More "preventive detention" from the bush administration.

"The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a phone-book-thick proposed rule yesterday that would give the federal government new powers to track the comings and goings of individual travelers and expand the circumstances under which passengers exposed to a serious communicable disease could be isolated or quarantined," reported the November 23 Washington Post.

"The new provisions--the costs of which would fall mostly on the travel industry--call for greater scrutiny of passengers for signs of illness and greater efforts by airlines and others to obtain personal contact information from travelers. They also broaden the list of symptoms that would make people subject to quarantine."

The federal government's constitutional responsibility to protect our borders includes the power to interdict foreigners carrying infectious diseases. But the Bush administration, which has been eager to tear down our border protections, is also notoriously fond of preventive detention.

In an essay published by Reason in April 2003, tech writer Declan McCullogh noted: "A still-mysterious disease that spreads through unknown means may cause governments to overreact and unreasonably limit rights to privacy, property, and freedom of movement. President George W. Bush has signed an executive order triggering a 1917-era law that hands the Feds the power to appoint quarantine officers, create quarantine stations, and detain Americans 'reasonably believed to be infected' with SARS [Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome]. This power can be used carefully or wildly abused, and it's tar too early to make predictions."

SARS proved to be over-hyped as a potential "pandemic," and the same will probably be true of the dreaded Avian Flu. The same cannot be said, however, of the threat posed by the federal government's accretion of power to detain citizens on a whim.