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Not like it's ever happened before.

It's not a good thing when the state keeps secrets from its citizens, whether it forces an issue or not. If it disallows you from travelling, it is interfering with your life. There is no good reason to keep these regulations secret.

Why is this necessary?

Can someone give an example of terrorists striking the phone system? Anywhere, ever?
(Need I remind people that terrorism isn't new or unique to the US.. )

Is there any indication that Al-Quaida even wants this information?

This is just ridiculous to the extreme, no matter how you look at it. Just to play devil's advocate, I'll go along with the fact that the US is engaged in a 'War on terror'.

Is this 'war on terror' a conventional war?

Is the goal of Al-Quaida (or whatever terror group you want) to disable the US military and its supporting infrastructure through strategic attacks? Why? Do they plan to invade?

Hell, no. The goal of terrorist organizations is to create terror. That is best done through spectacular things like hijackings, bombings and the slaughter of civilians.

Terrorists kill people. They don't bomb bridges, bust dams and destroy communications networks. They kill people, as many and as violently and as publicly as possible. The purpose is to create fear and publicitity. Actual military-strategic damage is far less important.

So why can't we know when our phone systems are down? Why are bridges being guarded? Why are people being harassed for photographing locks?

The USA has managed to inflict more fear on itself than Osama ever could.

[/rant]

It's been quoted to death, but you deserve to hear it again.

Benjamin Franklin: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

I would say that the "forces of security" are pretty much running free in Iraq. I'm sure they have no problems tapping whatever phone they like, surveilling who they please and Abu Ghraib showed that some use of torture was being done. This is not a state I would care to live in and neither would you in all likelihood.

However, this is not enough to stop domestic terrorism there, is it? People are still getting their heads chopped off on a regular basis. Hussein ran the place like a prison camp and was able to keep order. We've set up a wishy-washy police state and that doesn't work.

Increasing police powers in a mostly free state tends to lead to what Jerry Pournelle has taken to calling "Anarcho-tyranny". What is Anarcho-Tyranny? Well, basically the police have the power and the right to make any ordinary, law abiding citizen's life hell (witness the number of run-ins with the TSA of late) but not enough power or will to stomp down hard enough to eliminate terrorism, crime, etc. The police apparatus increasingly spends its time enforcing draconian and silly rules (don't take any pictures of that bridge son - http://www.brownequalsterrorist.com/artiststatemen t/) while failing in actually stopping real crime and terrorism.

The police have more than enough resources and powers to fight terrorism. The lead up to 9/11 did not involve a valiant group of law enforcement agents fighting against evil, ACLU controlled judges putting legal barriers in their way. No, it involved interdepartmental politics, head office vs branch office nonsense, head in the sand denial and would not have been prevented with more wire-tapping.

It's time to confiscate all cameras, so we can't take pictures of people talking on cel phones:
www.brownequalsterrorist.com

http://brownequalsterrorist.com/

Mission accomplished.

That sounds like something a terrorist would say! Quick! Call John Ashcroft, this man is hiding something! What exactly would you do with this information you Amurrika hatin' terrorist you!

Actually though if you want to see how useless, stupid and ridiculous our "war on terrorism" has become (hope this one goes better than the "war on drugs" cuz last time I checked drugs were winning big time), check out the story of Ian Spiers. Here is the link to his website describing his run-in with Homeland Security types or you can read this story from the Seattle Times or this column from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. For those of you who don't want to read the articles Spiers was harrassed by the local police and Homeland Security types because he was taking pictures of the Ballard Locks, oh, and he's kind of not-white looking, but that never figures into the actions of our Homeland Security Overlords.

Kevin was held in prison for about 5 years the second time around on bogus charges. It never went to trial, he was merely incarcerated. The white equivalent of Brown Equals Terrorist.

Tragically, he finally gave up and pleaded no contest to the charges so he could be allowed to leave the prison and return to society. Go watch Freedom Downtime if you want to understand what Kevin was truly up against.

To those never entering the shitlist, what made a difference was the constant pounding of head against the beaurocratic [sic] brickwall, the humiliation of "sorry, you're not allowed to enter that flight", "you're not authorized by proper authorities", always have to submit to some greater authority. Always hearing "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong". To most, that's something they could live with. And what it would take to change it had very little to do with leadership, it had to do with people getting off their asses.

Yours is one of the most informative comments I've read on Slashdot.

To anyone who doubts just how much we've become like the totalitarian societies we once despised, just compare what Dovregubbens Hall (583591) writes to your last visit to an airport or a Federal building.

We've learned to fear the screener for the Transportation Security agency, because if he doesn't like your attitude, he can keep you off your flight -- or from flying ever again. A year ago that screener was a janitor or a Microsoft Certification dropout. Today he can seriously disrupt your life if he wants to -- and for the first time in his life, he know he holds that kind of power.

We've got the government "training" long-haul truck drivers -- guys who routinely drive twelve or eighteen hours straight to meet deadlines --, and bus drivers, and rest stop workers to identify "suspicious" people and report them to a secret toll-free phone number. To think that this volunteer force can't be used to suppress dissent -- "Just keep a count of pro-choice bumper stickers" --is to be willfully blind to a century or more of police misconduct.

Even guys with cameras aren't safe from being scrutinized and added to government databases, because cops today wave the bloody shirt of 9-11 and invoke "patriotism" as a fig-leaf to justify anything they care do to -- reasonable or not, legal or not.

Protesters, exercising their First Amendment rights, are already being arrested solely because of the content of their speech. Whether they are eventually convicted or just harassed by cops and city inspectors, the message is clear: dissent will cost you at least a day in jail, enough money to hire a lawyer (or rely on a possibly incompetent court-appointed lawyer), and maybe a little roughing up by the cops.

Every war attracts a few war profiteers along with the honest, self-sacrificing patriots. Every increase in police powers gives police new tools to fight crime, but at the same time gives that minority of cops who are bullies, busybodies, and braggarts interested in throwing their weight around more occasion to lord that power over the innocent citizens.

The thing to fear is not another 9-11. It's not even Stalinist knocks on the door at midnight. What we need to fear is more subtle: a steady erosion of American liberties, of what it means to be an American.

I always believed that, as an American, I had a right to protest my government. It said so right in the Constitution. But now I'm reluctant not only to protest, but to even view protests, giving that several nurses at a conference in Washington D.C. were arrested along with protesters, just for being nearby.

I always believed that, as a citizen in a democracy, the police were not to be feared -- and weren't any "better" than me. Now we have the Hiibel decisi