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Senator Blacklisted by No-Fly List
sig writes "Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was turned down for a flight from Washington, D. C. to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to D.C. It took 3 weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won't take their calls?" There's also a New York Times story.
Is it me? Or does it seem that potential threats have and easier time getting into airports and on board planes than ordinary citizens do?
It goes to show that once you head down this road, it is abused, or at best, applied incompetently and inflexibly. Show me your papers, citizen!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
It appears the good ole' US government is soon going to require us to carry 'airline licenses', just like drivers licenses ... maybe that would keep them from making incompetent mistakes like this!
Kennedy used this as an opportunity to show how this system is sort of a lousy idea, and an even worse implementation.
So to this, all I can say is that Ted should be modded up at least +3 Insightful
Vonal Declosion
A Liberal Democrat Senator gets put on the No-Fly list by mistake _AND_ It takes 3 weeks to get removed?
What are you suggesting? That he blacklisted himself?
Everytime I fly I am on the Screen list. It's annoying and intrusive and pisses me off, but I've never had a gate agent actually tell me about it, and it's never made me almost miss a flight.
With the screen list, they put several big S's on your boarding pass, and then you get shunted into the "extra-thorough" screening line going in. You'll recognize it next time you fly: it's extra long, extra slow, and it's where all the people with dark skin or funny clothes go.
What was described in the article is nothing like the screening I've seen. I've never had an airline worker tell me I can't fly, in fact they never mention it. I wouldn't have realized the significance of the S if it didn't happen every time I fly.
My point is that I was marginally inconvenienced, but it was not the end of the world. It cost me maybe 10 minutes of my life. How much of this is that Ted Kennedy doesn't like being treated like the masses?
BTW, my name is as WASP as it gets.
Believe it or not this happened to my college roommate and his girlfriend when they tried to visit me in NYC in June. They got up to go to MSN (Madison WI) airport at 4am and when they got there they were held and interrogated because they were both on the no fly list. Even the TSA people realized it was a mistake (two middle class/white/college educated midwesterners in love with a round trip ticket?) but because it was so early in the morning none of the government offices that could sort this thing out were open. Long story short they finally made it. THANK GOD WE'RE SAFE WHEN MY COLLEGE ROOMMATE CAN GET INTERROGATED AND SEARCHED FOR HOURS AND MUSLIM ARABS CAN STILL GET ON WITHOUT GETTING SEARCHED AND RUN DRY TERRORIST RUNS (http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landi ng.aspx?titleid=1&articleid=711). I hate this country under Bush.
Our Airline security system would be highly endangered if passengers were trusted because they were recognized as a senator. There are people who look almost identical to ted kennedy, I'm sure, who could also get fake licenses. They are following procedure, because if they do make an exception they will probably be fired.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
thats assuming that the measures protect us from hijacking. But ted is just grandstanding he actually did fly every time and it was not his name on the list but a simular name. and its not the tech that is the problem her , why would a booking clerk or sercurity person not have enough sense to look at Ted and say ok he is the senior pol from Mass let him pass
men will do for beer
Doh! And here I thought I would get to read a juicy story about some aging senator who likes to get rip-roaring drunk on flights and pinch the stewerdesses' rears. Ends up being yet another story about how American "terrorist" paranoia knows no bounds.
On a somewhat related note, it took my girlfriend and I about 2 hours to cross into the States in late June. we were "pulled" aside - told to turn off our cell phones, remove all valuables from her car (but no camera's or recorders please!) and go into a building while they searched her car. After sitting there about an hour, a person who I assumed was the supervisor came over to us and said "Why are YOU here?" (being the only caucasian couple in "waiting"). We showed him the slip of paper they had given us - he wrinkled his nose, peered at us, went "hmmmmm" and handed the slip to a INS agent and went on his way. We were then very rudely "interviewed" by said agent. Even though my girlfriend drives a very nice 2000 model Grand Am - they wanted to know how much money we had on us - when I told them none, as we intended to use americna funds we would get from bank machines, they demanded to know how much money we had on our credit cards and in our bank accounts! Were they stupid enough to think we would leave the relative freedom of Canada to sneak into the States? Give me a break. I am happy to say that after that, our trip down to St. Louis and back was wonderful.
Oddly enough coming home, we got waved through Canadian Customs in about 30 seconds.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
They didn't let him on the plane because he was a suspected terrorist, but there's no indication that they tried to detain or arrest him either. WTF?
Random? How about you go to the root of the problem? Start with "Tom Ridge", and see how long things stay the way they are. Mind you, "Edward Kennedy" was probably a good first choice for getting some noisy hell raised about the situation.
Incidentally, I thought I heard back in high school American government class that it was massively illegal to interfere with a member of Congress on their way to or from the House/Senate floor? Anyone?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Oh yeah, I'm sure it was a bug. "Kennedy" sounds kind of Middle Eastern, don't you think? Wonder how many other Democrats will run into this kind of "mistake."
The current White House occupants are shameless. Immediately after 9-11, Prime Minister Cheney ordered Continuity of Government to go into effect. The program calls for the evacuation of government leaders from Washington and the activation of the underground hideaways that shelter bureaucrats trained to keep Uncle Sam in business. The problem was no Democrats were evacuated or kept in the loop. Must have been an oversight.
And how many people wrongly on the list can call Tom Ridge? If it took Senator Kennedy several weeks, how long would it take me or you? Thank you to the government for keeping us "safe" by taking away our Civil Liberties. Bastards.
What makes you think your name needs to sound "kind of Middle Eastern" to make it onto the "no-fly" list? Your predjudices, perhaps?
Is that you? Nixon used every power at his disposal, from the FBI to the IRS to the CIA, in order to intimidate and even imprison his enemies. Look at what he did to Tim Leary: got him sentence to over 10 years in a federal prison for having, IIRC, less than two grams of marijuana in his car.
There were plenty of *allegations* made about Clinton and the IRS, but like 99.9% of the allegations made about him they turned out to be Dudge fodder and usually outright lies.
I fly quite a bit for work and know that for a time I made some sort of list somewhere. Apparently after a while, if you pass enough of their tests you are removed from the list.
The e-ticket machines would not issue me tickets, telling me that I had to get my tickets at the counter. I was no longer asked if I wanted to upgrade to first class for special price... The boarding agents stuck little colored dots with initials on them on my boarding passes - apparently as cues to people down-stream. It got frustrating that everywhere I went I and my luggage were singled out for special attention. Up to the point where my luggage would not be accepted curbside, My luggage and I would be taken into a little room and searched. In one case, even sealed packages were opened. As I boarded the airplane, I was always one of the passengers called for a random search.
Durring one of these searches, I mentioned to the agent that I must have made someone's list somewhere. He shook his head up and down as he said "I can't say that sir!" I had my answer and just resigned myself to being watched.
Then one day, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. My guess is that I satisfied the intellegence built into the database that I was not a threat and it removed me from the list.
I do not know what I did to make their list nor do I really know what I did to get off of their list. I can tell you it is an unpleasant experience being there.
As far as I know, I have never done anything anywhere that would cause someone to think of me as a potential terrorist.
"Well, yes. After implementing any system, you review after a period of time, and correct mistakes/problems."
Yes, and BEFORE implementing a system like an inherently error-prone No-Fly list, even some basic design review of error recovery should have been firmly in place, beyond "there's this guy you can call and something might be done, maybe, if you're a senior gov't figure." I'd loved to have been in on the design meeting where that was finalized.
It took a senior senator 3 WEEKS to get off the list. Think you'd have ANY chance? That's broken by design. And given past abuses (Euro journalists denied entry to US due to their "mistaken" inclusion on The List) I have zero confidence in this not being used as a political tool. Tom DeLay's "missing plane w/ congressmen" false report to the FAA, for example.
And that's only the painfully obvious list. What about the ones you're never allowed to see?
Nearly every aspect of this homeland "security" as implemented appears to have come from some underperforming kindergarten class. "And colors! We'll have pretty colors for the national terrorism alert level!"
Meanwhile actual terrorists, whose plans apparently are NOT drawn up by underperforming kindergartners, will be busy trying to get one of their own put onto the equally poorly thought-out "security express" list that allows previously cleared individuals minimal security review at airports.
But that's just me talking, some guy who's never benefitted from a terrorist attack, unlike those now supposedly in charge of preventing them.
So I'm thinking to myself "who's on the list with a name like Ted Kennedy?" Then it hits me: Ted Kacynski.
My handle breaks slashcode, what does your handle do?
THere are 2 issues wth your reasoning (don't know if it was meant to be cynical and just repeating how some people in government seem to think..)
1. The constitution and bill of rights may define some rights for US citizens, but are based on the idea that many such rights are not given by that bill or the constitution but confirmed. Those rights exist due to being human, not because the constitution or bull of rights grants them. Due process is one of those.
2. The USA is a party to the international declaration of human rights. Due process is a part of that as well, and sicne this is an international treaty, it should be considered 'law ' accourding to the USA constitution.
So, it does not matter at all if he was a foreigner or not.
The fact that your government seems to argue along the lines that you presented however is the exact reason why I am not visiting the USA, and haven't visited it ever since that government started with this kind of talk.
After all this brouhaha, "Edward Kennedy" should be a pretty good choice of alias for a would-be terrorist hijacker to use, since that name has surely been removed from the No-Fly list.
So everyone with a name of T. Kennedy is going to have trouble flying. That seems like a pretty fundamental flaw to me. You had better hope one of the suspects doesn't choose YrWrstNtmr as a alias!
included a funny little exchange between a woman whose daughter was being prevented from boarding planes and Asa Hutchinson, TSA honcho (and, interestingly, one of the House GOP engineers of the Clinton impeachment). The gist of the story being that after repeated attempts to get her daugher off "the list," she was still on the list. Hutchinson suggested she talk to the TSA ombudsman, which she had evidently already done.
f Id=38597 56
There were a few other interesting, chilling tidbits regarding homeland security. Fun stuff:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?w
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Yet they seem unable to learn from past mistakes.
The Florida voter registration records fiasco before the last US presidential election was because of the same reason; removing people from the voter registration list based on names (and not even the whole name, but a few of the first letters, dumber than dumb), and some other criteria that practically ensured multiple people would match the criteria, when only one should.
Who designs these systems? If I were to design a "matching algorithm" like that at work, my boss would seriously question my competency.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
It appears you assume that they didn't do any testing...any simulation on this process before implementation.
I assume nothing. Whatever testing they did was prima facie insufficient, due to the fact that this problem arose. Any serious test plan should have included many situations where the system produces a false positive result. The system itself should have one or more mechanisms that deal with said false positive, and the testing should determine either that these mechanisms work well, or that they don't. If they didn't, they should have been fixed and tested again.
It appears that some or all of that didn't happen, as exemplified by the fact that it took three weeks for a US Senator to resolve a problem that the Department of Homeland Security itself says should have never happened.
Is you position that the system was well tested and this problem was beyond the reach of reasonable testing?
I'd absolutely agree that any non-trivial system is bound to have bugs upon completion. Such systems should not, however, have huge, glaring, easy to predict bugs whose results take three weeks for anyone to correct, much less the staff of a US Senator. It's not so much the bugs that are the problem, it's when and how you deal with them.
Note: I'm not saying that senators should get special treatment because of their position; I'm just saying that they usually do, and they certainly have access to all the right people.
Vote.
I agree completely with your sentiments. But I don't think any major party candidate is going to do anything about the Department of Fatherland^W Homeland Security. Recall that the votes for PATRIOT etc were almost unanimous.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Oh, I'm caucasian too. My wife, however, is not. And we've definitely noticed that while I'm not the only white guy in the screening line, there aren't many of us.
Remember that Florida tried to purge Democratic-friendly voters a second time. At first, they refused to turn over a list of the names of the people purged, to prevent the tactic from being discovered until it was to late to counter. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... won't get fooled again. They got caught working to steal the election.
It really looks like the TSA simply doesn't care whether innocent civilians are denied the ability to use the nation's airlines. The hassles in air travel now make the choice between driving six hours and buying an airplane ticket or two easy; I drive. I'm looking at a 14 hour drive in October for me and my wife. I am reluctant to try flying. What if my name is on the no-fly list?
Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out that Kennedy's name ended up on that list as a form of political protest?
I should probably shut up now...
You can't win... just the other day was a slashdot story about NOT having to present ID in order to travel...
People, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. I personally don't think showing ID to travel on a plane is that bad. Comparing it with the former Soviet Union is a joke... you don't get stopped on every road at every state border with people asing for "papers, please".
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually from reading the article it appears that he was allowed to fly every time anyway, he just wanted to get his name off the list to stop the inconvenience of arguing about his right to fly every time.
This makes an even greater mockery of the system if people on this list are allowed to board planes even though they are identified on the list.
Overall though I don't know what all this argument concerning the details of this system is about given the enormous stupidity and invasiveness of this system in the first place. Honestly you are now in a situation where you may well have to effectively prove your right to fly where you want in your own country and if your request is denied you then have to spend weeks arguing with some slow moving bureaucracy who may or may not tell you if you are on the list and may or may not tell you why you are on it.
Does that sound like America to you or does it sound more like communist China and Russia 20 years ago ?
..he was never actually prohibited from flying. His name was flagged. The counter clerk bumped it up to the next level. That person checked him out, found he was not the person they are looking for, and cleared him to get on the plane.
Yes, it took 3 weeks to get his name off the list, but during that time, he was still flying.
For an analogy, let's presume there is a warrant out for a person that goes by the name MysticalFruit. No address, no other info. All they have is the name. Should you get stopped by the police (running a stop sign, maybe), should the police officer check you out a little further, to determine if you are that MysticalFruit named in the waarrant? Or should he just blow it off?
Because this particular T. Kennedy is not the person they are looking for does not mean that there isn't a T. Kennedy that they ARE looking for.
You seem to forget that Germany, France and Russia are all being investigated because they were taking bribes through the "Oil for Food" program
US companies are implicated in the corruption of that program also. The US gov't has refused to do an audit of the oil for food program. Your point?
All that US and Bush did was stand by his word when it came to said Resolution.
Please don't talk about the US and Bush's "word" -- it's worthless. One should not believe liars.
What happened to the UN inspectors in Iraq while Clinton was in office? Iraq claimed that the inspectors were really spying for the US -- an illegal activity which gave Iraq full, legal reason to kick them out. The US said, "No, they're not spies". Iraq said, "Yes, they are." Iraq interfered with the inspectors' inspections and Clinton then ordered the inspectors out and launched cruise missile strikes.
Later, Scott Ritter, the Marine Corps officer who headed up the UN inspection team for quite some time, admitted that the US inspectors were spying for the CIA. The Iraqis were right and the US gov't was lying.
Later, when Bush passed the resolution for Iraq to disarm, Iraq said they had disarmed. The US demanded documentation. The Iraqis provided a CD-ROM of thousands of pages of documentation.
The US demanded first-access (before the UN) to that CD-ROM and promised not to modify its contents. The US lied, and when it got the CD-ROM it removed all references to American companies providing dual-use chemicals and technologies to Iraq's 80s-era WMD program. THEN the US turned the CD over to the UN.
Under great pressure and the US/British military build-up, the Iraqis agreed to let the UN spies/inspectors back into their country. Hundreds of inspectors went to Iraq. They went all across the country, directed by US intelligence.
The inspectors found *nothing*. The Iraqis were telling the truth, they had no WMD. The US gov't is the liar, and Iraq was telling the truth.
The US then launched its illegal invasion.
This timeline ignores the FACT that two very high officials of the Bush administration have publicly stated that Bush wanted war with Iraq before any of the UN resolutions or the above controversy.
Do we forget Bush's former Treasury Secretary on the "60 Minutes" TV show displaying a map of Iraq being divided up among US, British and western oil companies -- a map created very early (long before 9/11) in the Bush administration? Do we really have to debate the above points?
Anyone with a minimal grip on reality knows the REAL reason why Bush went to war with Iraq -- and it had nothing to do with WMD!
Based on these events, it's crystal clear: The US gov't violated the UN Charter in launching an offensive war to conquer Iraq and to put a puppet gov't in place in Iraq. That's harsh, but there's no other way to put it.
It's also harsh to say that George Bush and his group are war criminals for launching that aggressive war -- but again, it's true.
You can't win... just the other day was a slashdot story about NOT having to present ID in order to travel...
Are you suggesting that people should not complain when the system which has been imposed upon America (and quite frankly the world) by this administration, without any public consultation, and with implied threats against other nations which dont get on side, and in contradiction with historic American values of liberty and freedom, don't function as advertised?
The root of the complaint is that this administration is causing disruptions in people's lives, without accomplishing the stated objective (beneficial or otherwise). i.e. America is not safer. It is absolutely impossible to secure every single mile of road, every train track, every building, every hospital, every boat, every mail parcel, every nook and crany inside or outside of America. And as long as Al Qaeda or islamic fundamentalists still exist, there will be unsecured targets to attack.
Unless you consider the fact that you can be detained for having initials which match those on some terrorist list to be a form of "safe". This process is misdirected. It is a huge waste of resources to detain the WRONG PEOPLE.
Americans used to think of freedom as a right, and a threat to that freedom as a form of danger.
People, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. I personally don't think showing ID to travel on a plane is that bad.
What about traveling on a train?
What about walking on a public road, or visiting a doctor?
What about being present in a public place?
What about being present in a private place?
What if your ID had been deleted from the database?
You don't think it is bad because you dont think you have a RIGHT privacy, and you don't appreciate that in this information age, privacy is just as much a necessary protection against tyranny as the right to bare arms.
The right to bare arms is actually meaningless without privacy. You can't possibly win a war, when the enemy knows everything about you. Once privacy is abolished, then the environment is ripe for a tyranny to empower itself. A tyranny, supported by information technology the likes the world has never seen before.
Comparing it with the former Soviet Union is a joke... you don't get stopped on every road at every state border with people asing for "papers, please".
But then again, the Soviet Union was communist.
You don't get stopped at every road at every state border with people asking for papers *YET*.
Wait for it.
But this administration has reserved such authority for itself. Not to mention complete and absolute surveilance over all communications.
Imagine what will happen, the next time the terrorists make a strike against America. It will be lock down time.
Thats what they do in prisons. Every hour or so.. everything locks down, including guards, nobody can leave their section, and everyone reports a body count in their sections. So if a single person is missing, it will be detected before the escaped inmate can get to far.
However in america's future, the number of people in jail or on parole will increase from 6 million, to over 300 million. Everyone will be on parole.
Afterall... aren't we all born in sin? There is all the moral justification you need to put everyone on parole from day 1.
That is America's future, if America keeps going down this path of fear.
Would you like a Department of Home Security Officer to visit your house each day to make sure you haven't moved or left with ciy without reporting in?
Perhaps, a friendly high speed internet video phone call, secured by longhorn. It would only take 30 seconds of you and your families time each day. A small price to pay for freedom.
Of course, "terrorists" need not check in.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
1) I've read several intelligent theses that the current US President is not incompetent, but that he puts forth great effort to lead his enemies to think he is. Every time an ad hominem attack is raised against the President instead of a cogent criticism of his policy or the disparities between his promised and delivered campaign, he wins; he makes "those left-wing liberal haters" lose credibility and power.
A similar assertion is made by linguist Geoffrey Nunberg in his most recent book:
"Bush went to Andover and Yale, and you can be sure he heard the term 'nuclear' at the dinner table in Kennebunkport," he says. "His brothers don't talk like this. His father doesn't. He's chosen to talk like this."
Nunberg surmises that Bush is trying to shed his patrician heritage and proffer himself as a populist, a strategy that worked well against the legendary stiffness of Al Gore in the 2000 election.
2) President Bush is most likely trying to do what he thinks is good and right for America. However, conservatism by nature is afraid of change, and Bush is on most fronts a conservative. The President looks at trends in society and sees them as worrying hallmarks of a civilization in decline.
His actions to ban marriage between homosexuals, to reduce oversight on large corporations, to wage a war on Iraq (instead of, say, Saudi Arabia, which still produces millions of dollars annually in support for terrorism and was the home of 15 of the 19 hijackers of 11 September 2001), all these actions are likely made honestly and with the intention of preserving what he sees as a decadent, depraved society.
Consequently, that fundamental clash of values - the one that arises in the distinctions between Ashcroft&Homeland Security vs. unfettered civil liberties, Social Security security vs. trickle-down tax cuts, No Child Left Behind vs. effective teaching - this disparity could cause anyone on either side of the issue to view the other as hopelessly out of touch with morality ("evil") or reality ("incompetent").
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I would ignore names and ID's. This approach is stupid. Trivial to fake. I am very angry that my government is wasting my money and time on this utter BS. If you really want air transport security, you:
Massively increase spending on physical search of people and baggage. 3X-5X would probably be a minimum. This means everybody, including maintenance, food service and airport staff gets screened, every time, fast.
100% air marshall coverage on commercial passenger flights with max gross over X,000 lbs. (you decide how big you want X to be...).
100% security screen on bizjet flights over X,000 lbs max gross (yes, Carly, Steve, and Larry, that means you).
This is very expensive. If you do it right, security screener and air marshall become well-paid, prestigious, sought-after jobs.
You don't do it (like the current situation), then you're just pretending you want security and (willfully or not) hoping that the bad guys and the public at large are too fscking stupid to notice.
BTW, this isn't even starting on truck/train/ship/air freight security. If you're gonna be scared about something, be scared about that.
FWIW, I don't think you should be scared about terrorist threats at all; they want you to be scared. (Figuring out who "they" are left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: there's more than one. :-)
Did these people NOT recognize Ted Kennedy? Christ, I recognize the local weatherman when I see him at the mall. These are folks who have never learned to think for themselves. They have been taught to follow orders no matter how stupid or banal they are and they would throw their own grandmothers out the window if ordered to do so, and THAT is the real danger to America right now. And these are the ideal citizens in the estimation of the likes of G W Bush--zombies who follow orders and thank their masters for throwing them a few scraps to chew on now and then.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
It's ALWAYS going to be a good thing to know who someone really is from a security point of view.
The problem is, Sen Kennedy's experience shows that the current system doesn't show who someone really is. Nor will that be enough.
The fact of the matter is our airport security is paranoid but without the possiblity of a solid perimeter which can be used to prevent an attack on our own response. The only thing we have to be thankful for today is that those who wish our country harm haven't figured this out or have decided that such attacks don't fit their ends well. All one really needs to do today is to create *the appearance* of a security threat to cause real damage to American business and commerce. One does *not* have to show ID to effectively do this because one can effectively do this sort of thing in lobbies, baggage claims, public restrooms, and the like. In this regard US airport security is extremely brittle.
I have traveled to many countries which have had a longer history of having to deal with security issues than the US. For example Ecuador has a multi-layer security system which effectively protects them against their threats. But their threats are simply narco-traffickers who are not aimed at causing damage to Ecuador's businesses.
But take a look at Indonesia. Not too long ago, a bomb exploded in a KFC at the airport outside their security perimeter. (Indonesia uses a system similar to that of Ecuador but does allow public areas inside the airport buildings but outside the security perimeter.) I think only two people were injured in what seemed to me to be an ad-hoc attack related to a trial of an alleged terrorist. But if such had been a coordinated attack and in the US, do you think US airspace would still be open (even if nobody was injured)?
IMO, the real solution is the development of a multi-layered security infrastructure. Yes, this includes reinforced doors in aircraft and the development of uniform security plans across airlines with regard to common threats. I think it also will eventually require an open and public discussion of the security of general infrastructure in this country as well as what is most critical to the operations of basic services and commerce. We must have confidence that we can fix flaws found before terrorists can do the necessary recon, etc. to actually carry out an attack. Analyzing the pattern of Al Qaeda attacks, I suspect that these take them *years* of planning. We should look seriously at how we can improve the speed at which we respond to weaknesses in our security infrastructure. I.e. we don't have years to impliment that new security procedure.
Finally, such security needs to be robust enough that we don't really have to worry about who is on the airplanes.
There will always be "soft targets" but we MUST work to minimize the global impact of attacks on them.
Thank you. I am an American citizen, naturalized since age 15 or so. I was also in AFROTC (very briefly). Because of this, the federal government has my fingerprints on record, a full accounting of everything I've ever done, a lengthy list of people I've known, and all the info it could ever want about me. I know this because I had to give them all of this. Despite all of this, I am pulled out of every single line in every airport I ever go through and my bags are generally searched thoroughly if not emptied entirely. Why is that? I am a short white glasses wearing female computer technician. Like one of the earlier posters, I can only imagine that I am on some list, somewhere. I've read about the mangling of the Bill of Rights currently in progress, and when I talk to my peers, all they can say is we have to support the president.
Wrongo bongo. I have to get his rear out of the white house by voting for the person who stands the greatest chance of deposing him and his imperial hawk buddies. That's what I've got to do, and that's what anyone else who has suffered because of the recent insanity needs to do. Outta there. This year.
maybe one day i'll be smart enough to come up with a cool sig, too.
Then you VOTE THEM THE FUCK OUT. This entire problem occurs because the voters in this country fall into two categories: Those who are foolish enough to think there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, and 2) those who honestly think that there is no way to vote in a third party (or fourth, or fifth, or twelfth, but let's not go as far as France.)
The biggest lie the media has ever gotten the american public to swallow is simply this:
Any vote for a third party is a vote for $NAME_of_REP_OR_DEM_PEOPLE_HATE.
You're preaching to the choir on this one. My vote this year is already going to a third party candidate. I, like you, realize change is impossible while our current two party system endures, and I'm working to change that.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean I'm naive enough to think that the winner of the Presidential election this year will NOT be a Republican or a Democrat, which goes to the point of my initial post.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
From this article on the ACLU's lawsuit: [of people on the list] "the "no-fly" list has resulted in routine stops of passengers without terrorist ties who "have no meaningful opportunity to clear their names," said the complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union... They are detained, interrogated, delayed, embarrassed, humiliated in front of other passengers."
"Plaintiff David Nelson, 34, a trial attorney in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, said he has been stopped more than 30 times -- every flight he's taken..." Its all the Nelsons everywhere, although evidently the one bad one is from Tennessee. From another article "...this week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so."
I do not feel safer that all T. Kennedys or all David Nelsons are being searched. They should hire police to follow the one bad David Nelson around and save those 12,000 searches (assuming 1 trip per year) for random searches of everybody. As Bruce Schneier points out:
Bad Soundex matches don't make us more secure. Even good soundex matches aren't much better: the bad guys will just learn which names not to use. Random searches: annoying, but results in more actual safety.
The guard should have been commended and the commander transferred. Knowing a face doesn't mean you know it's recent history. For all that guard could know, even if he knew the commnder's face, he couldn't know if the commander's lack of id wasn't due to a change in status- as in longer allowed on base, information that hadn't yet trickled down him. Then as you say, there's a 100 percent ID check requirement in force. The face is not the ID.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
IIRC, they stamped a "J" on every jew's passport
Although a little late to posting, I had an interesting experience about 8 years ago in Northern Ireland. When crossing from the Republic to the North, I was stopped at a British army checkpoint. It was just after a medium bombing and I happened, unbeknownst to me to be driving near the bombing site. The soldier asked for my name and when I told them, all of a sudden the soldier stood up with a visible change her appearance. There was scurrying around the armored transport with soldiers now grasping their assault rifles and coming towards the car. Fortunately the next question was "where are you from?". When I said "America" things got under control quickly, with the other soldiers turning around and heading back to where they were sitting, and the soldier asking me questions was much relieved. Apparently my family name had links to the IRA with a couple of members serving time for terrorist offenses. Mind you, none of my relatives were/are involved. But because my name is a somewhat uncommon Irish name, the simple reference to the name almost caused me and my family problems. Just simply our names should not enough to cause these problems.
It is dangerous to be right on a subject on which the established authorities are wrong. - Voltaire