Via: Cleveland Leader:
Andrew Feldman, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who’s currently a psychotherapist in Vancouver, was recently detained for four hours, fingerprinted, and then barred entry into the United States after Homeland Security googled him and found an article he wrote in a literary and scientific journal in which he talked about using LSD and various other drugs in the 1960’s. And even though he has no criminal record and says he hasn’t used drugs since the 1970’s, Feldmar must now get formal permission from the U.S. consul before entering the U.S.
Feldmar has been accustomed to visiting the U.S. about five or six times per year to visit his children, but last summer when he was pulled over for a random search, border patrol turned up online evidence that he had experimented with drugs for therapeutic research in the past.
Related: U.S. Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read
Research Credit: PD
I already assumed they were going to start googling people eventually for certain purposes like obtaining a green card, getting a passport, getting a job with the gov’t, etc. but I had no idea they would take the time at the Canada-U.S. border to start googling people driving through, this is ridiculous.
Which also brings up a scary thought – this would mean that anyone who writes an article somewhere *about* you saying less than flattering things, or that you used/use drugs, etc. could prevent you from entering the U.S. – regardless of whether the claims are false or not…
In other news (this is off topic but it’s info that I’m sure the readers would appreciate, Kev) – be careful of what you bring on airplanes nowadays. Last week I was on an international flight bound for Amsterdam, with a connecting flight onto a European destination from AMS. In my carry-on small suitcase I had a bunch of hard drives: external ones for storage (2), normal desktop computer ones (2) and one laptop hard drive. The reason I had them was because I was moving and did not want to mail my sensitive data through the postal system or with the moving company.
Well, the security not only flipped out because they couldn’t x-ray through my carry-on which had the hard drives – they started questioning why I had them. The security guy was treating me very suspiciously and was pestering me about why I needed all those hard drives on the plane, also making a comment that “that’s unusual, people never carry that on planes”. Anyway, after a few minutes of hassling and making me empty out my drives and re-running them through the x-ray machine, they did let me go. I realize this might not seem like a big deal to some people who travel often, but I had never been treated suspiciously just because I had my computer data with me.
Beware, travelers – I’m probably lucky that they didn’t decide to go read inside my drives and discover all the interesting ‘documentaries’ that I have – I might have been placed on some kind of a watch list!
Forewarned is forearmed! (sorry for the off-topic Kev but I feel that your readers will appreciate this story)
Not to mention, nearly everyone has several dozen people with identical names in the country. Check zabasearch. It wouldn’t matter to private police.
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By the way, I met up with a friend after the SanFran antiwar march. She got her boyfriend into politics – a quiet mechanic guy. Now, he is so convinced of collapse that he decided to go to New Zealand via wwoof.org farm jobs, and has his documents, and has sold his stuff. He doesn’t read your site, but rather a mix of normal and 911 truth material. It’s sad because my friend has anxiety, and even lived in east germany, but probably couldn’t take the stress of moving with him.
good god. this is very, very bad news. censorship and cultural control just took a huge step forwards.