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Passenger Risk Database to be Implemented in U.S.
bluephile writes "CNN is running an article on the The Transport Security Administration's (TSA) renewed efforts to implement the CAPPS II color-coded passenger risk-assessment program, despite outcries by numerous privacy activism groups at the program's collection and redistribution of personal information. The TSA has made several claims that the system respects passengers' privacy, but their track record isn't impressive. Congress suspended the program last year in order to investigate its privacy implications. One MIT paper suggests that CAPPS II could make flying MORE dangerous, rather than less."
Airplanes can't be hijacked anymore after 9/11. People now realize that it's not a matter of demanding your comrade be released from prison, but instead a matter of taking control of the world's biggest bomb. Nobody is going to yield to a terrorist carrying anything short of an automatic firearm.
The solution to stopping terrorism on flights is two-fold. One, everyone travels naked, without carrying thing on the plane. Two, luggage goes on a second plane operated by robots.
Color Coded, eh? Now I can sleep easier at night, knowing I am protectected by a color coded system. I wonder if this will be about as useless as our fabled Homeland Security "Orange Alerts"?
Well they'll only get me for one flight...As i move to Canada...
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
What good are civil liberties when you're dead?
Or as I prefer to see it, what good is life without civil liberties?
If you have a bad credit score, be prepared for a full body cavity search.
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I have no credit history because I have little income and can't get a credit card.
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I pay cash because I can get a discount
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I buy a one way ticket because I wont be returning until I have earned enough money to afford a return journey
Will I be barred from travel? I think I might. At the very least I'm likely to be detained for further questioning.Why not get the real ultimate power?
I think "scaring the piss outta everyone" is a well used device that shakey governments employ to increase their chances of re-election. It's pretty clear that a determined terrorist can do what they want to do if they put their mind to it, even if everyone is asked if they packed their own bags. This is just FUD, and expensive & inconvinient FUD at that.
In other news, Al Queda agents and officials retired en masse today. Evidentally, the U.S. government is now doing a far better job of making Americans fearful and submissive than Al Queda could hope to do with the techniques they have. "We did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people," said one unnamed source. "But Americans responded only with defiance and belligerence. Within a couple of months, they'd gotten on with their lives. The DHS, on the other hand, can frighten the American people practically at will, just by announcing rumors or cancelling a plane flight. In this climate, we can't hope to compete."
Representatives of the Bush Administration called the mass retirement a possible ruse, and urged people to remember all the rumored attacks that might have been thwarted had Al Queda attempted any attack on U.S. soil since domestic security initiatives were put in place.
TIA v1.2 up and running; using SCO UnixWare.
Trace log: Started.
Trace log: Complete
Hate me!
Pretent that you are tasked with protecting American lives from Islamic terrorists on your own soil. How would YOU do it?
I'd start by not making the assumption that the terrorists would be Islamic.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
The parent is modded as funny, but replace "terrorist" with "communist" in the above quotes and realize that ordinary, reasonably intelligent people really said and believed such things only 50 years ago.
It's not far-fetched at all.
DNA just wants to be free...
I would say we are really a lot closer to Nazi Germany circa 1932-1937.
We need to fight with the next election. Get rid of the problems.
I'm willing to take the same terrorism risk on every plane flight that I took before 9/11. Let's roll back these draconian, orwellian, nazi-esque laws.
Write your senators, write your representatives, both federal and state! Let them know that we are not willing to "buy safety" at this price! It is not worth what we are giving up!
Jim
So the KKK'esk guy arrested who was packing a biological weapon capable of making 9/11 look like a scratched knee, with apparent plans to use it near or in a Federal building (ala McVeigh) was not a terrorist? What about the anthrax mailings that disappeared off the news as soon as it became apparent that it was not the work of evil guys in turbans, but more likely white supremacists who "borrowed" the samples from the US government lab they where traced back to. Domestic terrorism is alive and well, but people are ignoring it because its more convient to have a single enemy, whose skin color, religion and society is different. On topic this won't do any good, in most ways it just helps Bin Ladin. As we saw in the first 9/11 commisions results, one intercepted transmission showed that they actually did a complete dry run to determine if they could sneak weapons through security and onto a plane. With this kind of permanent security designation, its just a matter of sending agents on normal flights and seeing which ones get stopped for searchs and which ones go on the plane. Then you send the green ones on your suicide mission.
For instance, these guys (use pointless as the user name and password) could have been a problem:
"Investigators found nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and briefcases that could be detonated by remote control.
Most distressing, they said, was the discovery of 800 grams of almost pure sodium cyanide -- material that can only be acquired legally for specific agricultural or military projects.
The sodium cyanide was found inside an ammunition canister, next to hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids and formulas for making bombs. If acid were mixed with the sodium cyanide, an analysis showed, it would create a bomb powerful enough to kill everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility, investigators said."
And they were found almost entirely by accident.
Look, I'm not suggesting that Islamic terrorists aren't probably the biggest current threat. But don't be stupid.