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*koff* WMD *koff*

Or just ask Canadian citizen Maher Arar how great it is to get on a plane to the US and get off one in Syria to be tortured and detained without charge - based on somebody's accidental or deliberate injection of bogus "intel".

That could be YOU. Ever think of that?

The most disturbing case, however, is that of Jose Padilla

No the most disturbing cases are the Canadian citizens who keep getting pulled aside in transit through the US and deported to Syria for torture without ever going near a court and without embassy officials being kept up to date of their whereabouts. Maher Arar has been cleared by a Canadian commision of inquiry of any involvement in terrorism, and there are at least another three Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern descent who have suffered the same fate and are yet to have their cases heard.

I've always felt that Customs agents were considerably more frightening that real police. They can certainly do any number of things on a whim that a cop would never consider. Well, outside of The Shield anyhow.

There are more and more people, myself included, that wind up avoiding traveling to the U.S. From outside of your borders it looks as if I need to worry not just about routine customs abuse like having my car torn apart, but also being shipped to Syria for torture, and now having sensitive data pulled off of my laptop.

And again, in the present climate it can be hard to know what data Homeland Security might see as abridging "National Security" even if it's legal in my own country.

Because USA's allies are spying on their own citizens and USA has access to this info is even more reason for the rest of us to fear the USA. Case in point Maher Arar.

(for those of you not from Canada here's Arar's story in short - Canadian government was watching one there own citizens without any real cause; not knowing he was being watched he booked a flight that included switching planes in the USA; when he landed in the USA he was arrested because US officials knew that the Canadian government was watching him, and he was sent off to a secret prison where he was tortued for 10 months)

not to mention Maher Arar

Increasing the number of H1-B visas won't address an important additional problem that the summary doesn't mention: increasing unwillingness of foreign tech workers to come to the U.S. because they have no rights there. Granted, some of them may be coming from countries where they have fewer rights than American citizens do, but once they enter the U.S. they have no rights whatsoever: not habeas corpus, not due process, not anything.

I've worked in the U.S. in the past, but would be very unlikely to accept a position there since the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, whose passage makes clear that the government believes that no constitutional protections apply to non-citizens, as it explicitly suspends habeas corpus for non-citizens suspected (for any reason) of terrorism. Given that the constitution explicitly forbids congress from passing any law that suspends habeas corpus except in cases of invasion or insurrection there is no reasonable interpretation that can be put on this except that foreigners have no rights in America. All it takes is one baseless accusation of terrorist activity against you, and you're out of luck.

Given that this has actually happened, it is not at all unreasonable for foreigners to want to stay away.

I know it sounds trite, but it's the truth - at least in the US, the only ones who really need to fear the authorities are those with something that's punishable by the authorities.

This is unfortunately false.

If he were a citizen of only Canada, it wouldn't have happened.

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old wireless technology consultant. He was born in Syria and came to Canada with his family at the age of 17. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991. On Sept. 26, 2002, while in transit in New York's JFK airport when returning home from a vacation, Arar was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Syria, where he was held in a tiny "grave-like" cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. In Syria, he was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.

Tell that to Maher Arar.

I hope that we never reach a time where the majority of people accept the idea of "proving one's innocence."

I'm afraid that the notion of "guilty until proven innocent" is already entrenched in American law, at least for non-citizens. See the Military Commisions Act of 2006. If any of the various organs of the state accuse a foreigner of being guilty of terrorist-related activity, they may be incarcerated indefinitely without trial, without knowledge of the crime they are accused of, and without being allowed to hear the evidence against them.

And in some cases, for some reason, they may be deported to foreign countries to be tortured. It has never been explained what the purpose of this torture is. It cannot be for the purpose of gathering intelligence, because it is a matter of uncontroversial empirical fact that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. So it must be for some other reason.

Americans are very much living in a world where, "They jailed the terrorists without trial, and I didn't stand up because I was not a terrorist. Then they jailed the foreigners suspected of terrorism without trial, and I didn't stand up because I was not a foreigner. Then they jailed the Americans suspected of terrorism without trial, and I didn't stand up because I wasn't suspected of terrorism. And there was no one left to stand up when they jailed me without trial."

For the rest of us, we just live in hope that we never come to the attention of any of the organs of the state in the U.S. Unlike this completely innocent Canadian software engineer.

That may have been true with respect to Mutually Assured Destruction, but I think that this is aimed more at modern asymmetrical warfare. These days the US doesn't really fear massive barrages from the Soviet Union or China as much as it fears a single missile from North Korea or Iran with a nuclear warhead. Something which can inflict tens of thousands of casualties.

The U.S. is pretty much afraid of everything and everyone right now: illegally incarcerated suicides, completely innocent Canadian software engineers and of course, Mexicans. All societies go through periodic bouts of xenophobia, and this happens to be America's turn. It'll all pass in a few years, but in the meantime it is doing great damage to America's security.

The problem is that unless America becomes a police state, there is no practical way to secure the borders against anything, be it illegal immigrants or one-off nuclear attacks. Getting a single nuclear weapon into the U.S. is incredibly easy--so easy that I wake up each morning deeply thankful that no one has done it yet. When (not if) it is done, it will be done either by domestic transportation (imagine what one nuclear bomb set up to trigger at 3000 m might look like flying into O'Hare or LAX...) or by smuggling it in (canonically, hidden inside a bale of marjuana.)

ABM systems actually made a little sense (if they had worked and the "successful" tests hadn't all been faked) against the threat of massive attacks back in the Cold War. Today, against people who only need to get one bomb in after years of planning, they make no sense at all. They are the most wasteful kind of security theatre around.

Of my colleagues about 5% categorically refuse to travel to the U.S. for conferences or employment.

This conforms to my experience as well. I've worked in the U.S. in the past, as recently as last summer, but with the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which suspends habeas corpus for aliens, I will no longer enter the U.S. for any reason. YMMV, but I'd strongly recommend any non-American who can avoid it, to stay out of the U.S. until the current fight between the government and the consitution is over. There is no doubt that the constitution will win in the end, but who wants to be one of the tens of thousands being tortured in secret prisons while that happens?

America has not been a safe place for foreign high-tech workers for some time, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 makes it a considerably less safe place. You may look at this and think, "Well, I'm not a Syrian-born Muslim, so I'm in no danger." But I'm sure Arar, if the thought crossed his mind at all, thought, "I am a Canadian citizen, going peacefully about my business, in no way connected to terrorism of any kind, so I'm in no danger."

It's hard to compare between countries but for those of you getting a sense that Canada is so great for privacy ... just like the USA, we have our own government and police spying on citizens. The RCMP arrested a Canadian engineer (Maher Arar, Canadian citizen), presumably after monitoring him covertly, and collaborated with the US Government. The RCMP handed him over to the USA, who then sent him to Syria. He was tortured and detained there.

After returning to Canada, the RCMP continued a smear campaign and tried to identify the man as a terrorist, even though recent documents (from a government inquiry) show that there was no evidence to this effect. The national police did not take measures to clear the man's name, either with the USA or domestically.

Just remember that, next time you think you have freedom and privacy typing away at your office. It's quite possible the national police or spy agency is monitoring your activities, and who knows maybe you too can be labeled a terrorist

This guy was shipped off to Syria by the US government and tortured. And here is their justification:

"The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother's had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar's apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian-born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document." (quote from a this SFGate story).

Sad but true : linky

So, again, I ask, how, specifically, would an ID card threaten my liberty? How is this "a system designed to curtail the freedoms of whoever the people in power consider enemies"? What "additional power" is going to be given to the government?

Here's an example. Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was returning home to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia through JFK airport in New York. At the airport, the authorities are allowed to demand to see ID; they did, and saw that his name was on some list as an associate of someone who was on a list as being associated with al Qaeda, so he was deported to Syria, where he was held for a year and tortured.

Now fast forward a few years, to a time when the authorities can stop you anywhere (not just at a border crossing) and demand to see your ID. Turns out someone in your office attends the same mosque as a known al Qaeda supporter! One of your classmates wrote some crap in support of the Oklahoma City bombing! Your 3rd cousin was at Waco! Your next door neighbour supported the Tamil Tigers! Holy cow, you're involved in all kinds of terrorist activities. Better take you in for questioning.

Like canada you mean?

Besides, does it really make much of a difference if the US is abusing citizens of other countries (Maher Arar is an excellent example), or its own? Abuse is abuse.