Hypocrites Outrage

The Geekwife sent this article to me. I'm not overly surprised by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security through US Customs can open personal correspondence from overseas. The part of the article that gets me is that this guy has derision for the DHS openly observing his correspondence and making sure he knows it.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "“by Border Protection"” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. "“I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,"” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. "“That'’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,"” he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.

"“I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning,"” Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. "“I think I must be under some kind of surveillance."”

Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit'’s position. "“But we didn'’t do it as clumsily as they'’ve done it, I can tell you that,"” Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. "“Isn'’t it funny that this doesn'’t appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here," he said.

So he feels outraged that his mail has been tampered with, but he himself formerly did this exact thing for the military. Sounds like a bit of selective ethics going on. And his thinking that he must be under some kind of is just hilarious. If he was under surveillance, do you suppose that they would have put the tape with a border security label on it? Of course he had to run to the press with this horrible story of violations of his rights.

He calls the surviellance clumsy? How's that? Leaving a big label saying your mail has been opened by the government isn't clumsy, it's a notification. The fact that he calls it clumsy really makes one wonder if maybe he isn't being melodramatic. Would he really prefer that he not be notified of the surviellance? I suppose he'd be fine with that.

Personally, I find it bizarre that they use that tape for the notification, not to mention that they notify the correspondent at all. Doesn't sound logical to me if the intent is intelligence gathering. If the notification is required for random searches or mistakes, that would make sense. But then Customs can open any packages coming into the US for many different reasons. Without any direct information on why they opened the professor's report of the activity is quite sad.