{"id":6293,"date":"2006-01-10T09:39:30","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T14:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6293"},"modified":"2006-01-10T09:39:30","modified_gmt":"2006-01-10T14:39:30","slug":"reading-your-mail-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/reading-your-mail-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading your mail, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under the guise of a war on terror, the Bush administration has decided it can intercept phone calls and emails without a warrant. Apparently, snail mail is fair game too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. officials are opening personal mail that arrives from abroad when they deem it necessary to protect the country from terrorism, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said Monday. […]<\/p>\n

“Customs and Border Protection is charged with making sure that terrorists and terrorists’ weapons don’t enter the country,” said Suzanne Trevino, a spokeswoman for the customs agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

“One of our areas of responsibility is to inspect international mail coming into our country,” she said. “We respect privacy and always keep that at the forefront, but at the same time we need to make sure we do our job in keeping U.S. citizens safe.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m trying to be open minded about this. If a package is coming into the country from North Korea, and it’s ticking<\/em>, I think it’s fair to say that officials can and should open it. If a package is arriving by way of Iran and it appears to be leaking some kind of suspicious white powder, by all means, give it serious and immediate scrutiny.<\/p>\n

But the problem is that Bush’s Department of Homeland Security seems to use vague standards for its mail-opening program. The Reuters report noted<\/a> a letter that an 81-year-old retired history professor received from a long-time colleague in the Philippines. Before it was delivered, Customs agents opened it, screened it, resealed it, and then sent it to its destination.<\/p>\n

“It was a big surprise,” Goodman, who taught at the University of Kansas, told Reuters. “The public should know that this is being done. Nobody whom I know had any idea that this was going on. And as far as I know, it’s never been announced. It’s never been revealed that this is being done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No warrant, no notice, no suspicion of wrongdoing. It’s just the federal government reading your mail — just in case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under the guise of a war on terror, the Bush administration has decided it can intercept phone calls and emails without a warrant. Apparently, snail mail is fair game too. U.S. officials are opening personal mail that arrives from abroad when they deem it necessary to protect the country from terrorism, a Customs and Border […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}