TNT Testing my Laptop..

I am a Swedish citizen living in The Netherlands and I've been going between the 2 countries for 8 years now with car, boat, buss, train and flight, but this time it was different when I went through the customs of Weeze airport in the area outside Dusselsdorf just on the border between Netherlands and Germany (cheapest route I found with Ryanair). I saw them having a interest in my laptop, they just said, "we want to do a little test on your computer" and I was thinking about ACTA and wondering if I left any copyright infringed material on the disc while I was lead into a little room. There I was told they want to do a TNT test on it and I was surprised, considering I was going from one EU country to another so how about my free movement that EU preaches about...? No point to argue with customs though, they have a cavity test ready for you and perhaps a detention cell somewhere and I did not want to miss my flight...

He ran the sweep for TNT and the machine showed a green light so all was fine. I was curious why they picked me so I ask what made them suspicious and he explained that I was the 120th person, so a ordinary check. I did not believe him, considering how they were looking at it during the X-ray. Could it have been the cookie I ate while reading the report "The shape of things to come" by Tony Bunyan in the train?

What have I learned? That I need to clean my computer from crumbs before entering a airport or I may be suspected of carrying TNT! The state actually suspects me of being a terrorist who would put a laptop bomb together to hijack the plane and force them to fly into the EU parliament or something?!?

Yes, everyone can be a terrorist in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the process of finding suspects we want to dismantle the principles of our democratic system and put projects like INDECT (that Tony is talking about in his report) to keep track of everyone at any given time.. Tell me: what is security worth if we have no privacy, what is a quality of life in a society who does not trust the individuals? I am not talking about dictatorships like Burma (Myanmar) and Sudan etc, I am talking about the western democratic countries, so how long will they stay democratic with these kind of distrust I tend to wonder..?

To quote Tony:

Put another way, if "collective security" requires the state, in "the name of all", to set the limits, boundaries and sanctions of all our actions it is a recipe not for "freedom" but enslavement.


Read his best work on Statewatch:
http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/the-shape-of-things-to-come.pdf

Please feel free to join our work in Pirate Parties International (PPI) against projects like ACTA and INDECT!

PPI URL:
http://www.pp-international.net

PPI ACTA Taskforce:
acta-tf@pp-international.net

PPI INDECT Taskforce:
indect-tf@pp-international.net