Slashdot Mirror
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."
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"
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
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?"
Look at El Al in Israel -- they have massive amounts of data on passengers and participate in profiling unlike any other airline
And we probably would to if a bunch of Canuks started border-jumping/bombing cafe's in Seattle.
Of course, maybe it's just my own idiosyncratic way, but I'm not a big fan of the government tracking all of my purchases. I pay taxes for them to go blow shit up when it needs blowing up, to make sure my roads are paved, and to spray magnesium chloride in Downtown denver just before it snows. I don't pay them to tell the guy driving the 747 what I had to eat yesterday.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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
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
"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.
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.
This is exactly the problem. America is falling into a "reaction based on paranoia" mentality that is hindering the country.
Consider this: If you fly into Washington Regan (DCA) you must remain seated for thirty minutes prior to landing. This means that when I fly to DCA I am not permitted to stand from the time the door is closed on the flight (I depart from Pittsburgh, the flight is 35 minutes from wheels up to touchdown). What purpose does this serve other than to hassle the passengers? It has already been proven that if someone rushes the cockpit other passengers will stop them (this occured on an American flight to Chicago). Furthermore, does anyone really think that someone intent on taking a plane down is going to remain seated because the pilot or FAA says so?
To make matters worse the media consistently reports that this airline or that airline is going to go bankrupt because of the fear of flying. This prevents people from buying tickets for future flight because they fear that the airline won't exist (I work for an airline and this is keeping our load factors down to 60% meaning that only 60% of a plane is full at any given time).
If the government wants to do something they should make it easier to fly, not more difficult and restrictive (I believe that it is possible to do this without comprimising security - please tell me how these randon searches are helpful?). A simple ad campaign telling people to travel isn't going to cut it.
The private sector isn't any better off. If you are flying to the Winter Olympics you have to first land at one of four "gateway" airports to have you aircraft and pasengers inspected. Then you have to file a flight plan and get a password to fly on to Salt Lake City. For this hassle, what is the point of flying there (and yes there are those that argue that people on private planes can afford the extra cost, but should they have to...)?
In addition, the government is moving to build a database that will track all of the individuals applying for a pilots license. Is this going to work? Probably not. The government already has a database of suspected terroists and their profiles. That failed miserably on 911 when some 16 people boarded those various planes completely undetected.
The more that we move to build nataional databases the more that we restrict ourselves. I agree with the previous post that suggested that those that want the complete security and limited freedoms of as city state move to one. As far as flying goes, there is only one way to keep people completely safe: Put them in one airplane completely naked, and have their luggage follow them in another airplane (having said that there is probably some government bill pondering this very idea...).
-Kris
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.
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)
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.
Actually, I think that most of the "profiling" that is done is based on various people's *perceptions* of the probablilities.
The number of people stopped on drug related suspicion grounds generally disproportionaltely favours blacks, yet in that particular area, the number of people actually convicted disproportionatly favours "whites". The profiling in this case was actually wrong, yet it still occurred. (And of course I have no citation to back this up :-)
If the system used an independantly audited algorithm that accurately reflected the known factors associated with "bad" behaviour, and randomly selected people for further checks based on representitive data and modeling, then I might not have as much problem with it.
Of course I would still be concerned about the potential for privacy abuses.
One must also consider the effectiveness of any system designed to merely catch those intent on destruction. If we make the airlines "safe", would not the determined terrorist just start blowing up busses? NFL games? Little League? If you want to kill 10, 20, or 100 random people, you do not need an airplane to do it. Inciting terrorcan be done in even the most strict of police states - so is it worth the cost to become one?
I have to disagree with you. I believe all these items truely are "a unit." By consolodating ID's under the control of a Federal system, the Federal authrorities don't have to concern themselves with that pesky 10th amendment, where all laws and regulations not specificly outlined in the constitution are reserved to the indivial states. This gives them the power and authority to handle all mater of security, search, seizure and survelience. The bush administration is only exploiting the emotion carried over from the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to greatly expand the power and authority of federal law enforcment over state-run ID systems. I'm sorry to say this, but the first poster is correct. In about 3 years, there will be some gov't goon standing outside all major transit stations asking, "papers please." Anyone who looks suspicious or doesn't have their papers WILL spend some time in jail until their identity and motive can be determined. They won't be arrested of course, but they'll be detained. Don't believe me? Here's a true story. Exactly 4 weeks ago, I returned home from a trip to Bulgaria. (It's a small former communist-controlled coutry just north of Greece.) On my return flight back into the US, there was an elderly German couple standing about 6 feet away from me as we were waiting for our baggage; so we could proceed thru the customs checkpoint. Everyone who enters the US must fill out this little peice of paper where you list the items (food, plants, animals, precious metals etc) you are claiming thru customs. Well, some army punk was walking his "bomb-sniffer" dog among us pasengers as we waited for our baggage. The dog stopped at the German couple, because it could smell a half-eaten chocolate bar. The army punk started given the couple a hard time, and yes, he really did say "Where are your identification documents!" The couple stared pulling out their passports. The army punk didn't care to see the passports, and instead asked "why didn't you declare this food on your customs paper?" And, oh maybe two seconds later, he asked the couple to follow him into some security room nearby. I know everyone reading this will think, "Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. And who cares about some old German people." And if that's your opinion, than so be it. But, interestingly enough, when hitler took over in germany, he expanded the gishtappo (which just happens to be German shothand for "Homeland Security," cute) for fear of attack from other nations -- which lead him to belive that only through strict "zero tolerence" law enforcment and military security will his people be safe from outside agression. (This all happened many years before the war.) Funny how history repeats itself. - Richard.
How can you separate these issues when one is facilitated by the other? If I don't need an ID, how can they do the background check? If I don't need a background check then what's the purpose of all the info on the ID?
These issues are related, but not necessarily equal. Don't fall for a slippery slope argument. Just because B requires A doesn't mean that implementing A implicitly implements B.
No, a search is not the checking of ID. The checking of ID is authentication. They challenge your right to be there, and YOU provide the proof that you are allowed here. The key difference is that YOU provide they proof...they don't check your pockets for your wallet, in this instance.
How does my freedom of movement remain unfettered when I have to submit to a "search" every time I want to move?
Where is this freedom outlayed in the U.S. Constitution?
How does my freedom of association remain intact when they're checking me against everyone who ever lived at the same address?
Who says they're checking you EVERY time? Who says they're checking you personally at all?
How does my freedom of speech still exist when I get a background check, allowed by the existence of my ID and facilitated by my need to fly, whenever I go to a protest?
You do not have a constitutional right to airline service. Just clearing the air here. You can protest. You might not be able to take the privately owned airplane, but such is life.
I don't really care if the ignorant masses "don't mind" the idea of a national ID card. I _do_ mind.
Well, I don't know how to take this. Either its fallacious logic(anyone who disagrees with me is incorrect), elitism(anyone who disagrees with me is part of an ignorant mob), or both. No matter....you're betraying a rather ugly streak here.
Last I checked the constitution couldn't be overridden just by getting a majority of mislead people to agree to a national phone poll and I'm pretty damned chafed that you and the Bush administration are trying to get away with it.
The most common mistake of the novice is oversimplification.
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?
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
In addition, the government is moving to build a database that will track all of the individuals applying for a pilots license. Is this going to work? Probably not. The government already has a database of suspected terroists and their profiles. That failed miserably on 911 when some 16 people boarded those various planes completely undetected.
Indeed part of the problem with systems in place before September the 11th is the issue of information gathering outstripping the ability to analyse it. This kind of thing is only likely to make such a probelm worst.
The US also spends huge amounts of money on ATC and Military radar systems. But apparently all of these systems were incapable of tracking large aircraft by primary return alone. If was truely what happened then every airport in the US is a disater waiting to happen. The last thing you want is any aircarft able to enter crowded airspace unseen...
In my experience in flying between European countries customs has been a joke, if anyone was even there to talk to. Hell, my last trip over in November I didn't even get an entry stamp.
Single male entering Thailand - visa declined
US passport holders are not required to have a visa for stays of less than 30 days. Thailand is part of the visa waiver program. Before I started travelling a lot (office in India) I thought it was difficult to go some of these places. It isn't. The visa waiver program makes it very easy, and for most other places it just takes a little bit of money. I realize it is ethnocentric to say but in my experience merely holding a US passport changes the ease with which one can move between certain countries.
I see your point, however, that if we (Americans) begin to profile people based on their ethnicity that we should also expect to be examined in a similar manner entering other countries. Well, I have news for you. We're already pulling Arabs aside! I flew from Heathrow to Dulles about a month ago and found that the United gate agent had a list of people she wanted to hand check. They asked what seat you were in (1D for me! upfront is nice) and if you weren't who they wanted you got to board, if you were unlucky you had your bags hand inspected. Let's just say when I went through there weren't any white people being checked out.
Another anecdotal note, when I came home in December 2000 via Dulles no one even looked at my passport. As I found out later, and an article here talked about it, our flight was precleared, there was no one they were interested in so the immigration guys just ignored those of us with US passports.
I have been around the world twice in the last 18 months and the only country I had trouble with was Japan. The guy couldn't understand that I was only going to be in Osaka for a day and wanted to enter the city to look around. Eventually he just stamped me and let me go.
You should read the 9th amendment to the constitution. Power is granted to the government, from the people, and not the reverse. The Bill of Rights, and specifically the 9th and 10th amendments, were enacted to eliminate arguements such as yours, where "X is not in there, it must not exist" because the framers forsaw your argument.
Let's make up our mind... are we against a powerful, sophisticated group that is a real threat to U.S. security, or are we up against a small, underfunded band of crazy morons who just happened to be lucky enough to kill a few thousand people.
Your profiling idea will certainly protect us against some portion of stupid whackos, but think about it... If you had a pile of money and a lot of influence and intelligence and wanted to cause damage, and you knew that they were screening for young Arab men but letting the ederly black women on the plane, wouldn't you try to find a way to use ederly black women and not young Arab men?
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."