If you are or have done any traveling outside the U.S. you know for sure you've been under surveillance. The U.S. government has been collecting electronic records about American travel habits since the mid-1990s but the program has been greatly expanded since 2002. They collect information like with whom you travel or plan to stay and personal items you carry, like books. The records are meant to be stored for 15 years while the data is analyzed by the Automated Targeting System. But new details about the program indicate that the amount of information being collected is even worse than initially suspected, such as the names and descriptions of books Americans carry with them. Civil liberty activists say that the data collection violates the Privacy Act, "which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate." John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist said, "The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society." (Washington Post)