echwa.com

Wired’s The Threat Level blog recently published a disturbing account of how two bloggers late December were subjected to governmental pressure to reveal a source. The Wired article centered around instructions that America’s Transport Security Administration (TSA) issued Christmas day in light of the latest attempted plane bombing by a suspected operative of the Al Qaeda, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The bloggers, Steven Frischling and Christopher Elliott, travel journalists each wrote on their blogs about the advisory. A spokeswoman for the TSA, Suzanne Trevino, maintains that although the document was not a secure document it was not intended for mass dissemination.

Details from the document — guidance that passengers boarding flights for US bound destinations should be ‘pat-down’ with particular attention paid to the upper thigh and torso — were sent by the TSA to over 10,000 foreign airports and airline operators late Christmas day.

It seems that America is at a cross roads. On one hand there are the founding principals contained within the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment in particular which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press and on the other the passing of the USA Patriot Act in 2001 has undoubtedly produced shades of gray in how America protects herself.

When do these freedoms get overruled by the need of the State to protect the population and more importantly; who is the arbiter when presumed freedoms are crossed by the greater need of public good? What are you thoughts on striking this balance?

Further reading:
www.bordc.org/threats/speech.php

UPDATE: The TSA have withdrawn the subpoenas and offered a new computer to one of the Bloggers involved, read more at theconsumerist.org