TSA wants to spy on passengers' reading matter

Truthdig - The Transportation Safety Administration is considering implementing a new national policy that would require passengers to remove books from their bags at airport checkpoints, like they do laptops. And given the administration’s reputation for religious profiling, the procedure could be used to violate passengers’ First Amendment rights.

“Books raise very special privacy issues,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in response. “There is a long history of special legal protection for the privacy of one’s reading habits in the United States, not only through numerous Supreme Court and other court decisions, but also through state laws that criminalize the violation of public library reading privacy or require a warrant to obtain book sales, rental, or lending records.”