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Feds Undertaking Massive Passenger Profiling Plan
Logic Bomb writes: "The Washington Post is running an overview of a rather big-brother-ish airline passenger screening system the government is proposing. Keeping track of people's ticket purchases is one thing, but correlating people's addresses and living arrangements...! This attempt seems closer to completion and implementation than any other that's been proposed so far."
you cant blaim them..."desperate" times call for desperate measures, although these may be going too far...
...just buy Doubleclick's database? Those bastards already have most everyone's data. If the gov't is going to collect data like that, they can at least have the decency to do it on the cheap and not add insult to injury by spending huge amounts of my tax money on it.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
I hope this isn't the start of what could turn into an internal visa that will apply to all forms of mass transit.
With a little accountability (i.e.: assurances that the data doesn't fall into the wrong hands or is abused) I really don't think this is a bad thing. Look at El Al in Israel -- they have massive amounts of data on passengers and participate in profiling unlike any other airline. Why? Because they HAVE to. After September 11th I feel like we have the same responsability.
As I understand it, several of the terrorists of 911 fame used their real names and were living here legitimately. They had no reason to use false id since there was no reason for the feds to look for them.
Spending money on whatever isn't going to bring about better security. It will just bring a better false sense of security.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
See you at the next article... :)
Don't click here. BT will enforce intellectual rights and sue for eac
Do what I do and use cash whenever possible.
Obviously, it wouldn't be sensible to buy your air tickets with cash, but the airline knows who you are anyway so you don't lose anything by paying by card on this occasion.
30%: "If this is what it takes to not get blown up by terrorists, OK."
55%: The "Those who would trade liberty for security..." quote, with typos or the wrong source name.
10%: The above quote, spelled correctly and attributed to the right person.
4%: "I'm sure glad I don't fly, because now I can REJECT THE EVIL ESTABLISHMENT MAN! Pass the bong."
1%: "FRIST PSOT"
All of these draconian rules will simply drive more and more people away from flying.
It's already a pain in the ass to board a plane two hours before takeoff, strip down to your underwear for the security screeners, and then wait on the tarmac for three more hours when the airport gets evacuated because the minimum-wage security screener was napping when somebody snuck through.
All this while the terrorists will do what they've always done: they'll case the airport, a little bit at a time, probing for every weakness. Then, when they're ready, they'll strike. And all we can ever do is play catch-up, closing the barn door after the horses are gone.
Now, I'm all for making the skies safe, but at some point the burdens outweigh the benefits. People already put up with a hell of a lot to fly somewhere. Add any more hassle and those planes will be flying empty.
This will solve all of our problems! Hurah for the FBI and other organizations. they've seriously cleaned everything up.
Now that we've weeded out that large portion of the terrorist world that runs around conspicuously advertising the fact that they're terrorists, using their real names and all kinds of paper-trail leaving items like credit cards, real id's and such, all we have to worry about now is that tremendously tiny segment of the criminal population that uses devious means to achieve their goals.
Thank god the vast majority of criminals and terrorist won't be able to circumvent this measure! Otherwise, it would just be a burden on the American public. And the government would never do something that shortsighted and dumb! Right?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
It sounds like the system that is being described in the article is programmatically doing the type of data analysis that is performed manually by current intelligence agencies. This just speeds it up to where it would provide useful realitime data correllations.
The disadvantage is that it could potentially intrude on the public's privacy. Because it is so much easier to dig up unrelated facts, it would encourage law enforcement agencies to use such a system to go on "treasure hunts", just to see what dirt they could dig up.
What could get nasty though, is if the system could be tweaked by an unscroupulous operator to "plant" facts about someone they wanted to go after. It occasionally happens already, using physical evidence or data. This system could make it easier.
As Big Brother starts to collate that data I expect some interesting patterns will emerge. The famous "bought incubus CD -->probable anachristDO NOT issue that speeding ticket, you'll be embarassed on court!--"
It will be interesting to see what type of metric this data produces. Now if the data is flawed then it's not much use to anyone. I can't wait! I guess I have to start living with 2 Iranian women, purchase lots of ski gear (here in sunny FL) and start reading more ancient druid text.
The next TRUE geek test. Just how far away from the curve can you get. Just how confusing is it for Big Brother to pigeon hole you?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Apart from the issue that 911 started the death of the US by itself, who says that the weopen (an aircraft) can't be chartered, purchased, or by any other means aquired?
One day the US will wake up and realise it is no longer the USA.
Very sad.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
This is why Europe should have never backed down with the US over data protection. It would be illegal to do this in Europe without the express permission of everybody who they take the data from. Europe will not allow companies to export data to countries that do not have any form of data protection legislature (like the US). However, as far as I'm aware they bowed to US pressure to make it a special case. Great. I can't think of any country with companies that are more likely to abuse that information.
Ahemm..., shouldn't we profile MS Windows users, since they spread public diseases in form of viruses?
The checks would be against perceived security "flags", and each passenger would be given a "threat assessment" score: for example, someone who purchased four tickets for four passengers on a single flight on the same credit card would have a higher threat rating than you or I would. Yes, before slashdroids go apeshit over this, we can assume a family going to Disneyworld would not be flagged, but four guys with more consonants than vowels in their name sitting in different parts of the plane probably would. And what the hell's wrong with that?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well at this point at least to a degree they have been (although not very efficiently) tracking traveling to a great degree anyhow. Incidents like this though just gives them an excuse to go a little further with it and still appear to be doing something in the intrest of the protection of the public. To a point this is a good thing, but there is always that one person (or group) who will take it to far and then the next thing you know it turns out they were recording information not even relevant to the task at hand becuase someone seemed to think it might be useful.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
What about the thousands of business travellers every year who attend a weeks worth of meetings and
a) Don't buy their own ticket
b) Don't book their hotel
c) Give the address they are staying at as the company they are visiting.
Or even crazier....
DIDN'T BUY THEIR TICKETS IN THE US!
For pities sake linking all of the reservations systems in the US to try and catch terrorists based in the middle east ? I hate to break it to the muppets out there who thought of this but I can go to a website outside of the US (e.g. This one) and book tickets.
The first thing such a system would find is things like
"Hey look IBMs corporate card has booked 4 people onto this flight, 1 in first class, 1 in business and 2 in coach. We'd better check it out"
or
"Some guy in Redmond is booking hundreds of flights a week going all over the world... including to the middle east"
This wins two awards
1) Brain dead of the year
and
2) Failure to recognise the world outside of the US
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
From the Washington Post article:
If you can profile for terrorists, you can profile for other things," said Richard M. Smith, an independent computer security and privacy specialist. "The computer technology is so cheap and getting so much cheaper, you just have to be careful: Turn up the volume a little bit, and we just use the air transportation system to catch everybody.
Screen for terrorists, that's fine, aslong it is only used for that purpose. The problem is, that the government and airlines will most likely use the system for other things. Like the business traveler that flies to Orlando for a business meeting comes home to find 100 lbs. of spam brochures from Walt Disney World.
Read what happened to Microsoft Chief Architect Charles Simonyi when he got profiled at an airport.
if ($passenger =~ /leftist|non-conformist|muslim|CowboyNeal|ain\'t\s right/gi) {
warn "Potential Threat\n";
jerkknee();
}
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
That's called racism, fool. That's what's wrong.
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Just used your friendly neighborhood travel agent and pay them in cash. Travel agents are very handy and underrated anyway. They're happy to play what-if scenarios to try to find you a less expensive rate and have access to multiple means of getting you to your destination, so if those last minute air tickets cost too much, they can try Amtrack or Greyhound for you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There they go again - basically saying they need more technology to solve the problem, when in actual fact the more technology the authorities use, the less likely "undesireables" will be caught.
Why? Because any "undesireable" with enough savvy will go low-tech - not send messages electronically etc. Also, anyone with an ounce of intelligence will know how obviously easy it will be to get around this profiling schema - can you say "each buy thier own ticket under a false identity for the same flight" ?
Privacy aside, what gets me about this article is the fact that one might be permanently stigmatized without doing anything wrong. Say I rent an apartment in Boston for a year. If for some reason (without my knowledge) that apartment is somehow "linked" to terrorist activities, I'll be searched, questioned, and harassed every time I fly for the rest of my life! To make matters worse, I won't even know why. If the secrecy around this new system is anything like that around CAPS, there is little chance I would be able to get a copy of my own dossier in order to figure out why I'm always being flagged. A truly fair system would have to have an inquiry mechanism so that one could check their own file. It would also need some way of challenging one's own threat index - through arbitration or some similar process. I would also hope that one's threat index would be reassessed after every flight. If (after renting that apartment in Boston) I flew several times, was questioned, and was determined not to be a threat, my index should reflect that.
:-)
And what are the chances that this new whiz-bang security software will fall under the GPL...?
Unfortunately, most of my long distance trips are visits to family in Utah. That's about 36 hours driving time, not including stops for such luxuries as sleep. Damn.
Best Slashdot Co
Industry officials have already discussed with lawmakers the possible need to roll back some privacy protections in the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Driver's Privacy Protection Act to enable them to use more of the credit and driver's-license data.
So, why do they need to roll back parts of these acts? What parts do they want to roll back? And most importantly, what do these acts say to begin with?
<sarcasm> Is it because they want to know I only have 3 points left and used my credit card to buy a Big Mac last Tuesday? </sarcasm>
A limited model report, generated by Accenture on one individual, looked like any number of publicly available dossiers provided by information services. It included all his addresses for the past two decades, the telephone numbers and former addresses of people who now occupy those residences, and the names, ages, addresses, telephone numbers and partial Social Security numbers of possible relatives. Some of the information was incomplete or, apparently, unrelated to the passenger.
Ooooh! unrelated to the passeneger! Glad to know that they kept track of who now lives where I used to live, that's real useful info. Even more glad to know that I may get checked out for something that has nothing to do with me... (Yes, I know this was just a test system they're talking about, but test systems still have to be tested on the public eventually)
The company said it would eventually like to have more data in the analysis, including embassy warnings, passport information, foreign watch lists. Eventually, with government approval, they would link the system to a national ID or some sort of biometric or both.
Foreign watch lists? Emabassy warnings? What can I say, Salaman Rushdie (sp?) better not plan on flying anywhere. In fact, there's probably a lot of high-profile peole who would have some sort of warning against them by one country or another. Finally, national ID gets brought up yet again. As I'll say everytime it comes up: "yah, that's real useful..."
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
"She's got something against Microsoft, Intel, the Dee-Emm-See-Aye, stupidly awarded patents."
"Yeah, sounds like a radical alright, anything else?"
"She loves something called Linux, processors from a company called Aye-Emm-Dee, and open source something or other."
"Damn, sounds like one to monitor carefully."
"Oh, and she reads something called Slash-Dot."
"!!!"
Klaxons blare, national guard soldiers flood the concourse, passengers witness a woman dragged away in irons with the needles of many stunguns still embedded in her arms and legs.
Yeah, good thing we have people like Ashcroft looking out for us... excuse me, time to feed the pitbulls.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And yet in the face if this story, Michael still feels the need to rock the boat. Guess who's going to get the "Random" body cavity search next time he flies. Yep, the ticket agent will check his ID in the computer and the computer will go *BOOP* Dissident! This of course putting him on the fast track to all the unpleasant "random" security measures.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I like the "7 levels" of association. I'm pretty sure that somewhere no more than 3 levels away, the FBI is watching someone who could limit my travel...
I'm a Slashdot reader.
One of the million(s) of other slashdot readers may know a (god forbid) hacker.. Maybe even a hacker who reads a forbidden list such as (gasp) BugTraq! Now I'm an elite underground hacker by association. Who knows what evil plots I may be up to..
Guess what.. That makes all of you guilty by association too.
I'm thinking this may slightly change my plans on attending future DefCon conventions.. I may have to drive instead of fly. I'm sure previous con's will definately flag my name for years to come.
I've been expecting the mysterious 4am knock on my door from the FBI. Now they won't have to bother, they can just wait for me at the mass transit terminal of their choice. I'll just sweep my newly designated Federal identification (my good ol' drivers license) to get into the subway or through an airport checkpoint, and the stormtroopers will be there.
I'm not sure I like the government's new found power.. We all know perfectly well the aren't just going to use it for this set of terrorists, they'll use it for anyone they deem a criminal element.
I wonder how long it will take to explain the items in my normal carry-on bag..
- Laptop (Linux, of course)
- Hand tools (4-tip screwdriver, cutters, cat5 crimper, phone crimper, tone tester, etc)
- various wires (network, power, etc)
- small unidentifyable electronic components.
- small personal messaging device (Motorola "Communicator")
- technical documentation and diagrams (oh my)
Previous to Sept 11th, it was checked over twice before every trip. They'd do the swab test, look at it as if they knew what anything in it was, and then ask "do you have a knife in there?" I say no. They'd ask me various questions regarding my trip to see if I would trip up. It's hard to trip up with "Flying out to fix a client's network, coming back tommorrow."
Frequently my checked luggage is a large bag with various non-descript boxes inside (servers, components, etc).
Thank goodness I haven't had to travel since Sept 11th. I've been watched at airports just waiting to pick people up.. You can entertain yourself for hours when you're waiting for a delayed flight. Just keep walking around, and identify the undercover security agents.
Anonymous
Get your head out of "the ring".
I can think of less ordinary people that should
be tracked too : current or former CIA executives
for instance. They have showed a real talent for
doing nasty things using airplanes : Pigs Bay,
Chile, IranGate, sponsorship of extremist armed
groups, add your favorite state terrorism act
here...
The average dude is now getting more and more
filed, americans' cherished freedom is fading out,
but I don't think this will stop the madness in
this world. Governments, corps and friends are too
clever for shooting themselves so bad.
Enjoy.
gdon
At Christmas, I took the wife and kids back to Grandma's house.
As we came to the gate at boarding time, they were conducting the 'random search' on a bearded male who looked to be in his early 20's. A little later, they pulled me aside for the 'random search'. I guess the fact that I was travelling with a wife and two kids doesn't matter, nor does being in my mid-40s. I'm a bearded male.
I have a friend who has the same name as a porno producer, and he's gotten terrible hassles coming back into the US, over mistaken identity.
Somehow I doubt adding computers to the profiling scheme will improve things much. Imagine kids cracking the things to get their friends searched on family vacations. Or their enemies.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's incredible how in the name of security some governaments are leveraging citizen's life style. You must act like everybody else so you're not caught as beign weird, strange, which of course, means suspicious, terrorist, etc...
At the same time, media and cheap self-help books tell you how important is to be unique.
I wonder when this clash of morals will erupt and become a real problem.
Not for the Slashdot community, paranoic by nature, but for the average citizen. One side you have concerns about your security, phisically speaken (survival), and you empower governaments to garantee this desire.
On the the other side, you have your social needs to be fulfilled, and you (most people anyway) empowered the media to advice them about what is 'in', and what is soooooo 90.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
The FrancoDutch company I work for has been already implementing a similar system for 3 years for the EU. I can't tell too many details except that it's hush hush, that all airline companies are supposed to be in it, and that most of the checks are based on nationality. (So no fancy 'if a person buys multiple tickets not next to each other...'). I applied for working on the system, but I wasn't long enough in the company to be allowed to.
I wonder if that's how they found so fast the places where 9/11 people trained in Germany,France & Belgium ?
Why don't we get over all this niggling about privacy and work for a transparent society instead?
The government wants to know everything there is to know about us? Fine. We want to know everything there is to know about it. Fair is fair.
Corporations want all our data? OK. We want all their data.
See how fast things would change.
--
Graceland tour guide: "Elvis has the left building."
"Racial profiling" has become one of the shibboleths of our time. Anyone who wants a public career in the United States must place himself on record as being against it. Thus, ex-senator John Ashcroft, on the eve of his confirmation hearings: "It's wrong, inappropriate, shouldn't be done." During the vice-presidential debate last October, moderator Bernard Shaw invited the candidates to imagine themselves black victims of racial profiling. Both made the required ritual protestations of outrage. Lieberman: "I have a few African-American friends who have gone through this horror, and you know, it makes me want to kind of hit the wall, because it is such an assault on their humanity and their citizenship." Cheney: "It's the sense of anger and frustration and rage that would go with knowing that the only reason you were stopped...was because of the color of your skin..." In the strange, rather depressing, pattern these things always follow nowadays, the American public has speedily swung into line behind the Pied Pipers: Gallup reports that 81 percent of the public disapproves of racial profiling.
All of which represents an extraordinary level of awareness of, and hostility to, and even passion against ("hit the wall...") a practice that, up to about five years ago, practically nobody had heard of. It is, in fact, instructive to begin by looking at the history of this shibboleth.
To people who follow politics, the term "racial profiling" probably first registered when Al Gore debated Bill Bradley at New York's Apollo Theatre in February 2000. Here is Bradley, speaking of the 1999 shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by New York City police: "I...think it reflects...racial profiling that seeps into the mind of someone so that he sees a wallet in the hand of a white man as a wallet, but a wallet in the hand of a black man as a gun. And we -- we have to change that. I would issue an executive order that would eliminate racial profiling at the federal level."
Nobody was unkind enough to ask Sen. Bradley how an executive order would change what a policeman sees in a dark lobby in a dangerous neighborhood at night. Nor was anyone so tactless as to ask him about the case of LaTanya Haggerty, shot dead in June 1999 by a Chicago policewoman who mistook her cell phone for a handgun. The policewoman was, like Ms. Haggerty, black.
Al Gore, in that debate at the Apollo, did successfully, and famously, ambush Bradley by remarking that: "You know, racial profiling practically began in New Jersey, Senator Bradley." In true Clinton-Gore fashion, this is not true, but it is sort of true. "Racial profiling" the thing has been around for as long as police work, and is practiced everywhere. "Racial profiling" the term did indeed have its origins on the New Jersey Turnpike in the early 1990s. The reason for the prominence of this rather unappealing stretch of expressway in the history of the phenomenon is simple: The turnpike is the main conduit for the shipment of illegal drugs and other contraband to the great criminal marts of the Northeast.
The career of the term "racial profiling" seems to have begun in 1994, but did not really take off until April 1998, when two white New Jersey state troopers pulled over a van for speeding. As they approached the van from behind, it suddenly reversed towards them. The troopers fired eleven shots from their handguns, wounding three of the van's four occupants, who were all black or Hispanic. The troopers, James Kenna and John Hogan, subsequently became poster boys for the "racial profiling" lobbies, facing the same indignities, though so far with less serious consequences, as were endured by the Los Angeles policemen in the Rodney King case: endless investigations, double jeopardy, and so on.
And a shibboleth was born. News-media databases list only a scattering of instances of the term "racial profiling" from 1994 to 1998. In that latter year, the number hit double digits, and thereafter rose quickly into the hundreds and thousands. Now we all know about it, and we are, of course, all against it.
Well, not quite all. American courts -- including (see below) the U.S. Supreme Court -- are not against it. Jurisprudence on the matter is pretty clear: So long as race is only one factor in a generalized approach to the questioning of suspects, it may be considered. And of course, pace Candidate Cheney, it always is only one factor. I have been unable to locate any statistics on the point, but I feel sure that elderly black women are stopped by the police much less often than are young white men.
Even in the political sphere, where truth-telling and independent thinking on matters of race have long been liabilities, there are those who refuse to mouth the required pieties. Alan Keyes, when asked by Larry King if he would be angry with a police officer who pulled him over for being black, replied: "I was raised that everything I did represented my family, my race, and my country. I would be angry with the people giving me a bad reputation."
GOODBYE TO COMMON SENSE Practically all law-enforcement professionals believe in the need for racial profiling. In an article on the topic for The New York Times Magazine in June 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Bernard Parks, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Parks, who is black, asked rhetorically of racial profiling: "Should we play the percentages?...It's common sense." Note that date, though. This was pretty much the latest time at which it was possible for a public official to speak truthfully about racial profiling. Law-enforcement professionals were learning the importance of keeping their thoughts to themselves. Four months before the Goldberg piece saw print, New Jersey state-police superintendent Carl Williams, in an interview, said that certain crimes were associated with certain ethnic groups, and that it was naïve to think that race was not an issue in policing -- both statements, of course, perfectly true. Supt. Williams was fired the same day by Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.
Like other race issues in the U.S., racial profiling is a "tadpole," with an enormous black head and a long but comparatively inconsequential brown, yellow, and red tail. While Hispanic, "Asian-American," and other lesser groups have taken up the "racial profiling" chant with gusto, the crux of the matter is the resentment that black Americans feel toward the attentions of white policemen. By far the largest number of Americans angry about racial profiling are law-abiding black people who feel that they are stopped and questioned because the police regard all black people with undue suspicion. They feel that they are the victims of a negative stereotype.
They are. Unfortunately, a negative stereotype can be correct, and even useful. I was surprised to find, when researching this article, that within the academic field of social psychology there is a large literature on stereotypes, and that much of it -- an entire school of thought -- holds that stereotypes are essential life tools. On the scientific evidence, the primary function of stereotypes is what researchers call "the reality function." That is, stereotypes are useful tools for dealing with the world. Confronted with a snake or a fawn, our immediate behavior is determined by generalized beliefs -- stereotypes -- about snakes and fawns. Stereotypes are, in fact, merely one aspect of the mind's ability to make generalizations, without which science and mathematics, not to mention, as the snake/fawn example shows, much of everyday life, would be impossible.
At some level, everybody knows this stuff, even the guardians of the "racial profiling" flame. Jesse Jackson famously, in 1993, confessed that: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Here is Sandra Seegars of the Washington, D.C., Taxicab Commission:
Late at night, if I saw young black men dressed in a slovenly way, I wouldn't pick them up.... And during the day, I'd think twice about it.
Pressed to define "slovenly," Ms. Seegars elaborated thus: "A young black guy with his hat on backwards, shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants down below his underwear, and unlaced tennis shoes." Now there's a stereotype for you! Ms. Seegars is, of course, black.
Law-enforcement officials are simply employing the same stereotypes as you, me, Jesse, and Sandra, but taking the opposite course of action. What we seek to avoid, they pursue. They do this for reasons of simple efficiency. A policeman who concentrates a disproportionate amount of his limited time and resources on young black men is going to uncover far more crimes -- and therefore be far more successful in his career -- than one who biases his attention toward, say, middle-aged Asian women. It is, as Chief Parks said, common sense.
Similarly with the tail of the tadpole -- racial-profiling issues that do not involve black people. China is known to have obtained a top-secret warhead design. Among those with clearance to work on that design are people from various kinds of national and racial background. Which ones should investigators concentrate on? The Swedes? The answer surely is: They should first check out anyone who has family or friends in China, who has made trips to China, or who has met with Chinese officials. This would include me, for example -- my father-in-law is an official of the Chinese Communist Party. Would I then have been "racially profiled"?
It is not very surprising to learn that the main fruit of the "racial profiling" hysteria has been a decline in the efficiency of police work. In Philadelphia, a federal court order now re quires police to fill out both sides of an 8½-by-11 sheet on every citizen contact. Law-enforcement agencies nationwide are engaged in similar statistics-gathering exercises, under pressure from federal lawmakers like U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who has announced that he will introduce a bill to force police agencies to keep detailed information about traffic stops. ("The struggle goes on," declared Rep. Conyers. The struggle that is going on, it sometimes seems, is a struggle to prevent our police forces from accomplishing any useful work at all.)
The mountain of statistics that is being brought forth by all this panic does not, on the evidence so far, seem likely to shed much light on what is happening. The numbers have a way of leading off into infinite regresses of uncertainty. The city of San Jose, Calif., for example, discovered that, yes, the percentage of blacks being stopped was higher than their representation in the city's population. Ah, but patrol cars were computer-assigned to high-crime districts, which are mainly inhabited by minorities. So that over-representation might actually be an under-representation! But then, minorities have fewer cars....
THE CORE ARGUMENTS
Notwithstanding the extreme difficulty of finding out what is actually happening, we can at least seek some moral and philosophical grounds on which to take a stand either for or against racial profiling. I am going to take it as a given that most readers of this article will be of a conservative inclination, and shall offer only those arguments likely to appeal to persons so inclined. If you seek arguments of other kinds, they are not hard to find -- just pick up your newspaper or turn on your TV.
Of arguments against racial profiling, probably the ones most persuasive to a conservative are the ones from libertarianism. Many of the stop-and-search cases that brought this matter into the headlines were part of the so-called war on drugs. The police procedures behind them were ratified by court decisions of the 1980s, themselves mostly responding to the rising tide of illegal narcotics. In U.S. vs. Montoya De Hernandez (1985) for example, Chief Justice Rehnquist validated the detention of a suspected "balloon swallowing" drug courier until the material had passed through her system, by noting previous invasions upheld by the Court:
[F]irst class mail may be opened without a warrant on less than probable cause.... Automotive travellers may be stopped...near the border without individualized suspicion even if the stop is based largely on ethnicity...
(My italics.) The Chief Justice further noted that these incursions are in response to "the veritable national crisis in law enforcement caused by smuggling of illegal narcotics."
Many on the political Right feel that the war on drugs is at best misguided, at worst a moral and constitutional disaster. Yet it is naïve to imagine that the "racial profiling" hubbub would go away, or even much diminish, if all state and federal drug laws were repealed tomorrow. Black and Hispanic Americans would still be committing crimes at rates higher than citizens of other races. The differential criminality of various ethnic groups is not only, or even mainly, located in drug crimes. In 1997, for example, blacks, who are 13 percent of the U.S. population, comprised 35 percent of those arrested for embezzlement. (It is not generally appreciated that black Americans commit higher levels not only of "street crime," but also of white-collar crime.)
Even without the drug war, diligent police officers would still, therefore, be correct to regard black and Hispanic citizens -- other factors duly considered -- as more likely to be breaking the law. The Chinese government would still be trying to recruit spies exclusively from among Chinese-born Americans. (The Chinese Communist Party is, in this respect, the keenest "racial profiler" of all.) The Amadou Diallo case -- the police were looking for a rapist -- would still have happened.
The best non-libertarian argument against racial profiling is the one from equality before the law. This has been most cogently presented by Prof. Randall Kennedy of Harvard. Kennedy concedes most of the points I have made. Yes, he says:
Statistics abundantly confirm that African Americans -- and particularly young black men -- commit a dramatically disproportionate share of street crime in the United States. This is a sociological fact, not a figment of the media's (or the police's) racist imagination. In recent years, for example, victims of crime report blacks as the perpetrators in around 25 per cent of the violent crimes suffered, although blacks constitute only about twelve percent of the nation's population.
And yes, says Prof. Kennedy, outlawing racial profiling will reduce the efficiency of police work. Nonetheless, for constitutional and moral reasons we should outlaw the practice. If this places extra burdens on law enforcement, well, "racial equality, like all good things in life, costs something; it does not come for free."
There are two problems with this. The first is that Kennedy has minimized the black-white difference in criminality, and therefore that "cost." I don't know where his 25 percent comes from, or what "recent years" means, but I do know that in Department of Justice figures for 1997, victims report 60 percent of robberies as having been committed by black persons. In that same year, a black American was eight times more likely than a non-black to commit homicide -- and "non-black" here includes Hispanics, not broken out separately in these figures. A racial-profiling ban, under which police officers were required to stop and question suspects in precise proportion to their demographic representation (in what? the precinct population? the state population? the national population?), would lead to massive inefficiencies in police work. Which is to say, massive declines in the apprehension of criminals.
The other problem is with the special status that Prof. Kennedy accords to race. Kennedy: "Racial distinctions are and should be different from other lines of social stratification." Thus, if it can be shown, as it surely can, that state troopers stop young people more than old people, relative to young people's numerical representation on the road being patrolled, that is of no consequence. If they stop black people more than white people, on the same criterion, that is of large consequence. This, in spite of the fact that the categories "age" and "race" are both rather fuzzy (define "young") and are both useful predictors of criminality. In spite of the fact, too, that the principle of equality before the law does not, and up to now has never been thought to, guarantee equal outcomes for any law-enforcement process, only that a citizen who has come under reasonable suspicion will be treated fairly.
It is on this special status accorded to race that, I believe, we have gone most seriously astray. I am willing, in fact, to say much more than this: In the matter of race, I think the Anglo-Saxon world has taken leave of its senses. The campaign to ban racial profiling is, as I see it, a part of that large, broad-fronted assault on common sense that our over-educated, over-lawyered society has been enduring for some forty years now, and whose roots are in a fanatical egalitarianism, a grim determination not to face up to the realities of group differences, a theological attachment to the doctrine that the sole and sufficient explanation for all such differences is "racism" -- which is to say, the malice and cruelty of white people -- and a nursed and petted guilt towards the behavior of our ancestors.
At present, Americans are drifting away from the concept of belonging to a single nation. I do not think this drift will be arrested until we can shed the idea that deference to the sensitivities of racial minorities -- however overwrought those sensitivities may be, however over-stimulated by unscrupulous mountebanks, however disconnected from reality -- trumps every other consideration, including even the maintenance of social order. To shed that idea, we must confront our national hysteria about race, which causes large numbers of otherwise sane people to believe that the hearts of their fellow citizens are filled with malice towards them. So long as we continue to pander to that poisonous, preposterous belief, we shall only wander off deeper into a wilderness of division, mistrust, and institutionalized rancor -- that wilderness, the most freshly painted signpost to which bears the legend RACIAL PROFILING.
If it keeps more planes from crashing into buildings, then I'm all for racism. Gotta weigh the pros and cons here, folks, It's not like we're locking people up over this.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The Gov has been running roughshod over our rights for 50 years. I doubt there are enough Americans who understand what is happening, and how to stop it before it is too late.
it has never been at war with eastasia at all, eastasia are our allies.
I find this both amusing and worrying. amusing because this goes against everything the US is supposed to stand for (the land of th free?) and worrying because I'm sure england won;t be far behind.
if this is implemented then it is essentially commiting surveilance on a massive percentage of the american and america-visiting public without any due cause. it's an extremely short jump to link this with all the other worrying databases full of more info than you'd think.
hmm.. one person has bought tickets for 4 but he booked them in 2 pairs of seats situated far from each other? could it possibly be a family where the parents want some peace and quiet from their teenage kids perhaps? yet they might have their past travel plans checked, driving licences, passports, ciminal records, financial status, previous purchases (fertiliser eh? you can make explosives out of thatyou know), medical records (well, they might have a history of mental instability)... and so the list goes on.
I thought people in the US hada constitutional right to privacy and the right not to be searched unjustly (even ifthey don't know it). it looks to me like another attempt to quietlybring the US into being a police state while asking everyone "but what about the children?". yes, there are bad people out there, but I think that when you're looking at things like this then the cure is worse than the disease.
dave
rascism wouldn't have stopped the Timothy McVeigh. Actually it fueled him.
I get the feeling I shouldn't have bought that copy of 2600 with my bank card..
Why they do hide their identity?
A Kamikaze not fear the jail.
And they are well know people.
If they carry a bomb,i know their name,but the plane crashes.
I don't know what Bush is trying to do with his homeguard -er- Homeland Defense department. (and yes, that is a deliberate B5 reference).
Not mentioning the invasion of privacy this database has a huge potential for abuse. I am afraid that it is only the first step - after all dont we need to be protected during sporting events, concerts, hotel stays, and trips to the bathroom?
How secure and accurate will this information be? Will I be denied permission to attend a concert because some credit report has inaccuate information? Or because I attended a meeting the current administration happens to dislike?
Scary stuff.
and since, acording to you, there's nothing wrong with racism you should even in the future be subjected to prejudice. case closed. move on.
We already have a consitutional guarantee that events like 9/11 will and should not have happened. It is called the right to bear arms and no terrorist in their right mind would atempt to hijack a plane filled with armed passengers.
We also have another god given rigth called the right to Whoop-ass(tm). Which states that if people piss us off, after we turned the other cheek, we have a right to issue a can of Whoop-ass(tm).
Since the Government has already taken our weapons away and our cans of Whoop-ass(tm), obviously they need to protect us. The have already taken way our ability to protect ourselves.
Who is the US government at war with? It is us, the US citizens. The US government has disarmed us, has put us into submission by making us defenseless and is now using trajic events to demoralize us. Hell it is the same strategy we are suing in Afghanistan.
I'd say that there is really no chance that any terror network is going to waste its time trying to get onto a plane at this point. Yes, the US airline system was pathetically unsecure, but it really wasn't an issue until last year.
With the reality being that there are "simple but accurate" nuke plans out there (although just b/c I have the plans to Hoover Dam doesn't mean I can build it), I just don't see the airport as the launchpad for the next attack.
Millions of completely ill-equipped immigrants enter from Mexico each year, and while I won't argue the merits or lack thereof having a large base of cheap workers who don't pay their share to support infrastructure, I'd argue that the biggest threat at this point is just keeping these terrorists out of the U.S. While the possible benefits of having such a database is clear, the reality is that it is Unconstitutional. When Madison wrote The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, he was serious. Tracking who is living with whom is a direct violation of "being secure in one's home."Call it my military training, paranoia, whatever...but when I fly, you can bet your butt I check out every person I see getting on the plane. It's not like I stare at them defiantly or anything, merely take a look to see who I am flying with. You can always tell when people are up to something, you just need to be alert. The problem is, there are a lot of people that are *very scared* right now. The government is taking advantage of this to push through legislation that in a pre 9-11 world would have been laughed at scornfully.
People need to realize that rather than do this, maybe we should have more intensive screening for foreigners coming INTO THE COUNTRY. When my unit left the Middle East, we were lucky enough to fly out on a commercial airline. When we were getting prepared to leave Egypt, we were searched VERY thoroughly. EVERY BAG, knick-knack, etc. was checked. Not one person was singled out, everyone went through the same screening process. And you know what, other than the mild irritation of being delayed a bit, not one person minded. It's called safety. So, keep your database to yourself, Government, and let us get on with our normal lives, else: "THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON"
Sent from your iPad.
The numbers 1984 quickly come to mind. I really think its time to rally around our beliefs in civil liberties and write to our political leaders as necessary. Remember, the only thing they care about is reelection come the time and if they sense that their stance on an issue might cause a problem with consitutients they will be far more careful what they allow to occur. ... here we have laws against that... with some states being rediculous... Massachusetts comes to mind. .. Do you really think 9-11 would have happened if the public were allowed to carry on planes? ( at least the people invovled would have considered the reduced success potential, since they obviously didn't care about dying. )
I don't know about anyone else but couple this technology with Facial Recognition software and some other pattern matching software and stick a few field agents around with micro cameras and poof... big brother is always watching.
Someone mentioned a trend to a police state... well, at least in Israel the common person can carry a decent weapon ( Ak-74.. etc )
"Do not go gentle into that good night..." -Dylan Thomas. Points to ponder.
yeah right
"This technology, based on transaction analysis, behavior analysis, gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on in a person's mind."
Yep, now they can tell what's going on in a person's mind. The real fun part will be watching their faces as I imagine Peewee Herman doing Dr. Ruth Westheimer doggie style. And trust me, you *DON'T* want to know what they are doing with the Calamari.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The number of false positives and the resulting legal cases (where one group of people are repeatably suspected following a false positive) will ensure this never works as intended.
From the article:
For instance, it would note if an individual lived at the former address of someone considered high-risk.
Great. So now if my former college roommates do anything bad and get on the high-risk shit-list, then I'm going to be detained at an airport.
Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch for people with links to restaurants or other places thought to be favored by terrorist cells.
Hypothetical sitation: I'm visiting a friend in town. I stop into a coffee shop a few times while I'm there. Joe Terrorist also frequents that shop. A few weeks later, he tries to blow something up. As a recent patron of that store, am I going to be questioned?? I know this is a more extreme example, but it shows the type of situations that could arise.
The thing I mainly don't like about systems like these are that they filter out people that "mainstream" society generally thinks are going to be dangerous or problematic, regardless of their actual behavior. It is also becomes a problem of drawing a line for inspections. Even if a person comes up as a "green light" in one of these systems, they will probably be stopped if they have visible tattoos and/or piercings, or if they are flying one-way, or if they frequently travel alone.
Is there anything that can actually be done about things like this??
This technology, based on transaction analysis, behavior analysis, gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on in a person's mind.
And when this happens, the days of Orwells Thought Police will truely be upon us.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
The index would send color-coded signals to airlines. Green would indicate no problem. Yellow would indicate the need for more questioning. Red means apprehend. Ogilvie said the company would try to offer the same sort of service to cruise ships and other facilities that want to bolster security.
This could make security worse. People with little technological training (airline security screeners) often put so much faith in a computer system that if it says something, it must be so. This will result in the screeners seeing a green light and thinking, "This person got green, he can go on through." Unfortunately, they will be looking more at the light and less at the entire circumstances surrounding each passenger because they will trust the all-knowing computer - "just look at how much data it has, it must be right! And gee, if I see the green light I don't have to do any extra work."
For instance, if somebody has a normal name, doesn't have any irregular travel patterns, doesn't have any warrants, and buys their own ticket with a return trip in advance, they will get a green light in most cases. Now, the problem with that is simply that just because you don't have a recorded history of problems doesn't mean you won't cause problems. So, the screeners will just waive you on through because they don't know that this will be your first and last act of terrorism, you got a green light, and the green light will be all that matters to them. Great.
These are the petty annoyances with systems like this - the false hits far outweigh the real ones, and innocent people get harassed and treated rudely by ignorant, underpaid security guards for things they never know about. It's like someone stealing your identity, ruining your credit rating, and leaving you to pick up the pieces - you don't see the authorities in the credit industry rushing to clean up the records of identity theft victims, do you? No - the victims must spend months if not years reclaiming their credit rating - just as he-who-lives-two-doors-down-from-Muhammed would have to somehow convince Big Brother that the same street name doesn't add up to jack.
Was that out loud?
This article raises a lot more questions than it answers.
OK, let's hear the arguments in favour of it, but whatever they are, I contend that if we put in place a vast, complex, expensive system that is too problematical to use, then all we're doing is spending Federal money to perform a PR exercise for the airline industry.
And if we do use it, then god help us all. I never, ever want to hear this phrase spoken to me or to anyone else:
"The computer says you're 67% likely to be guilty, based on your past actions and associations. We're not going to release you until you can prove your loyalty."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What you do OUTSIDE your home, however, is a different story. You can't expect the same privacy in an airport, period. Flying is not a RIGHT, per se. Just like driving is not a per se right. The privelege is limited and restricted in a way that benefits the common good, using the method least obstrusive to your personal rights.
Flying presents new dangers to the public, and as such, you can't expect the same level of privacy. Privacy is, and always has been, weighed against the public good. Examples are: Warrants for any reason (when suspicion outweights your right to be left alone) and the govt.'s right to search your garbage without a warrant (once you throw it away, you throw away your right to its privacy)
If they start collecting information on people who DON'T fly, then I will join the chorus, but until then, I have to support the feds for investigating people who are exercising their privelege of using airports.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I don't normally bother posting here but I'll make an exception.
Have you ever dealt with the effects of incorrect information in your credit report? Well, it really is hard to remove errors, and unless and until you do, you may as well be the person portrayed in the credit report. And your cost of living will be ridiculously high as long as that is the case. Your mortgage will be at 11 or 12 percent instead of 6 percent. And your car loan will be at 22 percent instead of 6 percent.
Now, when they implement this national database, you will have lots of WRONG and DAMAGING information about you in the database, and you will be treated as if you are that other person. And you will not be allowed to travel freely because you will BE THAT OTHER PERSON, for all intents and purposes, as long as the information is not corrected. So, what will be your recourse to correct it? Well, damn near none.
It isn't just a lack of freedom that is coming - it's the replacement of reality with a virtual reality that is laced through and through with a surrealistic and pernicious spin. When reality is less important than somebody's version of it then we are all in big trouble. And that is exactly where we are headed with shit like this.
Uh... hate to frighten you guys but the method of data collection is called "Market Research" based on a bit of predictive modeling. I'll be suprised if most airlines don't already use such a system for sending you crap about frequent flying etc...
No comments:
In the only interview with the al-Qaeda leader since the 11 September attacks, Bin Laden declares that "the battle has moved to inside America".
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The US Government will lead the American people - and the West in general - into an unbearable hell and a choking life," he says.
Click here for the whole article
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
And again who would this target ?
Is a person that is a known former cocaine user, former alcoholic, with 2 daughters getting busted for drinking, a brother whose family gets busted for drugs, a history of using weapons safe ?
I'm sure this will offend pretty much every tree-hugging PC person that reads this, but I don't care. Grow a fucking spine.
Whereas we haven't declared official war, we
*are* at war right now. If profiling is one of the tools that we need to use to prevent the death of more innocent people, then fine. Would you guys be whining right now about racism if it were the israelis profiling arabs that fly into their country looking for palestinians? Do you think it would help if you did? Hell no. The israelis would look at you like you were a madman, and then point out the last 30 or so suicide bombers that have set themselves off in malls or local businesses in the last 6 months. They have a problem over there.
Likewise, we have a problem over here. In my mind, it is our responsibility to treat the problem before it develops into a disease. If certain ethnic groups over here don't like the profiling, then my suggestion is that they lean on the people that they damn well know are involved in terrorist acts against the states and either turn them in, make them stop, or eliminate them.
Now. As a sidenote.
Black man says nigger - it's culture.
White man says nigger - it's racist.
Italian man says wop - it's culture.
Asian man says wop - it's racist.
Indian man says chink - it's racist.
Asian man says chink - it's culture.
So. Where's the racist act? In saying the word, or in differentiating between the speaker?
People like you scare the shit out of me.
Wtf do you think that whites and blacks would have a different genetical mix? Except for physical work (a black dude is in general stronger than a white dude his size), there's no diffence! IT'S ALL ABOUT CULTURE!! If you give someone EXACTLY the same opportunities and background, you'll see that they will do the work about as good, regardless their "genetic mix". Go blow yourself. Segregation, as you seem to favor, only makes your arguments stronger by separating the "haves" and "have-nots".
Again: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GENETIC MIX!
After reading this article, I reflect that my three year old daughter was flagged. She does NOT have a beard. I am an Army Reserve Captain and fit the Topgun Iceman profile (big white guy with a short military haircut and demeanor). We all got flagged and searched (carry ons emptied, patted down again etc.)
Although I understand people's concerns, Europe for all their supposed laws about privacy and information continues to be the most racist place in the world. I can't tell you how many (serveral) times coming through customs in Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland, I sailed through with nary a glance but the Latin American's behind and in front of me were interogated (who are you visiting, why are you here, who are you with, where are you staying).
In Bilbao, Spain, I was watching their local television news program where they were patting themselves on the back because they didn't have the same race problems as the US. "We have no such problems in Bilbao," The anchorwoman beamed, "We are proud of the six black families that live here in our city and consider them equals."
YOU COUNTED THEM?! And you know where they live, don't you? That's an indictment of the first degree. You can see that immigrants are not fleeing worlds of oppression and landing in Bilbao Spain that's for sure... doesn't that tell you something?
I've lived all over the world, and although the US is certainly not the utopia people think it is, we really are the best place to come if you are different or oppressed. Millions of immigrants can't be wrong *G*.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
if the government really wants us to use the airline industry they should not be causing problems to those who do. im glad this got posted as it will discourage others from flying.
the program looks more like witch hunting than real security practice, and could easily get out of hand. for example, to be used by the government as an excuse to remove people they dont like. imagine what would happen if the likes of a modern up and comming hitler were given these kinds of powers...
but, like many things, we dont have to participate. dont like the airlines? maybe you can take a train or drive. dont like the MPAA? watch indy films instead. dont like RIAA? they are easy to boycott, theres plently of good indy music. dont like SSSCA?, dont go to disneyland, there are many other theme parks.
even if hundreds of thousands of us chooses not to participate in these things it probably wont change them, but at least we can that know we are not helping them either.
You will be praying for "alarmists" when the cuting of civil liberties has reached you and the ones not affected yet call you an alarmist. Rest assured that I am not praying for that day to come.
Cheers..
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
The entities proposing this plan are the US government and the US airline industry. Both these organizations have abused their power in the past, what makes you think it will be different on this issue?
From the article:
"This technology, based on transaction analysis, behavior analysis, gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on in a person's mind."
How long will it be before the government knows EXACTLY what you are thinking all the time. And if they find out you are thinking of committing a crime, what is the harm in arresting you? Sure it cuts back on crime, but at the price of freedom. Sounds exactly like Orwell's thought police to me.
Enigma
Article:
Establish a computer network linking every reservation system in the United States to private and government databases.
Should have very little impact for us in Europe. From a system security standpoint i do not understand this. Just suppose this system works and the next al quasimode terrorist goes to hijack a plane again to fly it in [fill in any american center] would he circomvent this system by fling from canada, europe, mexico... any other airport. But of course he will be flagged by US immigrations. A stupid terrorist will cross the "affiliated with el quosimodo" form with yes.
Or does this system just proves that American's see "North america" == the world.
I see this is the beginning of the end. Like so many other posts quoting Ben Franklin, it may be truer than many believe. The second people start to believe this is a good idea, that's when it becomes acceptable for the government to do away with whatever they please. At least in their eyes.
The day of 911, when my teachers began talking about how everything was going to change from here on out, I knew that we were in for trouble. My biggest concern wasn't so much that they were changing laws, and making new ones that take away freedom. No, it was when I was hearing people saying it was okay, that it was for the better...
Can't anyone see that they are blatantly using 9/11 as a cover for doing WHATEVER they want to do. They have called it a war so that they can use whatever powers necessary to do whatever they have the slightest inclination to do.
We can't just sit back and say this is okay. Write your congressmen!!! I don't even put much stock in this action, but if enough of us do, we can pray that somehow it changes things.
Remember this?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world." -- Declaration of Independence
Feds Undertaking Massive Passenger Profiling Plan
<humor>
This doesn't sound too hard. I mean, just how much variety are you gonna see looking at the profiles (side view) of massive passengers? ;^)
</humor>
And what would the Arabs living in Israel think of your response?
And while I agree that Israel has a right to exist in peace, if you didn't treat the Arabs like pieces of shit ("Hey, I need a new fence. I'll hire an Arab!") and weren't the absolute rudest fucks on the planet (ever try to get on a plane with a bunch of Israelis? or drive in Tel Aviv? Geez!), the Palestinians wouldn't be so willing to die to make you go away.
PS - and your food is the absolute worst. I always eat at Arab restaraunts...
All the privacy freaks can just use their standard technique of falsifying their information (as they do when registering with web sites), to make it say that they are an 84-year-old grandmother from Wyoming. Oh wait, they might encounter a little bit of trouble when checking in or boarding the airplane...
It doesn't belong in the alley between you and your neighbor!
Guten tag, mein damend herr...wo ist your papers? SIEG HEIL! *Bless you!
I bet rental property owners would jump all over this proposal - imagine trying to rent an apartment after the cops took the previous tenants down to the station on conspiricy changes...anyone else who rented that same apartment would be pulled out of line for years!
I wouldn't mind if they even put a camera up my ass as long as I was safe from the bogeyman.
When can I start turning in my neighbors?
CowboyNeal travels to Seattle... there's a big protest the day after he arrives... the next day he flies home. Hmmm... must be a terrorist. Guess well have to start dumping all cell calls over to the NSA, and might as well hit up his central office, get them to send all land based communications over there too. Next time he wants to fly into a city with a WTO meeting, he might just be picked out for "random inspection"... might just miss his flight too...
This isn't about "we don't want terrorists on planes"... this is pattern analysis of the masses... oh, but what am I saying, Ashcroft is in charge, so it must be all okay.
The problem with massive screening systems like these the reverend Thomas Bayes (of Bayes's theorem) is not the detection part, i.e. being able to actually detect all the bad guys, but not drowning in false alarms when doing so. And the base-rate fallacy says that there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
I've developed the argument further in an intrusion detection context see for example The base rate-fallacy and it's implications for the difficulty of intrusion detection, and it's directly applicable here. The article has an introductory example, that explains that under certain conditions a 99% accurate medical test, won't work at all. The references lists a few other papers by Matthews that are well worth a read also.
In short, since there are precious few passengers that are actually "terrorists" for any real definition of the world, the system must be several (perhaps 1x10^5 -- 1x10^6) times better at suppressing false alarms, than at detecting actual terrorist, to avoid the situation where "all" alarms (from a practical standpoint) are false alarms, i.e. the fact that you were flagged says nothing about you being a danger or not.
What's worse of course is that people when faced with such systems start to ignore their output sooner rather than later, and then the system becomes completely useless even from a narrow security perspective.
So, no, it won't work. It could have worked against the "casual" threat, its very existence could have served as a deterrent, but there are hardly any spur-of-the-moment suicide bombers, so, no, scrap that to. It can't work, because Bayes says so.
Stefan Axelsson
You know, all the ./ers said terrorists would never use export grade encryption either, yet we all know of the recent story where one did.
Surprisingly, this stuff works sometimes. Ya never know. Terrorists aren't all-knowing, all-powerful, infallible people.
However, Kastrup (Copenhagen), Schipol (Amsterdam), Vantaa (Helsinki) and Arlanda (Stockholm) are excellent models. I think Schipol may be the most secure I have looked at and very efficient. Vantaa and Arlanda by far the most efficient (and pleasant). Kastrup's not too bad. Any of these could be models for how to improve operations and security in U.S. airports.
And yes, the privacy laws are quite good in Europe. One example is that I get a written letter explaining who and why everytime some company does a credit check.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Interesting article, shitty site.
Pshaw... passengers of Air Force One would be exempt.
Achtung!
Zeigen Sie Ihre Papiere, Schnell!
ZEIG HEIL!
Young white American male/female backpacking across Europe - search for illegal drugs
Two white American males - AIDS check at airport
Single Eurpoean female entering Dubai - prostitution check at airport [okay, don't ask how they'll do that]
Single male entering Thailand - visa declined
"The company said it would eventually like to have more data in the analysis, including embassy warnings, passport information, foreign watch lists." It's interesting/troubling that the most obvious red flags are moved to the "eventually" column, while sophisticated data mining techniques are used on all sorts of other variables.
This will be great because sometimes I like to wear hats.
Justin Dubs
For years the airlines have tried to take the skies away from small private planes, and have had many an FAA senior management in their hip pockets to do their bidding. Looks like their karma has come full circle. Especially now that the new Sport Pilot license and aircraft certification is underway it will become more economically feasible for ordinary folk to own and fly their own inexpensive two-seater light aircraft. That stupid kid down in Florida who smashed the Cessna into the building proved to the world that small planes pose about as much of a risk to the public as a motorcycle does. I'm sure glad I now have a private pilot certificate and my own little 4 seat airplane and can fly just about whereever and whenever I please as long as the weather is good enough. Learning how to fly is very intellectually stimulating and quite a rewarding experience. True, some people don't have the "right stuff" to ever be a pilot, but the rules of Darwinism will take care of those.
except that Israel has nuclear weapons. If you say *that* they will follow you to the "free" country you are in (italy say) and kidnap you and take you back to israel to be locked up forever more. Which is only slightly better than the French who would blow you up with a limpet mine, and give medals to the terrorists who did so.
The (absolutely) last time I tried to book an airline ticket with a travel agent my family had done business with for years, they told me they could no longer make reservations over the phone unless I came in and filled out a profile. It was a whole lot of marketing crap about what brand of hotel and rental car you prefer (the cheaper the better), would you rather sit by the window or aisle (like you have a choice), food preferences (why, little packets of pretzels and peanuts, of course), checklist of countries you'd like to visit (didn't see any choices for Antarctica or the Solomon Islands), package tours, cruises and casinos (wouldn't be caught dead on any of them) etc. This was definitely not being done for MY convenience.
I book all my own trips online now. Travel agents may be OK for people who enjoy travelling in herds, but I'd rather just buy my own ticket and decide what I'm going to do once I get there.
The U.S. government and FAA are usually pretty far behind the curve on information systems, so I doubt they would get their terrorist profiling system up and running any time in the foreseeable future. I wonder if they will have any more luck with this than making sure people's baggage goes to right destination.
I have heard 2 great ways to discourage terrorism so far...
- Have everyone Fly naked...(except for a gown like a hospital)
- Give everyone in a plane a baseball bat, EXCEPT for the funny sounding consonent named people. (they dont need to fear anything if they arent terrorists right?)
Mabidex
the recent claims that on average 10% to 20% of people flying from jamaica (to london) are smuggling drugs? And even more on some flights! That's scarey.
can easily track the serial numbers of the notes they give out... what makes you think you aren't being tracked that way? :-)
The America of personal freedom, a man's house is his castle, that sort of thing, is what will cease to exist.
Already happened, and has nothing to do with terrorism :). I can't burn leaves in my backyard, put up a fence that could stop anything, or install a toilet with sufficient flush capacity. The government already knows where I live and work, and how much I make, so they can transfer my income to other people. They threatened me with criminal penalties if I didn't fill out my census and tell them all about my household anyway (now if only my census form hadn't got lost in the mail ...)
If we can remove those freedoms, for the feeble reasons they have been removed, then what's a little more ;).
so much for individualism -- "being different" in america. you better be a carbon copy of the next white guy or there's something wrong with you. that ain't too far off.
Will those in charge and those in their charge be subject to this invasion of privacy? Somehow I doubt it. History is full of police with "special powers" who immediately become corrupt (FBI under Hoover, KGB, Savak (Shah of Iran), the French in Algeria, Gestapo, Chile, etc...). The more we give away the harder it will become to get it back.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I heard that Bush recently read George Orwell's book 1984. I can see he slightly misinterpreted it. Somebody should let the dope know it's not a "How-to."
You think the USA doesn't know about fighting for freedom? Odds are we fought for the freedom in whatever country you come from.
As for your argument that we forfeited our rights -- I don't think anyone should expect to have privacy once they set foot in an airport.
Air travel is not a right. And finally, no country has more dudes suing on constitutional issues than we do, so I'm not sure why you are gloating about that.
My question is: if someone wants to see the criteria they used to select "security honorees", will that code be open for viewing? How else can we be sure that such a powerful tool isn't being abused with biased/racially motivated lines of code??
And if the system does start working, does the security agent looking at your score get to see why the damn computer flagged you? Shouldn't they be able to see why it thinks you're a threat, and simply ask you some questions to clear up the situation?
For example, "Sir, the computer tells me that you fly a lot of last minute one-ways, can you explain why?" "Yes, I work for the State Department" "I see, if you can show me your ID, we'll be all set here."
People fall into the trap of thinking that something computerized will do it better. That's not true. It'll do it faster, but somebody's still got to make the programming decisions. And possibly, computers will make this kind of situation worse by decreasing the alertness of security officials! So many false hits are going to be generated, that the computer matches might lose credibility, or the security guys/gals will be flooded with people to question...
I am an Army Reserve Captain and fit the Topgun Iceman profile (big white guy with a short military haircut and demeanor). We all got flagged and searched (carry ons emptied, patted down again etc.)
big military-looking white guy? then you fit the Timothy McVeigh profile.
You euros regulate your commercial sector so that you can claim a higher standard of human rights, but you hamstring your businesses and your regulations tolerate (and ecourage) laziness and apathy in the private sector. How useful will your human rights regime be when you come under the power of a much larger, more successful economic power? Oh wait...you already are under the thumb of just such a power -- namely the USA!! Have a nice trip to the bottom.
hdwHe swWas g_lpszObviously lpwMarked pwBy dwSomeone hiWho
szWas lpszPissed dwOff hAt lsHungarian s_lpszNotation!
If ever you're in doubt about who or where I am
I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere
I am your Uncle Sam...Electric Uncle Sam!
This is all a load of crap - so now terrorists know not to live together, buy each-others plane tickets, or otherwise look dodgy.
Anyone, can be a potential terrorist, given the right conditioning. Its amazing how you can turn someones view about something around in minutes. Brains can be re-programmed just like computers, and with so many of them about, all you need to do, is say the right thing, and you have an army at your disposal - social engineering. The only real way to ensure your society behaves themselves is to brain-wash them first. Its much harder to convince someone to think differently when they've been told the opposite from childhood. Obviously you can't go about forcing this, unless you live in one of those backward draconian countries like the USA. You have to then realise that there simply is no way of ensuring that terrorists don't crash planes into stuff - the only safe plane, is an unplugged one.
In conclusion: don't piss people off, don't make tall buildings with lots of people in them (population density), and don't fly lots of big planes around.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Since there haven't been a lot of terrorist attacks, there is essentially no data available to validate such a system. As a consequence, the "threat assessments" will have to be based on prejudices and guesses by law enforcement about what are "normal" living arrangements and "normal" travel patterns. You can figure out for yourself what these people are going to consider "normal" and "suspicious".
Show me in the constitution or bill of rights where it says we have a right to privicy?
I enjoy my privicy, hence posting anonymously, but it is sad to say that we don't have a RIGHT to privicy.
The protections afforded by the Geneva Convention do not extend to unlawful combatants, i.e.,
* Those who engage in combat while hiding among the civilian population to avoid retaliation
* Those who do not wear uniforms representing their affiliation with a national force (more to the point - are not distinguishable from the population at-large)
* And since the GC is an agreement between nation-states, please explain to me how al Qaeda combatants qualify as members of ANY nationally recognized force (Afghan or otherwise). Would you have us believe that the al Qaeda fighters are members of the Saudi, Yemeni, (insert native country) armed forces, engaging in combat under the direction of aforementioned countries and therefore afforded to protections under the GC?
I'm sure a lot of us have stories about the utter stupidity of so-called airport "security."
I fly once in a blue moon. As a result, I'm not exactly up-to-speed on the new security paranoia. I go to check in, and answer some silly questions, none of which include "are you carrying anything sharp -- a knife, nail clipper, knitting needles, that sort of thing?"
My luggage goes through. I waste an hour waiting to for the boarding call. It comes. I enter the security area. Toss my coat and carry-on onto the xray, and I'm about to walk through the metal detector. Then I remember my car keys. I step back, take 'em out, toss 'em into a tray.
The security guard just about shits herself. "Is that a knife?!" she asks. "Er, yah?" I reply. It's my little keychain knife. It's as sharp as a spoon and has a 1/2" blade. I use it for opening envelopes and potato chip bags.
Well, my god, you'd think it was the discovery of the century. She literally grabs them from my hand and goes frantic removing my knife from the key ring. Does not ask to look at them, does not ask if she can fuck with my property, and then hands me a bullshit line about either throwing it out or mailing it to myself. I got rude about that: it's not a cheap knife, and there's no post office in the airport.
It ended up being checked in as luggage, in an envelope and an enormous plastic bag. Must have cost the airline 3x what the knife was worth.
Anyway, the security bitch took my name. I suppose I'm in some database now as a badass, to be cavity-searched next time I come within a mile of an airport.
Now, what really pisses me off is the implied insult in the whole thing. They really think I'm stupid enough to believe that the security check has anything to do with making the plane safe!
I could have carried a 6" lexan dagger through the metal detector and they'd *NEVER* have known about it. I could have walked through with plastic explosive in my shoes. I could have run piano wire through my belt and used it as a garrot. I probably could have walked on with a glass bottle of Coke.
Or I could have snapped the pull-out handle off my carry-on luggage, and weilded two 16" long sharp-pointed metal sticks.
Or I could be trained in the martial arts, and way more dangerous than most anyone who is carrying a weapon.
(Or if I'd left the damn knife in my pocket, I'd probably have cleared the metal detector: it didn't detect my belt buckle, which contains about 10x the metal content of the knife!)
THERE IS NO FUCKING SECURITY ON AN AIRPLANE!
I am deeply insulted that the airlines are playing this stupid little game of pretending to make us safe by disposing of our nail clippers. That isn't improving our security at all. It's just an insult.
I'm also PO'd that the check-in desk isn't suggesting to passengers that they think about any sharp objects that might be confiscated, and consder checking them in with the luggage.
And I'd like to slap the bitch that was so rude about it all. I'm going through a small-town Canadian airport, riding a piddling small jet, and I'm carring a piddling small knife. It wasn't the find of the century: it was an obvious mistake, and she should have politely asked me to step aside and remove the knife myself.
It also pisses me off that the best I can do is gripe about it all here on Slashdot, because if I go to the airport and talk to her supervisor, I'll probably be filed in some freaking Interpol database as Dr. Evil.
Ok, your turn: what's your airport security horror story?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Its time to ditch this candy-ass approach where we are afraid of hurting people's feelings when it comes to airport security.
Because of this we have an invasive system being put in place instead of a far simpler but less politically correct one.
Fact is, if the criminal matched certain criteria that is the criteria you use for your search. You don't accost 90 year old NUNs just to be fair.
Political correctness will deprive MORE people of their freedom than effective profiling.
Yes it would mean that anyone from a foreign country would be subject to more scrutiny.
Yes it would mean that those of Arabian descent would be subject to more scrutiny.
Yes it would mean that those who are both Arabian descent and Muslim would be scrutinzed more...
BUT... if your evidence points one way you cannot ignore it without unfairly impacting all the safety of those same people, or that of other totally unrelated groups.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It just plain won't work -- these terrorist cells will simply get smarter. If it correlates and monitors addresses, then they will live separately. Anyway -- the next time something goes down, it won't be done by people who have lived at known terrorist addresses.
More importantly, I don't think that airplanes are going to be the used like they were on 9/11 ever again -- everyone is so hypersensitive about them. Another method which is less suspect would be easier for them.
The real upshot of this is obvious -- it's like the so-called 'Patriot Act.' It's an attempt to fight terrorism which results only in the restriction of freedom for normal citizens. This system won't be used to catch any terrorists -- it will be used to catch plain old criminals, who are just trying to catch a plane ride. You may say 'well, they're criminals, screw them.' But how many moving violations does it take to get a warrant issued? How does that factor into correlations?
Anway I've ranted enough -- this is obviously a bad thing. We need CLOSED COCKPITS and AIR MARSHALS, which are effective, proven means against terrorism used in particular by Israeli airlines, not some gigantic asinine computer database. Once this system lets a terrorist on a plane, it can no longer protect you.
This idea just sucks so much, I wish I could express it. And remember -- we're helping pay for it!!!!!!!!!
Gee, I think you should get a job as airport security! You can ALWAYS tell when people are up to something! And, apparently, so can EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the military! We must have nothing to fear.
Why be paranoid unless your a terrorist or are living with a terrorist. "Ummm, Akmed, Excuse me, could we please watch something other than Al Jazeera? Oh, and could you please keep your C4 on your side of the refrigerator?" Might make an good sitcom. Hell corporate America already knows everything about you, so why not big brother. (It's all living on a giant MySql database on a Beowolf cluster in Cowboy Neals basement!!!) Get over it, if you even remotely believe you have any privacy, I feel sorry for you. The only thing we still have to our selves are our thoughts. (Although, they are trying to get those to... Check out http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html to stop them!!
We know who blew up the WTC.
What is being developed here is an institutionalized system to document all the attributes of people which scare "us regular, hardworking Americans". If by chance you meet a particular attribute you are immediately suspected of being a "terrorist". Please!
./ test, check to see if someone has more vowels than consonants or is otherwise unpronouncable. Those names are just scary and all the terrorists that they show on TV have those names, so anyone else with that name is scary regardless of their individual behaviour.
(heavy sarcasm...)
First check off all "foreigners". Well not all of them, per the current administration, only those from "evil" countries. You know the ones that look "different" from "us". Start by asking yourself now what it means to be "different" and who the norm is being used to define "us".
Also if you have even been to any of the previously mentioned countries, you are a "terrorist". The only need to go to any such country is to associate with someone who lives in that country, which by previous definition is a terrorist. Now you have documented ties to terrorists.
The
As a subset to this rule, if your name is "Mohammed" you are a terrorist regardless of the vowel / consonant ratio.
Now let's see what else is suspectible. Since we are tracking behaviors, we can see all people that may have eaten at an Indian / Pakistani or other restaurant with "strange food". Only those foreigners, previously defined as terrorists, eat that stuff and there were probably some there as well, terrorist ties again.
This could go on and on. Start asking yourself who is defining the list of behaviors and what is really behind their motivation.
By the way, don't happen to ask yourself outloud, because remember that based on current policy "you are either for us or against us". To question implies that you are not for "us" and are therefore subject to having to prove your patriotism.
To all those people that think such profiling is a good thing are merely hiding behind their insecurities. They are also usually the people that are in the current "us" group, safely hiding behind the policies that define the "them" group. Someday, if not already, these people will find themselves in the "them" group, if not defined by an "us" in the States but by some "us" in the World. This is the start of a very viscious and dangerous cycle by which we are all profiled and assumed to be suspicious people by some group out there, and in the end no one is safe.
http://www.supersphere.com/FrontPage/Politic/Artic le.html?ID=911&NAME=1984 or read it below. The worst of it, he's getting more right by the minute. War is Peace? Iran now, and then... Freedom is Slavery? Watch your privacy disappear before your eyes. Ignorance is Strength. Yes, by keeping the people ignorant the government gains strength.
Bush's Orwellian Address
Happy New Year: It's 1984
by Jacob Levich
Seventeen years later than expected, 1984 has arrived. In his address to Congress Thursday, George Bush effectively declared permanent war -- war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy. Today it's Al-Qaida; tomorrow it may be Afghanistan; next year, it could be Iraq or Cuba or Chechnya.
No one who was forced to read 1984 in high school could fail to hear a faint bell tinkling. In George Orwell's dreary classic, the totalitarian state of Oceania is perpetually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. Although the enemy changes periodically, the war is permanent; its true purpose is to control dissent and sustain dictatorship by nurturing popular fear and hatred.
The permanent war undergirds every aspect of Big Brother's authoritarian program, excusing censorship, propaganda, secret police, and privation. In other words, it's terribly convenient.
And conveniently terrible. Bush's alarming speech pointed to a shadowy enemy that lurks in more 60 countries, including the US. He announced a policy of using maximum force against any individuals or nations he designates as our enemies, without color of international law, due process, or democratic debate.
He explicitly warned that much of the war will be conducted in secret. He rejected negotiation as a tool of diplomacy. He announced starkly that any country that doesn't knuckle under to US demands will be regarded as an enemy. He heralded the creation of a powerful new cabinet-level police agency called the "Office of Homeland Security." Orwell couldn't have named it better.
By turns folksy ("Ya know what?") and chillingly bellicose ("Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"), Bush stepped comfortably into the role of Big Brother, who needs to be loved as well as feared. Meanwhile, his administration acted swiftly to realize the governing principles of Oceania:
WAR IS PEACE. A reckless war that will likely bring about a deadly cycle of retaliation is being sold to us as the means to guarantee our safety. Meanwhile, we've been instructed to accept the permanent war as a fact of daily life. As the inevitable slaughter of innocents unfolds overseas, we are to "live our lives and hug our children."
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. "Freedom itself is under attack," Bush said, and he's right. Americans are about to lose many of their most cherished liberties in a frenzy of paranoid legislation. The government proposes to tap our phones, read our email and seize our credit card records without court order. It seeks authority to detain and deport immigrants without cause or trial. It proposes to use foreign agents to spy on American citizens. To save freedom, the warmongers intend to destroy it.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. America's "new war" against terrorism will be fought with unprecedented secrecy, including heavy press restrictions not seen for years, the Pentagon has advised. Meanwhile, the sorry history of American imperialism -- collaboration with terrorists, bloody proxy wars against civilians, forcible replacement of democratic governments with corrupt dictatorships -- is strictly off-limits to mainstream media. Lest it weaken our resolve, we are not to be allowed to understand the reasons underlying the horrifying crimes of September 11.
The defining speech of Bush's presidency points toward an Orwellian future of endless war, expedient lies, and ubiquitous social control. But unlike 1984's doomed protagonist, we've still got plenty of space to maneuver and plenty of ways to resist.
It's time to speak and to act. It falls on us now to take to the streets, bearing a clear message for the warmongers: We don't love Big Brother.
Jacob Levich (jlevich@earthlink.net) is an writer, editor, and activist living in Queens, New York.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The screening plans reflect a growing faith among aviation and government leaders that information technology can solve some of the nation's most vexing security problems by rooting out and snaring people who intend to commit terrorist acts.
Information technology is not some kind of magical spell that will allow telepathic scanning of what goes on in a person's head before the fact. All the data processed by a computer will be configured to respond to specific clues, which people will always manage to go around.
Computers will never replace the judgement of a human being, and will never be able to determine what the intentions of a person are because of a very simple reason: computers measure actions, and the same action by different individuals does not imply that they have the same motives.
Despite what many politicians and officials seem to think, computers will not solve all of the world's problems. Their "faith" is just that: a belief in something based on no rational grounds.
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
Given the recently passed laws in the USA this development was inevitable.
Just how many databases are they planning to put together for this profiling? The US government already has granted its law enforcement agencies the right to trawl through email and other web traffic. Is that information going to be used too?
I would be suprised if it were not. From what I gather they now have the legal right to do this.
It strikes me that it could be incredibly easy to get a "dangerous" profile. Just write some emails/articles that are harshly critical about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. Send too many attachments with your emails and you may be sending stenographic info. Send a random binary file as an attachment, or even just a corrupt file, and you must be sending cryptographic communications (of course you cannot prove otherwise). Hell, just use crypto. Buy plane tickets for a couple of friends and check in at different times from them, or not at all. Exchange emails with Muslim friends expressing anger and disgust about the racist abuse they're suffering from redneck idiots and offer your support and you must be a danger. The possibilities are almost endless.
By the sounds of it, if you were to do all of these things you would guarantee yourself a strip-search every time you fly in the USA.
Do you know who all your friends friends are? Can you really guarantee that you have no link to a terrorist organisation, or organised crime?
Of course not, and nor should you have to. However in a country where even the government has supported terrorism in the past it would not be all that unlikely for a data mining system to find such a link.
I thank God that I'm not an American.
Do you feel better now? Couldn't come up with your own post, had to flame mine? Anyhow, let me humor you.
An example was used earlier, I think is applicable again. If you see me wearing a long trench coat in a bank in the middle of summertime, you would be suspicous, would you not? Or, am I just too "Observant" as you would say? Did you even read my post? Where do you see me saying every military person can do this? I was taught to be aware...not sitting around with my head up my ass. If those people on that plane in Pennsylvania hadn't reacted to their situation, do you think something worse would have happened? That is what I am talking about. Next time, read the post before you blast away with sarcasm.
Next!
Sent from your iPad.
Trading Places. Funny movie.
Unless you buy your tickets at the ticket window or do your own complete reservations, usually your whole itinerary is published, sold and marketed. What is wrong with throwing some security behind it?
It isn't racial profiling or segmenting out certain people, just tracking patterns of who does what.
Hell, even in small as Lancaster PA of a population of 300,000 at most, they profile. They profile segments of town to track population, growth, crime and variations in all of the segments. If they see a crime "Wave" moving through they have an idea of where it originates and they can attack it from the source.
You aren't aware of it, you aren't being racially profile or magically segmented out, people are just using what is known to track, monitor and predict many fascets of normal everyday life which just so happens to include the threat of terrorism.
Your aren't loosing any liberties when people use information already available. They're not going to do anything unless your being suspicious.
If you fly 3 different airlines across the us constantly scoping out different airports and have the abilities to rackup miles, rewards, points and member benifits, but don't then that should raise a flag, especially if your paying cash for tickets or full price. As the typical person no matter if a business or personall trip will try and get all the benifets and perks of flying including saving money on advanced purchases, hotel rewards, point sharing rewards and predicting and scheduling their plans.
The people being evavisive for a reason will have another reason to fear flying. Either way you won't loose your liberties unless your TRYING TO.
The US has laws and rules to protect your rights, you don't loose them unless you express through actions or words you understanding of the loss of these rights.
I don't see a single legit american being held, all the people being held without release right now are people overstaying visa's or using education visa's for other purposes. The country they come from can get them extradited, but they don't. Is it wrong for Americans to protect themselves because other countries could care less about there own citizens?
These aren't people who merely stole a candy bar from 711 who are going to be held, and i'm sorry but a visa infraction is a SERIOUS crime. Your over staying your legal visit in a country and your stated purpose is no longer binding. Your going to pay the price and you were told simply the cost of your actions when you came to this country.
So don't consider it PROFILING, consider it being rational and using the numbers just like everything else is done. If you county has a high traffic accident rate you pay a higher insurance premium because they came up with a rational way of handling the problems of that area, they profiled the population and didn't hand all the expenses to black people, white people, chinese or japanese, but you know if that WHOLE DAMN AREA IS BLACK, WHITE OR CHINESE THEN IT IS THAT POPULATION THAT HAS TO ACCEPT THAT PROBLEM AND FIX IT. There are plenty of other BLACK, WHITE, CHINESE,INDIAN areas that DON'T have that problem.
Read The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, by Heinrich Boll. A classic. It's almost obligatory literature in german highschools (or used to when I went to school). Makes sure you learn from the past (it's not about Nazis, but about terrorists, Germany had quite some terrorism in the 60s and 70s too).
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
As someone who travels a lot I welcome all the "draconian" rules. It's a pain in the ass to board a plane because clueless idiots who don't fly a lot, or simply don't think, don't follow the rules, which are clearly posted everywhere, and clog up the system. Idiots trying to leave their laptops in their bags, when it clearly says that you have to take them out and put them through the X-ray machine separately. Idiots who waste time by complaining for tens of seconds instead of taking the 5 seconds is should take at a maximum to take their laptop out -- those tens of seconds add up quickly and if someone can't get their laptop out of their bag in 5 seconds they shouldn't have one.
Plus, most of the people I work with fly a heck of a lot also, have been doing so for the last 10-20 years, and have the same opinion as I do when it comes to the new "stricter" rules. Most frequent flyers wish that the rules would get much more stricter, because we know from experience how lax they really are.
Yea, and it's a pain in the ass to buckle your seatbelt when driving a car, those turn signals are just a pain in the ass, and screw those pesky pedestrians crossing the road. Both driving a car and taking a flight have rules of the road. If you don't like them then don't drive, and/or don't fly. You sound like the idiots who think everything is so troublesome that they may as well break the rules and go down the up escalator, or try to get past security, or some other stupid prank. THOSE idiots are who make your 3-hour wait on the tarmac unbearable.
No offense to you, sir, I aggree with what you say.
but the guy who runs my corner store has a different comparison of life in israel and the U.S. He's palestinian.
Of course, we must both appreciate the irony that my making this remark about the freedom of your country will likely wind up in the profile database in mine!
Mr. Laden said in his interview that was not allowed to air after raids, that government is tyraninan is US and it will get worse. I see no reason not to believe Mr. Bin. These are not smart games to outrun terrorists, but heavyhanded powergrabbing by government to justify future ability to quash anyone who is against uncontrolled growth of corporations and their ability to become the police. Anyone who says that large corporations are not going to be like dukes in dark ages, think again. Marginal comforts of life for which we sold out freedoms soon will be taken away and people will be chained into slavery.
In some ways some people are so by credit agencies. How so you will say... If credit agency can provide EVERYONE with credit but you for starting a business, all over you become weak, much less strong in ability to start a business,
your business will suffer, unlike others from stop-go cashflow, assuming you are marginally successful.
50 billion on military spending, where does Mr. Bush takes these numbers? Did he sniff something?
Oh wait... Well dealing with disaster in ways:
1. threaten the world and those who do not cooperate to be invaded and be destroyed
2. declare alternative world orders to be "Axis of Evil"
3. ask public to give him a loan of 50 billon green ones, to spend at his friend's factories to build second rate equipment
Now though canadian I really hope that US was to have Mr. Gore, than Mr. Bush.
While Gore was writing leading legislation, Bush was getting drunk.
While Gore was playing football, Bush was snorting coke.
But that is besides the point. Now you people have to deal with aftermath. So do we.
Dang.
This kind of a boondoggle is a sales guy dream. It will take years to build and prove to be unable to perform the task. By that time, the guy who sold it will be long gone, after he pockets his commision.
Systems that build a big pile of data and "try to find patterns" sound good, but never seem to work in real life.
They always seem to degrade into a very simple rule of thumb like "If you paid late before, you might pay late again." Duh.
So is the new rule "If you hijacked a plane before, you might hijack another one?" You dont need to track who I live with/sleep with to keep a list of people that hijack planes.
These systems that "find subtle patterns" usally find data artifacts that have little or no predictive power with lots of false positives.
In the mean time, it will be more useful for divorce lawyers if they can get their hands on the data. Ever want to hide from an ex wife? Never fly on a plane. Ever.
Bitching and moaning on slashdot about whatever the government does that you dont like isnt going to amount to anything. THe problem is everyone seems to voice their opnion here instead of where it counts, to their senators! I bet if the the enitre slashdot community actively protested to their senators about the DMCA, it wouldnt have passed. why dosnt everyone put all their efforts into actuallu voiceing their opinions to the government instead of crying about it here.
how many of you have actually written to your senators protesting anything? thought so. THe whole point of our American Government is that its a government thats for the people. Now if the only people that activly participate in our government those "ignorant" ones, then your going to get laws that are "ignorant" becuase thats all the government is hearing from its people. C'mon slashdot! put your comments where it counts! write to your senator!
Sun is Warm, Grass is Green
Reminds me of Gore Vidal's great remark that we live in the United States of Amnesia. In fact, he begins his 1998 article in Vanity Fair (was it November?) about vanishing liberties by saying "Do you remember the first time you're personal liberties were infringed upon? I do---it was 1969 and I was travelling by airplane..." Well, I don't have the article here, so I'm paraphrasing from memory.
The point is that people have been choosing to compromise their liberties in exchange for easy travel, even between states within the US, for several decades. Airline security, for reasons you can work out on your own, has been the perfect doorway-to-oppression in which to force a wedge. Sure, people are always free to choose not to travel, but as long as it's easier to comply, ever time someone signs-off his or her liberties for conveniences, we're one step closer to our new MacCarthism.
The sad fact, which is frightfully plain, is this will do absolutely nothing to stop terrorism. This blow to liberty is horribly worse than the strike versus the WTC.
Once again, Slashdot is running a day behind the game. Once again, Matt Drudge has brought this to the world before everyone else. Thanks /. for keeping the world up to date
Where songs like I Hate Israel" top the charts.
Say I have a dependent variable called "did a crazy, evil thing." Now I have dozens of independent variables called "income," "purchase behavior," etc. How many positive cases do I have on the "did a crazy, evil thing" variable? Let's assume that the FBI won't just leak all their investigative data into this system (which would permanently blow those investigations). So that means we have what, like 100 million people with negative scores on the "did a crazy, evil thing" variable, and like 30 ppl with positive scores?
The statistics suck here, folks, you will NEVER isolate the variation under these conditions. You'll get millions of innocent people whose patterns among the indep variables match the incredibly thin patterns you get among the terrorists.
This is TOTALLY different from credit analysis schemes where you have like 1/3 or 1/2 of the people in the dataset with occasional or severe credit problems. Modeling really works here b/c a) you have a quantitative measure of the dependent variable (you can smoothly and precisely quantify HOW bad someone's credit is), and b) the dependent variable gives a nice scale with tractable variation, probably one of those infamous bell distributions conveniently around some point (or if you stratify properly you'll find the bells, whatever).
And don't be fooled by the fancy-sounding "neural network" stuff, that's just another modeling technique which loosens a few assumptions. But it does NOT fundamentally change the need to have enough positive cases to balance the variation in the independent variables. And binary dependent variables? Sheesh. BAD DATA! DOWN BOY!
And let's talk for a second about the living arrangement correlation analysis. If someone X has lived with someone Y known to be positive on the "did a crazy, evil thing," variable, I sure as hell hope that someone X was questioned very, very thoroughly by the cops. So what good is this additional profiling??
BTW, I travel internationally with my laptop pretty often. EVERY SINGLE TIME I go through Schipol in Amsterdam they pull me out of the line for ~20 mins of additional questioning. They don't tell me why, but I'm tripping something in their profile. It's not racial, but I think "has been to Bosnia" or something, plus that I have a laptop. They always pester about whether the laptop is mine or my employer's, and being the latter, they are very, very concerned.
Profiling creates millions of false positives, and it is by no means clear that it prevents false negatives.
And if you do any of those things forget about EVER visiting the US.
Just ask Dmitry Sklyarov.
Also, since Israel gets a lot of US aid, they might even be willing to extradite you to the US for illegal DVD usage, decryption, etc.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This reminded me of an interesting quote of Bin Laden on the BBC this morning:
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The US Government will lead the American people - and the West in general - into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_ea st /newsid_1795000/1795531.stm
Lies about crimes
From CNN's report on the mid-October bin Laden tape just released:
Sounds about right, eh?
-ben
(only slightly more glad that I'm Canadian...)
myselfmusic
Remember the "shoe bomber". Maybe we could have stopped him from getting on the plane in the first place if we had a system in place...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I suggest the Feds put the database on Oracle running on a Beowulf cluster of Linux machines, running the newest kernel.
Then Slashdot would LOVE it.
;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
q. Why are Anonymous Cowards like Muslims?
a. They all look the same, they stink, and all they can talk about is hatred.
first off, hatred is everywhere- from the middle east to your backyard...coincidentally it sounds like you got some hatred there yourself. secondly, every single religion has fundamentalists that plague it, from the christians to the jews. summing up this rant, in one disorganized sentence: anyone who generalizes is doing the same as "those stinking, hate filled muslims" (to put it in your words)
That's the sound that the privacy-conscious traveller of the future will hear as he travels without haste, half-cokes, three peanuts meals and air-rage, all the while enjoying the scenery in a rooooomy seat or the privacy of a comfortable bedroom.
Now is time to travel with Amtrak more than ever...
Shit like this just makes me want to leave USA more and more everyday. Anyone know of any nice european countries that accept people seeking amesty from oppresive governments?
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
"We don't like the looks of you, you can't live in our neighborhood."
"We don't like the looks of you, you can't fly on our airplane."
Boy, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
-Thomas
Reading the article, and then reading the comments and sub-comments, this article has brought out the debate on the declining civil liberties of the US and what freedoms ARE or ARE NOT guaranteed by the US Constition. There's several comments from citizens of non-US countries who point out instances where their country is more "free" than the US, and then sub-comments pointing out counter-examples of said person's country NOT being "free". So, in summary I feel that many/most countries have some freedoms and do not have some freedoms.
What I want is the opinion of the slashdot community, on what country they feel is the most "free" with freedoms that the slashdot crowd is interested in. If a citizen of the US was going to move and try to gain citizenship in another country, what country should it be?
I've read the threads from this comment and notice the usual reality-challenged responses from people who appear to have thought they have learned from other cultures from travelling to EPCOT.
Well, as a Canadian raised as a Protestant Christian who came very close to converting to Judaism to marry and move to an Israeli kibbutz before Ariel Sharon arranged for the Shatila and Sabra massacres by Maronite Christian Lebanese allies, I do want to point out that Israel is the only democracy in any sense in the Middle East and allows greater freedoms to Christians and Moslems and just plain agnostics and atheists than any other Middle Eastern country. I was and remain appalled by the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, and by the steps taken by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities since then. But Israel is doing better with allowing freedom under seige than Western democracies since 9/11/2001. Various draconian laws and regulations are being passed in Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States, among others.
I still think that despite everything that Israel's public participation puts a lot of other countries to shame. I'm not prepared to defend it with my life, as I am similarly not prepared to do so for most other countries, but Israel is still high on my list of countries that are still trying to maintain civil freedoms where possible. I won't shake Ariel Sharon's hand, but then I wouldn't shake the hand of too many other heads of state, either.
Let's keep a sense of proportion here.
I don't believe it's safe, therefore to protect myself I'm going to walk everywhere now instead of using hijackable transportation...
ahh, the egg in the basket..
In the interest in preventing terrorism, please post your actual name, street address, home telephone number, social security number, mother's maiden name, and date of birth. Otherwise, QUIT TROLLING AND SHUT UP. There are mod points coming--I see repeated negative moderation in your future. And the beauty is, it won't cost me a thing in M2 because there are so many trolls of yours available in unarchived posts.
~~~
.. and 'profiling' gamers, as we all know how they are all just cyber trained killers. I imagine the 'flagged' students will be taken to a special class room where they can be safely seperated from the rest of the student body.
-- MrMud
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
I think Osama has confused the U.S. Government with the RIAA. It's an easy mistake to make. One is a bunch of pompous asses, while the other is an organization dedicated to controlling our lives by eliminating freedom. As an American, I still get confused about which is which.
The problem is not that they are making more rules. The problem is that they are making the *wrong* rules.
For example, there is now a pretty good chance that I will have to take my shoes off and have someone search them before I can get on a plane. However, I can, if I have purchased a domestic airline ticket, check a bag onto an airplane, then leave the airport and that bag will fly without me to its destination.
So on one hand you have a stupid little rule that inconveniences a lot of innocent people (there are so many better ways to get stuff onto an airplane than in one's shoes). But at the same time, there are huge security holes that are being ignored.
It would seem that the new "tighter" security is all about the perception of security in order to encourage people to fly. They don't seem to care whether that perception reflects reality at all.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Since most people are willing to sell out their freedoms because they fear choice: Why don't we just use the system against the government? We should start massive ticket buying schemes where one individual buys tickets for a few dozen people on the plane (get cash from the people who want tickets and put all the charges on one card). Maybe the government will think that we are all terrorists and arrest us. Better yet, why don't we all start listing our living arrangements as Mosques, Synagogues, Temples and Churches? The data is only useful if its actually accurate data.
1. Consider the amount of data that needs to be collected and mined for each individual. Is all of this data going to be stored in one place and updated continuously, or gathered per individual on request? Since associations are going to be traced, they'll want to gather all of this information up front. This is going to require a hell of a lot of storage space and some ungodly bandwidth to maintain.
The level of detail they want to put into your dossier is considerably more than a private investigator could come up with, and PIs charge hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars for such a report. These guys are going to keep the price down around $2 per ticket. Yeah. Sure.
2. A background check on one prospective passenger will be rather intensive. They're talking about using phone records here, which alone could bind the average person to several dozen other people. Let's call this number "a". Now, they're going to explore seven degrees of association. This means that 1+a**7 people need to be checked to vet one passenger. (Current population of Earth: about 6*10**9). How far in advance do I need to make my reservation?
3. Remember Kevin Bacon? I remember reading a couple of years ago that between any two people on Earth chosen at random there are on the average LESS THAN SIX degrees of separation. Yep, that applies to Ashcroft and Bin Laden as well.
4. Bad data is worse than no data, and it won't take much pollution to render the whole thing completely useless. The Feds will need to tamper with the data to allow their agents to work undercover and to operate the Witness Protection programs. This database will be an irresistable cracker target. And where would we get data on non-citizens?
Both major (and probably some of the minor) political parties will have their private cracks into the database and neither will hesitate very long to use those cracks to find or create dirt on their opponents and to try to clean their own candidates' records. It won't take long for them to dispel anyone's delusion that this thing is in any way accurate.
In short, it's just not going to work. I suspect someone's looking for free publicity or maybe some "venture capital".
smoochie smoochie
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
i know, because i'm working on it right now.
European airline are not allowed to disclose informations about passengers except a manifest (listing of passenger on a flight) upon arrival in the US...
And the european airlines won't disclose the information, otherwise the competitors would grab the information and the passenger...
Yes I know that there a thing like a echelon, but nowadays airline data centers are like Fort Knox. I doubt that they get some useful information out of it.
SCREW YOU! You would slice off your arms and legs for 10 cents worth of government provided "security" and STILL be worse off if you just bought a gun and did the job yourself! I hope YOU are "profiled" as a terrorist by that very system! And should that happen, you can pat yourself on the back for being a stool-pigeon and allowing even yourself to once again, fall into a trap of "security" for freedom's sake; yeah, right, i am safer because I am now profiled against a HUGE database that includes my race, age, height, sex, shoe size, work history, credit history, unemployment periods(SURELY a terrorist would be unemployed!), not to mention THOUSANDS of other, indiscriminate "features" about your personal life and living arangement/s would be shown to anybody wanting to "make sure" you were not a terrorist.
Shit, same old, sad story all over again..."security" while stomping OUR rights and freedoms ever farther into the dirt! MOVE OUT and take THIS NAZI formed government with you! And also, don't forget, your passport photos will also be used AGAINST you for whatever reason they can think of! Flagging, color-coding every traveler for "threats" percieved and real is ABSURD and directly conflicts with the RIGHT TO INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY ABOVE CORPORATE CONCERNS,and government "concerns" even more! Sorry, i am happy I will NEVER buy another airline ticket if this is what I have to endure just to ride on a plane! Besides, since I can pilot my own aircraft, why take big jets and take the reamings they give us/you? I'll bypass that B.S. and carry my gun(loaded of course) on my belt and feel 100% SAFER because I can secure MY personal safety BETTER than ANY cop, anyplace, anytime...GUARANTEED! I trade NO privacy for a nickel's worth of government backed exploitations under a guise of "national security" and "security"...What a crock of B.S. the gov is forcing down your throats, and better still, you FELL FOR THIS DECEPTION, lock, stock and barrel!
I suppose you carry a saint christopher medallion around your neck too, for "security", right?
Go ahead, ask god for his help, you will wait a long time for a response, because there are NO GODS!
206.39.38.2, DDN-BLK-36, DOD NET INFO CENTER. 800.365.3642 206.36.0.0-206.39.255.255 NET RANGE.
On this, you are wrong.
It's all about context. 'Nigger' was used by whites as a derogatory term, used in a racist way for decades. A white man saying it has a hard time escaping the context. Not so when a black man says it.
Just like context matters in sex discrimination. Telling an off color joke to you female co-worker you have known for 5 years is very different from telling a new employee who you manage the very same joke. It's about trust, understanding, and power.
Call a cracker a hacker - you are modded to -1!
rbb
>Now. As a sidenote.
>
>Black man says nigger - it's culture.
>White man says nigger - it's racist.
>Italian man says wop - it's culture.
>Asian man says wop - it's racist.
>Indian man says chink - it's racist.
>Asian man says chink - it's culture.
Um, no you cannot check your bag, leave the airport and have it fly to the destination. That changed a few weeks ago. All bags are matched with the manifest. You, obviously don't fly frequently. I hear all of the time folks being paged because the flight is about to leave. Why do you think that is? It's because if those dumbasses don't show up, they are going to have to offload their luggage.
I agree, it is the clueless jerk who is messing up air travel. I would like to have a frequent traveler card, so I can bypass the clueless idiots and get on to my next consulting engagement.
AUGH!
El AL uses profiling, you great bleeding moron.
Quotes.
"Even before that flight left Amsterdam, Mr. Bar-Lev had demanded the
removal of two suspicious passengers -- who promptly boarded and
hijacked a Pan American flight. El Al's airborne precautions are
designed as a fallback to the more important security screening on the
ground."
So, what EXACTLY is their criteria of suspicious? I bet it was dark-skinned Arabic or Palenstian people.
"But the keystone of El Al's security is the interview. Well before
passengers arrive at the airport for their flight, El Al security agents
scour passenger manifests for names on watch lists and check information
about when reservations were made and how tickets were paid for, to
identify potential high-risk passengers. Then examiners, usually Israeli
university students, question passengers to compile a quick risk
profile, ranging from a naive type who may be unwittingly carrying a
bomb, as was the case with a pregnant Irish woman in 1986, to a person
deliberately plotting sabotage."
The interview, and PROFILE. They check information to identify high-risk passengers. How is that NOT profiling?
"El Al's profiling might smack of discrimination in the U.S. Palestinians
and other Arabs are almost always asked to step aside for more-thorough
questioning and searches. Aviation experts say that, like human agents
in the intelligence world, preflight interviews are an indispensable
security tool"
They admit to it and do the same thing that that I was talking about. If you're gonna comment responding to and trying to disprove a post, make sure you aren't gonna look like a great big dummy first off, okay?
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
The Washington Post article that is linked from the story is missing a small little fact; the cards will include biometric information about the holder. Have a look here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/2002013
I feel sorry for you guys, this is a back door way to get national ID cards in place if ever I saw one. Some of you people even quote Thomas Jefferson "those Who Desire To Give Up Freedom In Order To Gain Security, Will Not Have, Nor Do They Deserve, Either One." however most comments lean in favour of this. Those comments that don't, congratulations.
Learn from the Israeli prick that posted in this crap in this story "Yes we have national IDs and soldiers and security guards everywhere, but we have freedom of speech (at least to some extent).". This misguided fool thinks he has freedom (despite the soldiers etc) because he can rent zone 1 DVDs, well lets put this in context: Forced military service for 2 years (killing 10 year olds) but if you can rent zone 1 DVDs you must be free, brainwashed scum.
You Americans are going down a very very slippery slope quickly and I'm actually very affraid of where this will lead the world. Think for yourselves, geeks are meant to think and not just follow what you are told. Does what the media are telling you make sense?
The facts involved in 911 are a long way from known, the majority here seem to have accepted the official story of events, think for your selfs. All you lot know about 911 is from the American mass media, you have been given hardly any facts at all and yet you "know" it was 19 or 20 Arabs. Somethings don't make any sense:
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/mayday/mediafile
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/01_25_02_revise
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/inde
*sigh*. Actually what's the point, this is a waste of time, no doubt this will get a lot of patriotic nonsense replies. You go and get those oil fields^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H evil arabs.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Should the US be invaded, make sure you put on a uniform before you pick up a gun.
--
E_NOSIG
~~~
I take it you are a white male.
I am black with a Middle-Eastern name. I have been stopped "randomly" driving in NY, PA, and NJ. I have been thoroughly searched everytime I go through a major airport.
And, I too live with my wife and child. Why do I raise flags and not you?
The government is taking advantage of this to push through legislation that in a pre 9-11 world would have been laughed at scornfully.
Point one. When investigating a crime, the mostly likely suspect is the one with the most to gain from the crime.
People need to realize that rather than do this, maybe we should have more intensive screening for foreigners coming INTO THE COUNTRY.
Point two. Dead right, common sense isn't it. Unless of course you were more intested in keeping control over your own population.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
As the subject of my post stated, terrorists don't care what hurdles get thrown between a plane flight and its passengers. The passengers, however, do care. At least the ones with better uses of their time.
"...clueless idiots...Idiots trying...Idiots who waste time..."
It's clear from your language that you value your time and don't appreciate people wasting it. So why spend more time stuck in the security gauntlet?
"Both driving a car and taking a flight have rules of the road. If you don't like them then don't drive, and/or don't fly. "
As it happens, one "rule" I don't like is spending the same amount of time just boarding a flight as the flight itself. Don't you see what's wrong with this picture? It doesn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't be this way.
Is security lax? You betcha. Are there ways to streghthen it? Absolutely. But push the passenger (a.k.a. the "customer") too far and you will doom the airline industry.
Because 19 out of 19 terrorists looked like you and had a similar name as yours. Are you so stupid not to see that?
Actually, no, I'm an atheist, and I own guns. Really, why is it so hard to realize that your rights ARE being violated when you're the target of terrorists? Why is this so bloody hard to understand? Yes, you've done nothing, but there are many people in the world who want to kill you just the same, for no good(in our opinion) reason. This is a violation of your rights. Will you be happy to run around saying "I'm free! I'm free!", and being shot by some wacko who wasn't filtered out, in the interest of protecting your rights? Really, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
You said that "Information technology is not some kind of magic spell that will allow telepathic scanning of what goes on in a person's head." But this excerpt from the Washington Post article suggests that the experts feel differently:
Next time, why not post a link to the original article rather than post it in its entirety here? For those interested, the article seems to have originally appeard here.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan.
An interesting comment from someone most Americans appear to think doesn't understand our value of freedom. Perhaps we should guess again...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Here is my design for a 64 digit identity card, based on proven mathematical principles from the 19th century:
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
airliners are not the only way for terrorists to commit their acts. McVeigh didn't need one. neither did the people who attacked the embassies.
call me conspiratorial. i don't see why the govt needs a lot personal information about us for "air safety." it seems to me that now they will have an easier way to eliminate anyone who makes them mad by shooting down their plane with a "missile defense" interceptor. they at least will keep even more tabs on people. if knowledge, or information, is power, then this starts to be quite a concentration of power. to what end?
do i have a right to freedom of movement? if i am not in prison/under arrest, yes. it doesn't have to be explicitly stated in the constitution or bill of right for me to have it. even if i am suspicious, what happened to innocent until proven guilty? do i have a right to speak up if i think the govt is being repressive? yes. i am not saying it is now, but this leads down that path.
"To stop the terrorists."
It seems to me, the events of September 11 did more to help and bolster the agenda of the Conservative/Christian/Republican National Socialists that have weaseled their way into every facet of government since world war 2. The Republican agenda has ALWAYS been to force world war three and put the citizens of the United States under military authority. The current administration is dedicated to ending the USA and overthrowing the constitutional system that existed befor WW2. The correlation between credit rating, lifestyle and travel patterns are just an excuse to guarantee maximum control over the population.
Why doesn't anybody see that where we were once critisizing the USSR for requiring internal passports, scrutiny of potentially "subversive" activities such as campaigning for an unapproved political ideology or political candidate, we now have the same systems being put into place right here in the United States for the same exact reasons the communists and fascists did it? "National Security" is just doublespeak for preventing too many people from asking too many questions or being able to rectify percieved injustices through law or other means. The restrictions on internal travel are just another symptom of the fascist revolution that took place in November 2000. Competing industries such as Amtrak are being forced out of buisiness while the airlines are subsidized in their fuel, security and maintenence costs to the turn of 50 to 75% of their operating expenditures.
George Bush had ZERO chance of reelection before September 11th, and I think the republicans are going to do as much cracking down as they can while they control the office. The once free citizens of the United States will be lucky to see another election. Restricting and monitoring travel is just another excuse to put people in prison for bypassing tha system.
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
I am not sure if the Buddhists have any fundamentalists, but if not, they are the only ones of the major religions. After all, the biggest religions are the ones that had the biggest armies.
There's one thing you must understand with the fannatical muslims, it's their way, or the highway. They see no compromise and they insist on double standards that exempt them from common responsibility, yet allow them certain privalegdes. They wish to slaughter cattle in their own (inhumane.. Halaal my ass.) manner, they must be aware if their death, yet demand schools adhere to their unorthodox dress code. In a school in the UK, muslims demanded that their children be taught to swim, but also demanded that they remaim fully covered and did not wear a swimming costume. I am not a citizen of the USA, I'm a citizen of one of the Allied Nations and I say hand me a desert eagle or an m16, either way, I will fight with my soul for you. Let's end these bastards.
Man, I'm getting sick of the overly-liberal attitude around here. :-)
I'm all for whatever someone does in the privacy of their own home is their own business, but when they're killing thousands, something has to be done, privacy be damned.
If the government used this to "out" five gay guys living in the same apartment in NY, can you imagine the huge scandle it would create? It just would *not* be used for invasion of privacy purposes like that.
But if they spotted a bunch of Afghanistan citizens who bought one-way tickets, and stopped a major disaster, more power to them. (And if the lead was bogus, no harm done, but a minor inconvenience.)
I think North American society has gone too far towards protecting the privacy of citizens; it ends up protecting the rights of criminals as well. I'd love it if the government checked the serial numbers of all consumer hardware in everyone's house on a monthly basis. They'd get nothing on me (I bought it all legally, I've got *nothing* to hide!), and they'd likely find all my stolen stereos, shop gear, and other stuff that was taken during two burglaries of our house. If there were a society that had that as it's policy, I'd sign up in a second, and sleep better at night (as would my daughter, who still has nightmares about the burglary).
I'm feeling more violated by the rights of the criminals under these "protections", than they supposedly provide me. Sure, give me a rundown now and then, as a minor inconvenience, as long as it nabs the people who are violating me through burglaries and other social crimes.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
On connecting flights?
Awesome.. Now i get to say the same exact crap people say to me when I say the USA has problems. Ok Here goes:
If you dont like it, move. I am sure you can find a country that would love to limit the privacy of its citizens.
I will only buy your arg when the powers that be stop LYING to the people and say that they are KILLING people in order to ensure out freedom.
Yes, its unfortunate that we end up protecting the crims as well, but guess what?
thats the proce we pay for freedom..
...the constant failure to draw distinctions between the official positions of Arab governments and armies (may of which are bitterly hated by their own people) and ordinary Arabs who just want to go about their lives?
By failing to make this distinction, the Israeli military elite marks itself as a ruthless aggressor.
Actually, D00d, I *don't* live in your country. so I don't have to move
Ummmm, explain that to me again? Protection of criminals' privacy is the price you pay for freedom? Define freedom? Freedom from the authorities knowing what illegal activity you might be up to? I'm not being sarcastic, I just want to know what particular part of your privacy you're protecting that would prevent authorities from knowing about criminals' activity?
Maybe I'm just too damn squeaky clean, and I don't smoke pot (I don't have any problem with anyone else doing it, and think it probably should be legalized), and I don't pirate software (heck, I'm on slashdot, I run open source OS's at home, and I relish the free stuff out there), I don't copy music (if you can even call it "music" that the producers are cranking out these days") or movies (there hasn't been a great one in awhile, and when there is $5 at the local video store well fix me up fine). Maybe if there was some petty piracy crime that was worthwhile, I'd feel different
Providing absolute privacy to *all* citizens means you provide absolute privacy to *all* *criminals* as well. That's not freedom, in my book. Unfortunately, in any group of people, there are some elements that you need protecdtion from, and giving *them* absolute protection just doesn't cut it. Especially after September 11th.
Anyhow, I've been personally victimized enough by criminals with too much privacy, and other folks hiding behind veils of anonymity, to be a big fan of privacy thsee days.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
...for the actions of US government, how can they be any better than those who blame all Arabs and all Muslims for the actions of a few homicidal fruitcakes?
Moron, the reason for the protections established under the US constitution were specifically designed to limit the power of the majority in its efforts to suppress the minority viewpoint. The 5 men in the same apartment would not be "outed" as you say, they would be arrested and likely executed for sodomy. It is absolutly nessesary to prove criminality to punish, IE the mob rule cannot justify its actions merely because somebody may disagree or oppose the majority's current ideology. Hitler and Stalin required no rule of law, they merely needed to aggrivate the mass hysteria and let the mob mentality take its course. According to your theory, if your neighbor decided that he didn't like your face, he could denounce you and have you arrested without any protection of law or requirement of evidence to prove his case.The specific issue addresed in this case is freedom to travel at will, within or outside your own nation without having to justify it or asking anyone's permmision to do so. If I pay cash to fly to another part of my country, why would my credit rating or current employment status come under any scrutiny? Would I be denied permission to travel because I was unemployed? Would my desire to go somewhere new be considered an "unusual destination" merely because I had never been there before? Why would I need to justify this to the government?
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
You have to give up some safety for freedom. Our country is built on the belief that EVERYONE, even criminals should have equal rights. While when we have probably cause that a criminal committed a crime, his rights can be limited, if we don't, he has full rights. But what if we didn't? What if someone in the gov't decided they didn't want to only check criminals? What if a company mis-stamped an item so that two products got the same serial numbers?
I've been robbed, too. I used the public information system to bust the guy, and it didn't take a huge criminal profiling system. It turned out to be some 30 year old white businessman, someone I wasn't expecting. And these terrorists will simply find out how the profiling system works and change their ways. Limiting MY privacy for someone else's safety (I live in the boonies) doesn't fit kosher with me.
I believe it was Ben Franklin that said "Those who give up essential liberty for a temorary safety deserve neither".
While you may be willing to give up some liberty for safety, some are not. The founding fathers of the US would not, and our Constitution will not allow it. No matter how hard the feds try, they can't change that aspect of the constitution without starting another civil war.
You can't spell worth shit, so it makes sense you were flagged as dangerous.
The problem can be solved by sealing the cockpit and ENFORCING a policy of NEVER giving in to a hijacker's demands.
It won't eliminate terrorists, but it will force them to move on to other things.
Currently it seems that the federal government is more than willing to help the terrorists punish Americans by stripping them of their rights and destroying their way of life.
Another way to curb terrorism would be to cease U.S. funding and arming of these sorts of organizations. It seems that a great many leaders who are more or less covertly funded later end up using American weapons and money against America.
to make a long story short, I can understand yer thinking, but for me, moi, I am not entirely convinced that the story we are being told about the big bad brown people around the world happens to be true.
Bush and his little band of criminals have a long long history of being the biggest fans of war and hatred in the name of money and power the past century has seen. While I do know there are "terrorists", I do no think that while on one hand these twerps running the show right now say, well yeah you are gonna have to give up your freedoms so as to protect you from these "Freedom Hating" brown/yellow/red/different people (who incidently do not like US gov installations of dictators, and corporations, who are decidedly anti democracy) coming in and saying how they should act, what sugar water they should buy, etc etc..
So anyway, these rulers here are telling us to give up our freedoms and privacy a bit, yet are storming around the globe, right now as we 'speak' calling democratic countries (Iran) "Axis' of Evil", doing secret covert actions in 150 countries, where the people are obviously pissed at us already (assuming they are behind 9/11), telling the US army women its cool to shit on Islamic tradition by not having to go around covered in Saudi Arabia anymore, one fuckin week after Saudi hinted that we should finally leave their country.
I mean, besides kicking Afghanistans ass, and replacing a sicko gov with another sicko gov (but one who likes Oil plans), and capturing a bunch of people on the old CIA payroll and bringing them to Cuba to dispose of, what the hell have we done to make us more safe?
Not a thing, we are making the world more angry with us, and isolating ourselves furthur with a perpetual "us against them" stance.
So my point is, until these selfish bullshit artists put their money where their mouth is, stop lying to us perpetually, and pissing off people around the world by pissing on International Law, etc. i dont want them taking one fuckin shred of my freedom away.
Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber, was travelling under his real name with his real British passport. About as English a name as you could get.
So, since you're going to hell anyway, why not take the mark. NOW I get it.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.