Photo: regolare on Flickr.

Two not-so-nice highlights of my RSS feeds:

First, from Edent (via BoingBoing) that got stuck in a “stop and search” checkpoint (video in both links):

A Londoner was stopped by a London Transport Police officer under S.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and had the presence of mind to whip out his video camera and record the officers tearing through his stuff. They officers admitted that they had no suspicion of him, no reason to search him and told him he’d be arrested if he refused. [...]

So that is what you do in a democratic country. Nice.

And second, from Emily Feder at Alternet that got detained by US DHS returning from Libya:

[...] No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility. [...]

Lovely. Just lovely. It’s a good thing they’re safe from terrorists now though…

*shrug*