Canadian Blogger Cavity-Searched By U.S. Customs Agent Who Doesn't Know What Blogging Is

Not a whole lot to say about this, except that I am glad my tax money is going to pay for conversations like the following:

Him: Why would you visit someone in the states you’d never met (I mentioned I was planning to visit several people whilst down there)
Me: Well, I have[n't] met most of them, but I’ve talked to them dozens or hundreds of times online.
Him: Do you have any of their phone numbers?
Me: No, but I talk
Him: You can’t talk to someone without a phone number. Stop lying to me.
Me: No, really, I can talk from my computer to theirs
Him: Don’t be a smartass. If you don’t have their phone number, and you’ve never met them, how can you have ever talked to them.
Me: … (at this point I’ve learned that sarcasm doesn’t help, nor does answering questions he doesn’t want to hear the answer to)
Him: So, you’re trying to tell me that you’re going to visit someone who you’ve never met, never talked to and who knows nothing about you? And I’m supposed to believe this?
Me: … (This was two hours in, and minutes before I demanded to be released)

Anyways, I’m not going to New York.

I sort of expect this sort of ass-headed behavior from law enforcement, and so it's always entertaining when my expectations are fulfilled.  I just wish they had slapped the guy around a bit more; I mean, what the hell, talking to people on computers?  He's laughing at you saying that shit, John.  Little punk should have gotten a size 10 up his ass, not a lubed finger.  Send him to Philly with his laptop; he'll be picking keys and microprocessors out of his face for weeks.

(Via The Committee to Protect Bloggers.)

Comments

[Matt]

You should have seen me today at the City Council hearing on the Free Library funding cuts. I carried a sign that read "Philly's Bloggers Support Philly's Libraries." Even among all of those kindly library folk, I was lucky to make it out of City Hall alive.

[Jim Shirk]

I guess bloggers really are journalists -- seems like the DHS people have got the memo on treating bloggers with the same restraint (on them) and care (for their colons) that real live foreign journos now are blessed with.