October 9, 2003
OK, so I saw an article linked off Obscure Store about an 85-year-old pedophile getting caught on his way to the Philippines to have some fun with girls about a tenth of his age.
Now, I'm happy that the sicko got caught, but what worries me is how:
Officials at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which made the arrest, said Seljan had been tagged after a routine inspection of outbound foreign mail had turned up incriminating correspondence and parcels he was sending abroad.
Now, I may not be an expert on the laws regarding mail, but how can the US government "inspect" outgoing mail without probable cause at the very least? I realize that privacy may not be protected at the other end, and that anything strange could be reported back to the country of origin, but from the wording in the article it looks a lot like the guys at Immigration and Customs just decided to read this guy's mail for shits and grins.
This strikes me as even worse than what air travelers have to go through -- at least the monkeys at the TSA have to see something odd on the X-ray before they break into your luggage. This just seems like too much.
