Slashdot Mirror
American Airlines Information Gathering
matt-fu writes "Cory Doctorow posted a story on boingboing.net this morning describing a recent hassle while flying American Airlines. It seems that since he was traveling from the UK to the US with a Canadian passport, he was actually asked to give out the names and addresses of everyone he would be staying with in the US! He has written an open letter to AA in response. Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?"
Trying being a diabetic with an insulin pump. The security people aren't big fans of people with tubes coming out of them strapped to little computers.
This is probably an automated check on anyone with a 3rd country passport.
This is just another reason in a long list of why I should leave the U.S. and move somewhere more enlightened.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
They need to followup with the families to make sure none of them get mad cow disease.
Yeah, something like this happened to me last time I was flying to Nigeria. They made me stay in the country, and I never did get that money I was supposed to get from Prince Nanawobob Jones...
Is why myself and a lot of people in Europe are currently very reluctant to go to the US, be it for business or leisure, even with the favourable exchange rate...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
As a US citizen traveling to the UK I've had that happen on both trips. One with Delta, and one on
British Air. I can't say this kind of information request is polite, but I have always thought it rather common.
This is absolutely routine - and gratingly unnecessary - when renting cars from all of the major rental car agencies. It makes slightly more sense in that case (or can be justified slightly better by someone so inclined), because you're actually holding onto the agency's property, but I can't imagine a reasonable justification for an airline doing this.
It should be noted that I've declined that request when renting cars in the past and haven't encountered any problems larger than the manager's irritation.
Having said that, those were not airline forms, but Immigration Departments'. Of course, the way things are in the US right now, maybe this is a new govt' measure ?
I went with my friend to pick up his german friend who was coming in from Germany and she didn't have his or anyone else's address in America. The custom's agent was apparently pissed and had to come out to find my friend to get an American address. This was all very weird to us and we had to wait for like 2 hours for her. So, I believe this is a US customs issue, not just AA.
Yeah, here's a Broadband Reports Security thread about the incident.
I can't wait to hear what AA's response to Doctorow is.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Yes its standard for all non-US citizens coming into the US, even on a short vacation or business trip. It was that way even before 9/11 too.
I've flown to the US (from the UK) with several different airlines, and I have to say that American Airlines gave me far more hassle than the others. My favourite bit was when I was travelling with a friend, and they separated us when we checked in to ask us questions like how long we'd known each other, how we met, etc. What did they think I was likely to say? "Well, we met at a terrorists' convention in 1998..."?
Are they going to verify with the hotel to see if you are going to be there for the duration of your stay?
Or what if you gave an address which exists but where you will not be staying?
The question is, when they are going to be as intrusive as this, how truthful do you have to be?
For you English Speakers.
probable -> probably
fillign -> filling
costums -> customs
dont' -> don't
coudl -> could
yoru -> your
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
At the very bottom of the article, there's a link called "Link" that takes you to the full text. That is the general format of articles on boing boing. In this case, it's also the same as the second link in the story submission.
I signed my parents up with passport, because I was afraid they would not be able to fly without one. Turns out I was wrong.
I guess Micro$oft does not run all of the world.
And if my parents and the banks like M$ maybe it is only 1% evil.
System V rules the world!
Peace.
I mean, if I fly to the US intending to wander round and find a hotel that looks nice to stay in, but don't know ahead of time where i will, in fact be staying, will I get detained at the airport?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I find that very hard to believe. I'm a Canadian and travel to the U.S. several times per year. It has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it happening to anyone that I know.
I do, however, have a weirder story. A friend of mine (also a Canadian citizen) attended a Muslim wedding in Canada. On his return to his residence in the USA, the border guard asked him about the Muslim wedding that he attended! My friend had not disclosed that information, but the border people new about it and questioned him on it.
Either I've been smoking too much crack or my memory is shot, because I'm pretty sure I've been required to do that every single time I've flown to America (to visit family, first time was in 1999). I have a Danish passport and usually fly via Iceland, with Icelandair, but have also flown via the UK.
There's the usual "I will not commit terrorist acts" but also a section where you list who you will be staying with.
In 2002, I didn't have my cousin's then NY address handy, so I made one up. Good thing they didn't check up on it.
Funny story: On one trip, I had a present with me for a wedding, and had to take a national connecting flight from Boston to Baltimore. They had these things where they check for various trace chemicals that would indicate explosives. It of course went off five times on my suitcase, so the guy had it opened and went through it, item by item.
Finally he got to the present, a bottle of Gammel Dansk (a bitter alcohol), which was wrapped. He asked me what was in it, I told him. He then asked me if I had spent time near or on a farm previous to my flight, all the questions that would explain why I had trace chemicals on my luggage, but there was no apparent reason. He eventually let me go, when I started commentingthat I had to catch the connecting flight.
During the carry-on check, I realized I had a box-cutter in my pencil-case. There were also a couple of blades that were just floating around in there along with the pencils & pens. As the guy was rummaging through literally everything, including the pencil-case, I gotta admit I got a bit nervous that he would cut himself. He didn't find it, though. So much for thoroughness, heh.
My aunt was less lucky. She had her knitting pins confiscated and they almost ruined the cake she was bringing for the wedding.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... and Cory's being more of a dolt than I would have expected if he really thinks it was.
... after about 40 minutes of this, I insisted on seeing a supervisor, saying "Look, dammit, I'm an American citizen. I was born in the USA. My parents were born in the USA. Hell, I'm a quarter blood Choctaw Indian -- I'm a Native American native american!"
That being said, I had that experience entering the US from Canada on a US passport in about 1996. Missed my flight in Pearson airport (Toronto) while I was going through the interminable questions ---
Q. Where are you going?
A. North Carolina
Q. Why are you going there?
A. I live there.
Q. What do you plan to do there?
A. I'm a computer consultant.
Q. Do you have work when you arrive?
A. Yes. That's why I live there.
Q. How long do you plan to be in the US?
A. Until I leave again. I live there.
Q. Where do you plan to stay?
A. At my home. The one where it says "Home Address." In Durhan NC.
The demand that I speak with a supervisor broke the log jam; they let me through.
My grandfather, many years ago when I was eight or nine --- which is to say many years ago --- asked me this question: "Do you know why a dog will lie on a sunny porch licking his own balls?"
The answer, of course, is "because he can."
This probable isn't american airlines fault, but more due to government regulation.
Did you RTFA? The person in question was never asked those questions when flying on USAir, and when American Airlines discovered he was an AAdvantage Platinum member, they immediately changed their tune and told him they no longer needed to ask those questions.
If it's a government regulation, then why didn't he have to comply with it when he flew USAir? Why didn't he have to comply with it because he had Platinum status in American's frequent flyer program?
Oh, and when an airline loses your luggage, you generally have a good idea they've done that before you leave the baggage claim at your destination airport. You have to file a claim for your missing bag (description, etc.) and they collect contact information at that time. There's no need to collect that up front.
I have relatives in Las Vegas, so I go there quite often, neither for business nor for vacation.
So one day I'm at the Budget Car Rental desk, and the lady at the counter starts asking me questions, like "who are you staying with?" She wanted adressess and phone numbers, etc.
Now, I was so taken aback by all of this, that I confronted her, trying to understand what the point of the questioning was -- because it seemed to me that my credit card, insurance, drivers license, and the fact that I have very frequently made this same rental, weren't sufficient to get me past the counter.
She simply asserted that "the information was necessary before she could rent me a car." "Very well", I said, "you will not be renting me a car today. Please cancel my reservation."
I then went to the National shuttle, showed my National Emerald Card to the shuttle driver, went to the lot, picked out a car, and the shuttle driver even put my bags in the trunk for me. I had to show my card and my license at the doghouse gate, and that was that. The rate turned out to be cheaper than Budget would have been anyway.
Needless to say, I don't bother with Budget anymore.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Yeah, but: normally, the information is collected by the customs officials of the country you're entering. Usually, the airlines gives you the customs forms near the end of the ride, so you don't waste a lot of time in the airport.
What Doctorow is describing is nothing like that: it sounds as if AA had a goon dressed as a security guard trying to collect marketing information. Since they were doing it in England, and not on U.S. Customs forms, it's pretty hard to believe that U.S. regulations had anything to do with it.
A set of regulations which is more likely to apply is the EU privacy and data retention regulations. If they get that info, they'd better be ready to account for it, as Doctorow points out in his letter. It would be funny to see AA get slapped around a little for lying. In fact, since it's AA, it would be funny to see them get slapped around for nothing at all.
See what I've been reading.
How does one draw the conclusion that shaking people down at the border or the airport will replace shaking people down at a football game or courthouse? If it was an either/or situation, I could almost see the reasoning...
It seems that some here are completely missing the point.
The author, Cory Doctorow, was directed to an AA 'security counter' before checking in at the AA counter in Gatwick airport, not on arrival in the U.S., was interogated by an AA security officer and was asked to provide personal information on A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER. If I was Cory I would have been as upset as he was and I believe he asked the security officer some reasonable questions. The entire process was bizarre to my thinking.
Many have pointed out that you are asked for an address in your destination country, but by an INS offical not an airline employee, on an official customs form and certainly not before you board your flight. The only country that I know of that has customs pre-clearance to the U.S. is Canada, where the customs and immigration process is handled in Canada by American INS agents before you board your plane to the U.S. Upon arrival, you step off the plane and into the airport, no customs.
EFF founder John Gilmore has been fighting these so-called rules for some time now. Check out Gilmore vs Ashcroft regarding these rules.
Wired magazing wrote:
Our consituttion provides for redress of grieveances against the government. But how can you address something when you aren't even allowed to know it's number, title, or content?I wish I could find the specific show, but this is documented somewhere in the vast vault of kpftarchive.org. A woman and animal rights activist I know fairly well was stopped in the Houston, Texas airport after returning from overseas with her parents. She was seperated from her parents by armed guards, held for hours, and had to wait for the local FBI / sheriff person to show up. Turns out this person has been attending demonstrations undercover for years. The key detail is that this woman, and everyone else in the Houston animal rights community, is strictly dedicated to non-violence and legal, peaceful, non-sidewalk blocking demonstrations. She's specifically taken on some powerful scum, such as Charles Hurwitz. The FBI agent vaguely threatened her, and mentioned details that according to the woman in question could only have been gained by listening to her private telephone calls. Then, the tactics changed, and the agent began to offer her college tuition or even cash for turning informant (not withstanding the fact that there is actually nothing for her to inform about). She declined. Finally, several hours later she was released. She had committed no crime, was not involved in the investigation of any crime, and was never given good reason as to why she had been held. It seems that just mere connection with a peaceful, unpopular cause is enough to be threatened. In fact, an agent (possibly the same one) once told me that 'you'd be surprised what you can do to someone without ever pressing charges' - a clear threat. She bravely went on the radio the next day to tell everyone what had happened. I imagine most people just keep quiet.
Difference is that this isn't the incoming country collecting the information at customs, but the AA people at the departure country.
Your destination country has the right to refuse you a visa if you don't give them the information they request, but they also probably have privacy laws saying that they won't be selling said information. He asked what AA's data-retention policy was and whose policy it was to collect this information (TSA or AA) and they couldn't answer him sufficiently.
His letter asks AA for the information he's entilted to under UK law: the company's data-retention policies on this information.
On another note, I've found that it's completely normal for airline agents to tell you that anything the company has told them to do is a federal policy, whether it actually is or not. For instance, bags can't be checked through from Love Field in Dallas to airports in non-adjacent states due to a local law meant to send out-of-state traffic through DFW, but if you ask the airline agents they'll adamantly claim it's FAA policy.
When I fly to Europe, they look at my passport for about 5 seconds (literally), and wave "hi" as I enter. Makes me want to stay. When I come home to NYC, I get literally hours-long lines past a few officials, with the majority of windows empty. Then I get hassled with all kinds of BS when I show my passport with my NYC address. Makes me want to stay - in Europe.
Meanwhile, small planes buzz the Statue of Liberty without even being warned away, I know of all kinds of people who accidentally carry potentially lethal weapons (hatpins, mace, etc) through "security", and no one has attacked the US. This whole "security" culture is a total sham, costing billions and our liberty to prop up corporations and the government with unchecked power. Goddamn bin Laden and his Republican soulmates, and the pussy Democrats who help them get away with it.
--
make install -not war
Yeah, right.
I'm an American who once (and only once) used AA to visit Colombia. At the airport in Bogota, getting ready to return to the US, American Airlines had a couple of podiums set up before you got to the check-in desk. The woman at the podium started asking me all sorts of questions... where had I been in Colombia, who with, what did I do, where did I stay, is that your friend over there? (yes, and he works at the US embassy, thanks), who's your friend talking to?, what's your friend's blood type and penile girth? etc. etc. etc. for about 15 minutes.
I had the same question - why is American Airlines asking me all these retarded questions, and to what end - and all I got was the same stock 9/11 non-answer.
After several trips to Colombia, neither the US government or any other airline has ever asked me barely a single question about my trip. Hell, at US customs, the people usually don't even look at my form - I had one guy glance at my name, read it out loud in a bored voice, and say "buh-bye!" and wave me off.
It's only American Airlines that's this obnoxious. I'd like to know why, too.
If you need to list an address in Chicago this one is quite popular:
1060 W. Addison
Chicago, IL 60613
(It worked for Jake and Elwood)
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
The difference is that the questions you are talking about are usually asked by immigration officials at your destination, not by airline employees prior to departure. The question the Doctorow is raising is "why does the airline want this info?"
Alas, the summary left out the important point. This was not a customs or INS form. He was not asked to do this by INS agents. This was at the American Airlines security counter, on a BLANK piece of paper, administered by an American Airlines rent-a-cop. This is very different.
Normally, you provide your details to the INS or Customs. He was asked to provide them to AA.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Ah, diabetes and airlines after 9/11. Such fun! ;)
;)
I have two stories here.
The first one was when I was checking in for a flight. Diabetic needleheads in my bag (these are sealed thumb-sized packages that you fit onto the end of an insulin pen). The attendant asked, probably for the umpteenth hundredth time, the boilerplate question "Do you have any sharp metal objects, etc, etc?". My nonchalant answer was "yes". After getting a few hundred "no"'s in a row, followed by my calm response of "yes", the look on her face was priceless. After leaving her in a state of confusion for a few moments I explained to her that I was diabetic, what they were for, and gave her a doctors letter confirming it. She seemed strangely relieved.
The not-so-happy second story was on a domestic return trip back home to Adelaide (Australia). After having traveled to a different state, on the way back the jerkoff checking my stuff (which I politely and properly declared), obviously looking for a power trip decided to give me a hard time for having too many needleheads (I had three). Never mind I can't eat food without getting sick without insulin. Sometimes needleheads break and warp, especially when you are trying to jab yourself with a pen between two other passengers on a cramped airline seat. I had a letter from my GP explaining I was diabetic, a medic-alert bracelet, etc, anticipating the whole post-9/11 paranoia. And I wanted to get home. I'm hoping karma comes back and bites that jerk in the ass.
I can't imagine what it would be like with an insulin pump. I put off looking into one for a while because I made too many flights post-9/11 and didn't want someone trying to yank the thing...
I went to Romania, not exactly the pinacle or bastion of freedom and democracy, and on entry was asked simply where I was going, why and for how long I was staying. Nothing else. This country was communist in 1989, and travel restrictions seem less severe that the USA? Maybe this is cause for Americans to pause for some deep reflection on what they were fighting for, and what they really won, at the end of the cold war.
This technique is used very effectively by Israeli security officers to flush out security risks - but they receive special training in interrogation technique, and they're not so much comparing your answers as observing you carefully. This technique can be very effective if applied selectively by people who are properly trained and experienced - much more effective than document checks, routine questions, and luggage searches. How many terrorist hijackings and bombings have there been on prime target El Al Airlines in the last 30 years?
3000 died. That is true... it only took 3000 to lose our freedom in this country. Give it a second thought. After 3000 dead everyone who enters our nation is treated as a criminal. Now remember the hundreds of thousands who died to bring you that freedom. DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR FREEDOM SO EASILY. Hundreds of Thousands of Americans died to bring Freedom back to Europe. That was not even our own freedom. In the Revolutionary war 10s of thousands died to Create your freedom. Stop being Scared of life and start living it. An Oppressive government is no way to run a country. Honor our soldiers and honor our forefathers by asserting your rights to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of worship and freedom to congregate. This is what makes America great. Read your history books and learn. No one is out to get you, though its hard to tell with the Alert set to "Orange" today.... hmmmmmm how do they come up with that anyway? Does that mean I should keep my gas mask in my car, just in case????
-One More Concerned American.
Passport Control at Heathrow routinely asked me why I was in the country and where I was staying when I flew in and out of there pre-911. That's fine; that's offical UK business.
Being asked by an airline to list the friends you'll be seeing is a different matter. If it this is, in fact, a TSA requirement, the TSA should acknowledge it.
And, if it is, was every other passenger on that flight asked the same question?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
then why did they wave the request when they noticed that he had their loyalty card?
A lot of posts mention that this is actually a common customs practice.
You're missing this line from the letter:
Several more minutes passed, and then the supervisor appeared. He
had looked over my documents and said, "Sir, I'm sorry, you are a
Platinum AAdvantage member and shouldn't have been asked this
question."
Generally, compliance with customs laws applies whether or not you're a Platinum AAdvantage member. Therefore, it seems that one of two things, both alarming, is going on:
a.) American Airlines totally lied, and this was not a TSA policy at all, or
b.) American Airlines completely ignores TSA policies for its more 'valuable' customers.
Something's not right here.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
You're totally naive - of course you don't live in NYC. Where we voted 3:1 to get rid of that clown Bush who's making us even less safe every day. Why start with "after 9/11"? How about stopping bin Laden when they were warned? It couldn't have anything to do with Saudi Arabia, and bin Laden's brother, Bush's corporate sponsor? Or that Enron pipeline across Afghanistan? Or the unprecedented power and denial Bush has won in the wake of the attacks? No, that's all coincidence. New Yorkers are a city of scaredy cats. Thanks for looking out for us.
--
make install -not war
We US-uns do that all the time. See, it's not hard to get *in* to the US, it's hard to get *out* of Canada.
That is how we spin things like "Sadam tells Bin Laden 'hell no, I won't give you money'" into "a real and palpable connection between Iraq and Al Queda".
And once every random idea is automatically presumed to be a federal policy, we are hoping that nobody will notice when we come to take all your toys in the name of that policy.
It is The _New_ Carte Blanche, so I guess not every french idea is a bad one to this regeme...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Out of all the places I've travelled, including Europe, Africa, South/Central America (w/Cuba), I've never had as much trouble as Canada. I was born and raised in Canada, and have a valid passport. Doesn't seem to matter. I have dual citizenship with the US, and when I go to the States, it's always "Welcome home!" Canada, it's more like "Where are you going? Where do you live? What do you do? How long have you been doing that?" I get red-lined every fucking time.
Haida Manga
????
This question is on the declaration form you fill out every time you fly to the USA from Canada.
I'm a little late for this but it's an area I'm familiar with so I thought I'd contribute it.
The U.S. Customs Department is in the process of moving towards what they call "U.N. APIS" (Advanced Passenger Information System). Details can be found at here in the Word document US Passenger List; UN EDIFACT Message Set.
The U.S. APIS system which has been used for some time does not require destination address information. The U.N. format does. See the linked document pages 60-63 for more details. Eventually this will be required when flying any major airline coming into the U.S., not just American Airlines.
It's not a myth. Or is it that you can't bring yourself to question your worldview that perhaps the US government isn't as benevolent as you'd hoped? As it stands today, the US is unable to support itself with domestic oil alone. That means that in order to support its war machine, it needs foreign oil and gas to keep functioning. Do you think it's coincidence that Pakistan enjoys impunity over its KNOWN nuclear black market while Iran is vilified for even ATTEMPTING to gain nuclear know how?
Wake up and realise you no longer live in a nation built on free and fair values, but rather on global hegemony designed to ensure its supply of resources to maintain living standards at present levels at the expense of everyone else. Democracy and freedom don't factor into the equation. They are merely platitudes to keep the populace uneducated. Why not read a few other sites for a different viewpoint:
Counterpunch
Truthout
Information Clearing House
Cryptome
Visceral Psyche Films
The problem comes when they compare the pax list with their databases. In the US even US citizens don't have the right to correct their data, and the FBI has no obligation to ensure their data about you is correct. Already we've seen how good the TSA's system is, putting every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on theirs Watch-List as it, doing repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer. And now their database is going to have this data for all travel and travelers around the world (because the gov'ts share this info). They'll be so swamped by the millions of false positives that it'll be far more likely that the extraordinarily rare false negative won't be noticed. Makes me feel safer already: cue theme music to Brazil.
Again the "Its a Warning not a Guidebook" Best Essay Ever...on privacy: "The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.
"[Example of typical gov't database, filled with errors] That was only a research database, so its inaccuracies probably would have remained relatively benign even if it had not been dismantled.
"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.
"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm."
Amen!
The Bush administration, early on (check the video footage of Condi Rice in "F9-11"), knew with some certainty that Saddam DID NOT HAVE WMD. After the still-secret Cheney Energy Commission meetings, and immediately after 9/11/2001, any/all possible excuses were to be dredged up to justify the invasion of Iraq. Considering (1) the ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, (2) the numerous ties between the Bush administration and the energy sector, and (3) the pre-9/11/2001 ties between the USA energy sector and the Taliban, any self-respecting conspiracy theorist would at least consider the possibility that the 9/11 attack was (A) sponsered by the Saudi government, (B) was sanctioned by a Bush "inner circle", and (C) carried out to reinforce Bush's hold on power (to carry out Saudi wishes) -- the deposing of Saddam Hussein who represented the single greatest threat to the hegenomy of the Saudi royal family.
The US Dept. of State instituted the "Visa Express" program specifically to allow the easy egress of Saudi nationals into the USA. If you think back to the early days of the CIA (actually the OSS), there is a strong resemblence between the OSS and the formation of Al-Queda. Al-Queda should be more properly viewed as the OSS of the Saudi government, but with enough "plausible deniability" for the Saudi royal family to continue to debach in Europe's playgrounds. The Bush administration would like to convey the image of a slightly "hayseed" organization, but their policy papers and roadmap have been carefully crafted by the neo-conservative think tanks
for more than a decade. Newt Gingrich's "Contract
With America" was the first scrimmage -- think
NFL here, and not Junior Varsity.
This is why there has been no "exit strategy"
publically pronounced for the war in Iraq, and
why the Iraqi war has been (purposefully) run so
badly -- the real goal is not democracy in Iraq,
but of civil war and fragmentation that the
Wahhabists (Al-Queda) can take advantage of.
What the Saudis want, and what the Bush team
want dovetail very neatly in the Iraqi conflict.
Carving Iraq into competing spheres of influence
is better for American energy interests. It
actually even suits the Turks, who will briefly
see an autonomous Kurdistan that will be crushed
between Turky, the Saudis, and the Iranians.
By the way, if you you were going to overthrow the
US government from the inside, what better way to
insure the loyalty of the military but to fully engage them in a "meat-grinder" of a foreign conflict. Those soldiers most likely to waver in their support of the President will keep getting sent on dangerous and foolish missions, or else subjected to "friendly fire". At some point, the vetting process will have been completed, and the troops will be ready for their next target, the American people (again).
If you take a look at the nonsensical spending
programs of the Bush administration, versus
the apparent (and touted) terrorist threats,
you begin to see a pattern of total disregard
for the possibility of additional terrorist
action in the USA. Hundreds of billions spent
on the war in Iraq, and a hundred billion spent
on a non-working anti-missile defense system,
while the USA's borders and seaports continue to
be largely unguarded. (Just recently, a group
of Chinese were captured in the Port of LA while
escaping from a cargo container. They could
just as easily have been Al-Queda or Hezbolah
or North Koreans with a nuclear device, ready to
go.) No, the spending patterns of this Bush
administration do not match the needs for greater
homeland security. Nor do the policies of the
Bush administration match those same needs. It
boils down to this: 9/11 was a blip on the radar
screen that justified a high level of secrecy
within the Bush administration, including the
war in Iraq and the USA Patriot Act (I). One
has been used to justify the abject & total
r
Two attacks. Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, remember? Fertilizer bomb.
Funny how no U.S. rightist militias were rounded up and sent to "processing" in Cuba for the rest of their lives, just-in-case and to keep-us-safe. No roundups of crew-cut guvmint haters. No searches of all pickup trucks and rental vans until the end of time. No permanent military surveillance of interstate rest stops, which is where McVeigh practically lived. No color coded "alerts". Could it be that they vote? That they're white? Could it be that all this "security" would have been as nonsensical then as it is now? Is it because Americans really, really think they are Christ's army in the war against a false god, or at least against dark people far away, and no torture, no suspension of the constitution is too much if we kill some more?
Sigh. Try finding the BBC Documentary "The Power of Nightmare". Lokitorrent has it at the moment. I've come to agree with the premise: there really was no such organization as "Al Qaeda", that it was the construction of a prosecutor that Bush used as a blueprint, that the attack was the last gasp of a desperate and failing jihadist movement, and that we have been taken to a near-dictatorship on nothing but the power to create a constant state of fear by extremely ruthless and self-deluded men who've methodically eliminated all contention of their assertions in the military, the intelligence community and the media. Even to question the simplest of their premises gets you branded a loon. We need to wake up. But I don't see how. Malignant egophrenia, aka "mad emperor's disease", has taken complete hold of the U.S. We've gone nuts, and we're taking everyone down with us.
I am sure you would feel the same way when I go visit you.
I don't. As far as I'm concerned, the "free" in "it's a free country" applies to citizens and visitors alike. Your ideas are way too draconian for my tastes.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
As a young working class irish immigrant, I was subject to all of these hassles and more right up until Muslims replaced Catholics the new niggers/"potential terrorists" of the UK.
This kind of treatment when travelling is an accepted part of the life of me, my family, and my friends. It amuses me when the upper classes (I will make this assumption seeing as the author of the article holds a high level frequent flyer card) get so outraged at being treated in the same way as the Hoi Polloi.
There are many points to be derived from this article, but perhaps the most powerful (and unintentional) is how some people expect to exempt from suspicion of being a terrorist under any circumstances. I really hope that it is not the policy of airlines to exempt frequent business travellers from security checks.
Another response to your post has some details of Clinton's problem going after bin Laden. That Sudan handover story is a fraud, designed to counter the memories of Clinton's actual attack on bin Laden in Sudan, more than Bush ever did until bin Laden was safely out of Afghanistan before invading there. Meanwhile, the Gingrich Republican Congress stopped Clinton from attacking bin Laden, claiming Clinton's attacks were "wagging the dog", when Gingrich wanted to impeach Clinton for a blowjob instead. When bin Laden bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in Clinton's final days, Clinton's investigation served up definitive proof to the incoming Bush that it was bin Laden - that was enough for Bush to go all out. But instead he did absolutely nothing, except to dismantle and deprioritize Clinton's counter bin Laden organizations.
Do a little more research beyond the Fox News Rovian talking points. Everything you're citing is the cliche coverup, exactly wrong to cover up the difference between common sense and the catastrophic actions taken instead by Bush. Snap out of it.
--
make install -not war
I'm afraid that if you don't enjoy being stripped to your underware and assumed to be a terrorist until you can prove you are not, then you, sir, are an anti-american friend to terrorists and we want none of your filthy money here!
Changa hates change.