Privacy in the US

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I went to San Francisco from Beijing to attend an academic conference this June. I was travelling with only a backpack, which somehow made me a suspecious target. At the SFO airport an officer demanded to check my backpack. I was carrying a digital camera. Without asking for my permission, and even before I realized what he wanted to do, he already browsed through tens of the photos stored in the camera. I was shocked. Although there was nothing really private there, that was simply unacceptable.

A few days after I went back to China. A very good friend wanted to buy a new DC, so she played with my camera for a while. She politely asked me if it was okay for her to look at the pictures before switching to playback mode.

So much for “respecting other people’s privacy” in US.

Comments 1

  1. wenny wrote:

    I hope more people will read this article before they say anything about US and China,

    Posted 19 Oct 2006 at 9:29 pm

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