Watch out for the cough police: If you thought the Patriot Act put the kibosh on your personal liberties, wait till you see what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are asking the gubmint for. According to Medical News Today, the CDC is asking for the first major changes to its quarantine protocols in more than a quarter century, looking to capture and retain personal information on travelers and beef up its ability to detain those with a runny nose or obvious fever.

Here are some specifics of what the CDC wants:

• Require airlines and cruise lines to keep electronic records of passengers’ personal information — including detailed contact information and seat location — for at least 60 days.
• Require airlines and cruise lines to provide that passenger information to CDC within 12 hours of a request.
• Allow passengers to refuse to give their personal contact information and still be allowed to travel.
• Require ship and airline captains to report to CDC any deaths or signs of serious illness on board, ideally before arriving at their destination. Existing requirements state only that captains report illnesses and deaths to local health departments.
• Expand the definition of illness to include respiratory ailments like influenza. Passengers would be considered ill if they had a temperature of 100.4 degrees or greater in addition to rash, swollen lymph nodes, headache with neck stiffness, and changes in levels of consciousness or cognitive function. Diarrhea, a fever that has lasted more than 48 hours, severe bleeding, jaundice, severe persistent cough or respiratory distress also would indicate illness.
• Allow CDC to detain a sick individual for three business days without a hearing, with an option to extend the quarantine if medical tests confirm the need to do so.
• Prohibit CDC from forcibly isolating individuals for longer than the amount of time it takes for the suspected illness to no longer be communicable — generally less than a month for most diseases.
• Clarify the appeals process for individuals who are quarantined to allow for “administrative due process.”
• Give health officials explicit authority to offer vaccination, drugs and other appropriate means of prevention on a voluntary basis to those in quarantine.

The proposed changes are expected to cost an estimated $185 million to $865 million annually to implement. The cost to the airline and cruise industries could be as much as $395 million annually.