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Financial Responsibility == Terrorism?
An anonymous reader writes "Capital Hill Blue is reporting that recently a retired Texas schoolteacher and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security. The crime? Paying down some debt. From the article: 'The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable. [...] They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.'"
And Bin Laden is still free.
Isin't that funny you can be freer in Afghanistan than in the US.
"Do I find it annoying? Yes. However, I also find it a necessary nuissance to help keep
smugglers and criminals from easily moving money around through our banking system."
YOU managed to explain it to the satisfaction of whoever asked. Why do you think a "smuggler or criminal" would be any less clever than you were?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Enron dumped hundreds of millions of dollars off-shore and the government never suspected a thing.
These people pay off $6K of debt and they're investigated and you support that.Yeah, it's called "Freedom".
Sometimes it means that the criminals get away, but that's part of the price of Freedom.
>
>And Bin Laden is still free.
He hates us for our freedom. All this means is that he's got less and less reason to hate us every day!
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."
Which is an idiotic argument, because what's currently okay won't always be okay.
Ask someone who signed up for the trendy, fashionable Communist Party in the 1920s how that act later went over in the 1950s, for example.
What you have to realise is none of this means anything. So homeland security is notified. So they have a look at your records.
You have a very naive attitude. Homeland Security is staffed by employees, who are evaluated on their productivity. There may not be a quota, but they are expected to show results. Now imagine the homesec guy looking into your records is behind--he's had a string of duds, or was lazy. Guess what--he's going to find a way to make your case a viable one. 18 months and $50,000 in lawyer costs later, you win your case. Doesn't matter to the homesec guy, because his semi-annual review 14 months ago treated your case a live high-probable laundering crime.
Understand why the law (real law, not fear-mongering homeland security bullshit) generally frowns on police fishing expeditions? There's just too much temptation to force a case through that shouldn't be. And yes, that's what this is--fishing.
Just to put things into perspective, you have a greater chance of being killed or injured by your own car than you do suffering death or injury from a terrorist attack. Can you say, overreact?
Whenever people try to defend the latest ridiculous things that DHS is doing, they always trot out the line "but you want the government to catch terrorists, don't you?" That's a completely specious and indefensible argument; the government had more than enough information to catch the 9/11 terrorists before the act, and failed to do it because they had too much information and not enough ability (or willingness) to correlate it. Thus collecting MORE information is not the answer, especially since it encroaches that much more on the liberty of citizens.
Terrorism should not be dealt with differently than any other crime. As in, "innocent until proven guilty", and "better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one innocent man". The Constitution requires search warrants for investigations of other crimes (though King George the W claims otherwise); they should be required for terrorism investigations as well, including searching financial transactions.
These "know your customer" banking regulations, the transaction reporting threshold, the instructions to report suspicious transactions even below that threshold, and the prohibition of "structuring" transactions all actually came about before 9/11, but have been stepped up significantly since then. The original rationale was the so-called "war on drugs". But that's not any better reason than the so-called "war on terrorists".
What you need to do, Rebeka, is read John Stuart Mills' "On Liberty" (specifically Chapter IV). Then perhaps you will realise just how short sighted your thinking is. An inept bureacracy is just as bad if not worse than an actual conspiracy.
So, you'd have no complaints being audited by the IRS for your 'suspicious' behavior of having a home business that earns more than the average, even though it'll cost you a nice chunk of time and money? I mean, after all, you came out of things without any harm, survived the audit, right?
You wouldn't mind being detained in a holding cell for a day because some overzealous cop thought you 'looked suspicious'? I mean, you got released the next day, so no harm, no foul?
How about having the police raid your home because you've bought a little too much cold medicine over the past month, and you also happened to place an order for some beakers for a halloween party? Because, you might be running a meth lab, and so the cops were able to get a nearly unrestricted warrant on that alone? I mean, it's no big deal, other than the day of work you missed, the neighbors watching the police crawl all over your property, and all those entries in the public records.
Seems a little more scary, doesn't it?
It has nothing to do with being a conspiracy, and everything to do with a big-ass violation of the Bill of Rights. You, as a citizen, have a right to be secure in your papers and effects, which is why we have this whole warrant system. It's supposed to be that, if the cops want to poke into your business, they have to show probable cause to a judge, and everything is public record (so you can see what they're saying about you, basically).
Basically, it's a huge pain in the ass, so why go through it unless you really think the person is a criminal?
Now, your entire life is practically open; law enforcement has access to all of your financial records, including taxes and bank account information, and all without needing a warrant, as long as you violate some arbitrary criteria as to what 'normal' is. Does this help them catch criminals? I doubt it; I mean, the crooks dumb enough to be cooking meth in their kitchens don't usually give a damn about pyrex or lab safety equipment, and the guys smart enough to build nuclear weapons in their basement aren't going to try and buy their supplies at Home Depot.
Personally, I'd rather our law enforcement dollars were spent on, oh, education, especially in high-crime areas, and in prison reform, so that inmates came out of prison, well, reformed, rather than better-trained in being criminals.
So, yeah, all of this does scare and bother me, not because I think that there is any big conspiracy, but because the government is violating my rights in exchange for some illusion of safety.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Vhat you hav to realise is none of tis means anything. So KGB be notified. So they have a look at your bumagi. So they notice nothing be wrong, they go away.
Vhat the problem? It be age old statement that defeats conspiracy theorists, they who convinced the government is going to imprison all good Soviets vhile the real reactionaries run free.
"If you not doing anything vrong, you hav nothing to vorry about."
Tink about it. If someone vere involved in the shifting of huge amount of funds around and planning the next Trotskyte terror campaign, subversive sabotage or bombing, you mean all would not want to know about it? Phew! You be joker.
============
Absolutely, I haf been telling zis to my Komraden for all zis time!
What you haf to realize is none of zis means anyzing. So ze Gestapo is notified. So zey haf a look at your recorden. So zey eventually notice nozing is vrong, and zey go away.
What iz ze problem? Again it comez down to ze age old statement zat defeats ze conspiracy zeorists who are convinced ze government is going to imprizon all good Germans while ze real Communisten und Juden run free.
"Iv you are not doing anyzing vrong, you haf nozing to worry about."
Zink about it. If someone vere involved in ze shifting of huge amounts of funds around und planning ze next Burning of the Reichstag or bombing of ze train tracks carrying our heroic troops in Polen, you mean you all vouldn't vant to know about it? Jaaa. Right.
Talk about complete bullshit. It's garbage like this that makes people distrust their government.
Let's see.. If I make a transaction over $10k, there's paperwork to be done and now the government has the Eye of Sauron on me. Hmm, I think I'll just avoid that headache and make two transactions on two different days instead. Alarm! Alarm! You are now being taken to Castle Wolfenstein!
All this does is persuade criminals to NOT use banks at all and fucks over the legit folks. Typical end result of Big Brothering.
Just to put things into perspective, you have a greater chance of being killed or injured by your own car than you do suffering death or injury from a terrorist attack.
/.
Which is why you need a driver's license, are required to wear seat belts, can't drive before a certain age, and have to drive a vehicle that meets government safety standards. It's also why you're required to have regular inspections, and why you can be pulled over and ticketed for driving with faulty equipment, or arrested and jailed for driving under the influence or even just recklessly.
In other words, not a good example to support your argument. (Which I basically agree with otherwise.)
But this all misses the point. Where is the rest of this story? All we know from this article, factually (or at least according to these people, who may or may not be telling the truth), is that one is a retired schoolteacher and they were contacted by homeland security because of a large payment they made. We also know that this guy has a lot of anger towards the government that may or may not have been caused by this action by DHS, or it may have existed previously and manifested itself in other ways. We don't know for how long or why these people were under surveillance by DHS - and some people have pretty good reasons for being under surveillance. (Yes, even Americans - remember Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols?)
Now, if large payments alone were a trigger for a DHS audit, you can bet it would be front page news. Millions of people every year make large payments into their IRA's or on their home mortgages at various times for tax purposes, or other reasons. I myself have made payments larger than $6,000 on both my credit cards and student loans, and I can assure you that's not my normal payment amount - but I have yet to be contacted by DHS. Why is that? The only difference between me and this guy, according to this article, is that he is a retired Texas schoolteacher and I work in the entertainment industry. The DHS must love their cable TV.
No, it just sounds fishy. Either the story is made up, or there's a long backstory here that we're not getting. Otherwise this surveillance would appear to be basically random (targetting some people who make payments like this but not others), in which case they may as well just close their eyes, open a phone book and point to get their latest victim. Why even bother?
Sometimes I do get a little tired of seeing these conspiracy theory stories on
And perhaps you are willing to wink at criminal behaviour so that you can secretly wire a few thousand quid to your mistress without having a few questions raised. I am not.
And here we have it, folks. That fantastic attitude called "If you don't like it, you must be doing something wrong". Every scare and people like you grant the government more power to brighten your fucking night light. It's okay to trample our civil liberties as long as those nasty drug traffickers are brought to justice.
Fuck you, Ritz.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
from the article: "Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up."
i can't speak for anyone else, but i know that a hold placed on my bank account would ruin me. i would not be able to pay rent, buy food. i would probably be evicted from my house.
all because some monkey raised a flag on a "suspicious" transaction.
true - nobody went to jail in this case... but you seem to not be accounting for how easily innocent lives can get screwed up when flags are raised and accounts locked.
maybe you should revisit your argument?
wrong, the PRIVACY of a citizen is being violated without warrant, because the government thinks an honest person MIGHT now be a criminal. By default, is none of the government's damn business why a citizen should choose to move or spend a large amount of money.
Yeah that's right. And people can't be held without being charged and the government can't tape our phone conversations with out a warrent...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."
This is the most naive, despicably un-American sentiment of all the tripe that's thrown around in this charade that is post-9/11 paranoia.
I'm sorry for being ad hominem, but please, try to use your imagination here.
This sheep-like "nothing bad happens to good people" mentality is the type of smug, head-in-the-sand mentality that destroys free society. My folks emigrated from behind the "Iron Curtain" in the late 60s exactly to escape the sort of propoganda and easy government-sanctioned persecution that I see creeping up all around us. Let me tell you stories about family and friends fired, harrassed, jailed, and yeah, even tortured because their actions were "misinterpreted", Sometimes they were released without apology a few months later, sometimes not. Sometimes the reason for the police action was political. Sometimes they were framed by competitors. Sometimes they were "snitched" on by neighbors with vendettas. Sometimes they just had the wrong guy. When paranoia rules and every out-of-step behavior is potentially subversive (or "terroristic") it's pretty easy to wreak havoc with people's lives, either intentionally or not.
But that doesn't happen here, right? You wouldn't get labeled terrorist and jailed indefinitely for something as silly as trolling unsavory websites right? Or be charged with a crime and have your property destroyed because you had a stupid bumper sticker, right? And we'd never get so paranoid about air travel as to make a mother drink her own breast milk to prove its safe before boarding a plane, or maybe create a secret no-fly list that is impossible to audit or even acknowledge but sometimes bars toddlers from flying because they might be terrorists (along with hundreds of others, including members of Congress), right? I mean, these are good people who didn't do anything wrong. I can't imagine that there'd be a slew of kafkaesque civil rights abuses that an internal Justice Dept. investigation might uncover, right? (I won't even touch domestic wiretapping) I mean, those who have nothing to fear have nothing to hide, right? Right.
These are just small examples, and maybe not even very good one. And maybe you'll never inconvenienced like the couple in this story. But who knows. Maybe you'll be the victim of identity theft, or even framed.. Maybe you'll have to engage in some bizzare but innocent behavior. Maybe you'll want to voice an unpopular opinion, or go read/hear someone else's horrible and unpopular opinion. Or maybe it'll just be some bureaucratic "oops". But, if it does happen, and YOU find yourself interrogated by the FBI, or forced to explain some blotch on your record for the rest of your life, or maybe even jailed without charge for a few months, then you come tell me how, sure, maybe you lost three months of your life in a cell being molested by thugs, but hey, at the end, everyone figured out it was just a big mistake. So really, it was OK. We're all safer for it. God bless America.
which cost the supposed "victim" nothing
You're right, it cost them "nothing" because that's MY money!
MY money was being used to harass retired school teachers. That's MY money that could have been used to pay real cops a raise. That's MY money being used so that some DHS lackey can play Joe Friday and feel all detectivey. MY money could have gone towards having the army we wanted. MY money could have gone towards buying food for Wal-Mart employees (whoops, different rant).
But no, MY money was spent freezing the account of some little old man because he tried to pay his bill. MY money was spent to see if JC Penney was really a terrorist front. MY money was wasted.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Of course the feds are interested in the movement of money over x. And I see that there are plenty of readers eager to justify the monitoring of citizens all in the name of security.
It is interesting that the justifications that existed when the level of x was thousands of dollars are now quoted when x is hundreds, when in theory, the effects of inflation should cause x to increase.
In a few years, as technology, and data storage, and indexing allows, all transactions will be reported, catalogued, and analyzed, all in the name of security, and there will be plenty of readers that will be happy to step up to the plate and explain the justifications.
The real reasons of course are about control of the masses, and to maintain authority by reminding all citizens that they are being watched and can be brought in to explain their actions and transactions at any time should their activity, be it financial or political opinion, raise an eyebrow in Washington, or the local town hall.
While this particular example of credit card activity may or may not have occurred, the interesting point is that the assumption is that if someone's financial activity appears to change to a third party, the first party must explain their behaviour, as if there is a presumption of wrong doing.
This is in opposition to the principals set forth in the Bill of Rights and the forth amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Since there is no probable cause to believe that a person with $600 or some other arbitrary amount has acquired the funds through illicit mechanisms, requiring the person to provide documentary evidence is clearly an illegal search and seizure.
This also may be a violation of the tenth amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
Since the ability to keep tabs and monitor the general population is not expressly granted to the federal government by the constitution, such activity must be the domain of the states. This is why the feds now claim that this is part of the "war against terrorism" to create a federal interest in monitoring of ordinary citizens, just like the illegal wiretapping of ordinary citizens phoning back to the old country.
The future is bleak, and the trends before us further demonstrate that these United States have continually moved from a democratic republic for the people, by the people, to a fascist state that operates in the interest of the new aristocracy, let's not forget that the most interesting of all financial transactions are the least scrutinized.
Has any else noticed the huge transfer of wealth from public coffers to private hands..? (hint: it was more than 600 bucks).
It isn't your money. Its your grandchildren's money. They borrowed it.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
It can't be anymore obvious, can it?
This one is so easy. Would you rather (a) risk the chance of being struck by lighting, or (b) carry around a 100 lb faraday cage all day, every day for the rest of your life? Funny that the American government is able to sell the faraday cage as the right choice, especially with side benefit that they sell faraday cages. And so many people are just lining up to get one. It doesn't even matter to some if the occasional one is plastic. Why bother checking? As long as people feel safe because the government told them they did the right thing. Good for them.
The reasoning behind this is because, generally, if you have that much debt, you do *not* have the means to pay it off. The reasoning continues that people deep in debt can get desperate--and indeed, they do. Many financial crimes have been born out of pure desperation.
And yet it's not a crime to send these people credit card applications. Hello debt slavery!
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
How about these:
1) It's a waste of resources. While we will probably never have a clear idea of the costs, it is not unfathomable that the overhead from such a program costs as much or more than the damage done to society through money laundering.
2) Nobody is innocent. Nobody is "not doing anything wrong." If you are honest and thorough, I'm sure you can find at least 5 regulations, rules, or flat-out laws that you've broken within the past week. The "If you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" argument is moot, since the number of people that statement describes is roughly 0.
3) Requiring burdensome reports for transactions over $10,000 (yes, that's the limit) encourages noncompliance. If the choice is "Deposit $12,000 and spend an hour filling out paperwork" or "Deposit $6k twice and fill out zero paperwork," many people are going to choose the latter. It's like McDonalds. Double cheeseburgers are $.99, but single cheeseburgers are $1.09. Who's going to pay more to get less? Conversely, who's going to go through more effort just to receive greater scrutiny?
4) Let's face it: The people being caught by transaction monitoring are white collar criminals. The people benefitting from such protection are large corporations. As Jon Stewart said last night at the Oscars: "Movie piracy is wrong. Just look what you're doing to the people in this room. Many of the women can barely afford enough clothing to cover their breasts." That's not an excuse, just a reminder to keep things in perspective.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Yeah, but in the other ditch is a bunch of Civil Servants getting their faces ripped off for letting a score of thugs strongly interested in parking jets in large builds into the country.
Bitch, bitch, whine. I'd rather die by the hand of a foreign attacker than be subjected to persecution by my own government.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
They borrowed it.
More correctly - It was borrowed from them.
Zero.
There weren't any cells in the U.S.
They've only charged ten men in the entire gulag system they've built around the world. And those aren't exactly airtight cases.
Over thirty men have died from "stress" during imprisonment and torture. None were charged.
They've not arrested a single man who actually plotted 9/11. They've bodyguards, drivers, one guy who wore a wristwatch "similar to those worn by terrorists". The bulk of those picked up in Afghanistan were fingered by enemies of the fingered who also got a fat cash payoff for giving up "terrorists".
The main reason is that the actual terrorists died in the planes. The second reason is that Bin Laden et al had a month to evacuate Afghanistan before we started bombing the poor bastards who had nothing to do with 9/11.
So, no terrorists. We've suspended the constitution, created a Gestapo, and are building Prison America to keep ourselves safe. And we've nothing to show for it.
bin Laden got what he wanted: the removal of the U.S. military bases from holy Saudi Arabian soil, and the provocation of the U.S. invading the middle east. He's really no more reason to hit us. Why bother? We've turned every muslim in the damned world against us. He got a lot for his money.
But we've got exactly nothing.
Think I'm extreme? What have your moderate views and voting choices done for us? They've gotten us here, that's what. Time for a change. Turn off the TV, forget about "compromise," and quit worrying about "wasting your vote." If what we have now isn't the result of wasted votes, I don't know what would be. Vote Libertarian. Vote independent. Run for office yourself. Ask your state to call for a constitutional convention. Won't do it? Ask yourself this: What would make you change the way you think, vote, and live if not the things you've seen, read, and heard about our government from reliable sources in the past 5 years? WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE PEOPLE YOU'RE VOTING FOR DO NOT SERVE YOUR INTERESTS?
More or less, yes.
There's an old saying that you can measure the freedom of a society by counting the laws. (This isn't true of course, a society in which the only law is "Obey Leader and his Enforcers at all times" isn't terribly free, but there's a point to the saying anyway.)
Once you hit a critical threshold in the number of laws and complexity of the situations they govern, then it's impossible for any citizen, even any lawyer, to know the law, even just the areas of the law that affect "normal" day to day life. We've long since passed this point.
Under such a system, you may know of many individual specific things that are illegal, but in general when presented with an unkown situation, there's a moment of vertigo. You don't know how to act. Now in a free society with limited, known, laws, you'd always know what you can and can't do. There's a list out there of prohibited actions and their associated penalties. You know these actions, and as long as you aren't doing them, you're in the clear. However in a society with millions of laws, you can't think this way. You either have to carefully research an unfamiliar action or (much more commonly) just behave like everyone else is behaving and assume, since they aren't getting arrested, that you're acting in accordance with the law.
For example: last weekend I was in a state park, walking around off the trail. I came across an old, decaying building (probably pre-1900) and went in and explored, opening what doors an cupboards were left, looking into the exposed rooms, checking out the rusting fixtures etc. Was I in violation of some law or park rule? I'll never know. Perhaps if an official had come along, they could have given me some ticket. Hell, it could have been a $50,000 fine and a year in jail. I'd have contested, but if the law was on the books, ultimately I'd have no defense. Ignorance of the law is not an alibi.
Further complicating things, consider that there are tons of laws on the books that aren't enforced. Little things you'd never think of. Even things that make for amusing trivia. There are a whole lot of places in the country where using dirty language around a female is illegal. Pornography is still *very* illegal in the US. The supreme court basically decided that the law couldn't be enforced, but it's still on the books. It would only take a fall of the gavel in washington, and suddenly every adolescent boy with an internet connection is a felon.
Combine this with pervasive surveilance and you have a very scary situation. When most people, whether they know it or not are guilty of imprisonable crimes, and the government has eyes everywhere, then it doesn't take any actual voted-upon action for your society to transform swiftly and suddenly into a very different kind of place. No law has to change, and suddenly you're living in a very different society.
It's effectively illegal to leave your house without a government issued ID anymore. A friend of mine (a republican no less) was riding her bike during the 2004 RNC in New York City. She wasn't part of, or even close to the protests, but she looks "weird" she's young, she's not white, and she has tatoos. She ran a stopsign on her bike (pretty much standard practice for cyclists at 4-way stops) and got stopped by a cop. He would have let her go, but she didn't have an ID on her. As a result, she spent 18 hours sitting on a hard cement floor with her hands plastic-tied behind her, with no access to food, water, or legal counsel.
She never got her bike back, and her suit against the NYPD was thrown out of court, as apparently, they were acting 100% within the Patriot act.
When the Soviet Union was still around, some people (generally people losing a political debate) would say things like "So why don't you move to Russia where you'll get thrown in a cell for not carrying your goddamn papers."
And here we are.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It's garbage like this that makes people distrust their government.
And the problem with distrusting your government is?
Usually it's money laundering you get accused of, and a HUGE number of money laundering cases (legit ones) are drug related. I want to say the limit is either $7k or 10k cash.
When I was a kid, I went with a friend and his dad to buy a Porche. He went to the bank first and got out a load a cash to make his down payment. If he had been pulled over on the drive from the bank to the car dealership why should he have had to explain anything to anyone?
Technically it SHOULD be an easy charge to beat, IF you got the money legitimately. If you didn't, or don't have a paper trail ("My friend loaned me $10 grand for...."), have fun!
The problem is that we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. You don't have to explain anything. Unless they have PROOF that you did something illegal, keep your mouth shut.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Loaning money to someone who can never pay it back is a very good business tactic. It means that they keep on paying interest payments for the rest of their lives, usually totalling much more than the loan was in the first place. Apart from that, it gives the jerks a feeling of power over the poor bastards so owned.
It is completely immoral and evil, of course, but when has that stopped a business from doing it ?
So all the Raynd-worshippers can relax: this is not charity, but a particularly nasty and deceitfull plan on furthering the business owners self-interest at the expense of others.
Surely you mean cheating at lottery, laundering money, selling stolen goods, murdering a rich relative...
Remember, if you stop being paranoid, the terrorists lose ! And then who would the boogeyman be ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Obviously you haven't been doing much traveling. Check out Cuba, Nicaragua, Israel, Croatia (until recently), etc. No matter where I've been the U.S. has always welcomed me back with open arms compared to some of the places I've traveled.
Just think about what you've written. You're saying the US is not so bad, not compared to Cuba, Nicaragua, Croatia, Israel. If you're trying to say that the US is not such a fortress state and in doing so favourably compare it to countries like Cuba or Nicaragua, or countries undergoing as much *real* terrorism as Israel, or countries with such recent mass-conflicts such as Croatia, then you're not doing a very favourable comparison.
I won't comment on most of your post, but 3 things stand out that can't be left without answer.
How about the United State's ties to Europe? 911 sure helped damage those (or at least finally brought the problems to the surface)
After the september 11 attacks, NATO 'woke up' and activated the 'an attack against one is an attack against us all' article (article 5 if I'm not mistaken).
The USA government said 'no thanks'.
Years later, they had to come back to NATO because of not being able to handle Afghanistan alone.
Few people in Europe took issue with the Afghanistan invasion, many believed there was enough proof and enough reason to go there.
What did cause the trouble between the USA and Europe is:
1. The refusal of the US government to involve NATO, and then comming back on that when they couldn't handle things (and still trying to hide the fact that they can't handle things)
2. The Iraq invasion.
9/11 only has to do with this indirectly due to reason 1.
The US government handling of those attacks and the Iraq invasion are the real problem there.
How about all the looney conspiracy theories? Can't say I've ever seen such a division amongst the American people since the civil war.
Try having a discussion about abortion, and you will see the same approx 50 50 split and the same fanatism... No, it is not new, has nothing to do with 9/11, and everything with a long standing 2 party system that does not allow for any 'middle ground' or nuance.
And how about civil liberties? For christ sakes, we have to actually consider a torture policy now.
No you don't. The only way to consider a torture policy is disbanding one. Any other 'considering' is a clear sign of tyrany.
That's an interesting legal viewpoint. That would make life so much easier for everyone.
Who knows, maybe it will catch on.
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
... And the attackers of the Sep 11 2001 weren't hiding their identity at all or borrowing from other people (there have been some clouds around the real identity of Muhammad Atta though, the family Atta denies the person being their [missing] son).
The interesting and most Anti-PATRIOT thing about the suicide bombers of Sep 11 2001 was that they were just normal. They were regular students at a regular university in Germany. They had regular student visa for both Germany and U.S., they were using their regular passports, they were openly going to their preferred mosque.
They did nothing to hide their tracks. Of course they wanted a good credit report on their credit cards. Of course they didn't want to be chased by debt collectors. Of course they didn't want the cheques they were writing to bounce. Basicly all they did was being good citizens. And that should scare anyone who thinks waging a War on Terror might be a good idea. If you didn't to anything wrong, you are a prime suspect.
Yes, we've all heard that same tired argument that's constantly used to justify every new government policy that encroaches on our rights as individuals. Frankly, I'm not mad at the government for being unable to stop the 9/11 attacks. Absolute security is unattainable, and the increased security we gain from capitulating to fear-mongering government officials isn't worth the trade-offs. I'm really more upset at our government leaders for their foreign policy decisions that elicits hostility from people of other nations and motivates such attacks.
You shouldn't have to. Thus our current problem.
Ever wondered why this idea of checks and balances exists?
I'm sorry, but you should always have a slight level of distrust with regards to your government. The day you give that up is the day you allow for tyrany.
I actually kind of liked the old system of being innocent until they prove you're guilty.
Take lots of laws (designed to "protect" you),
mix with surveillance
add some patriotism,
chop in belief in divine right to rule,
let it simmer under suppression of opposition
bake it under external threat (fake one will do if real one isn't available)
Serve with men in uniforms
Guess what's cooking kids?
Guess what's cooking kids?
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Statistically, you are more likely to die at the hands of your own government, than die by the actions of a foreign attacker.
The most secure place to live is a prison, but I'm not sure I want to live in one.
This also has a nice bonus for the credit card company... if they hold off crediting the $6000 for a week, at 15%, that comes to about $17 ... or $75/month (if they can make the 'investigation' last that long).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Frankly, I'm not mad at the government for being unable to stop the 9/11 attacks.
Frankly, I'm mad as hell about it considering that they had all sorts of warning signs that either got lost in the bureaucracy or ignored by the higher-ups in the Bush administration.
The sad truth about 9/11 is that they had ample warning and could have prevented it with the laws in place without the need for any big brotherish "Patriot Act".
The sad truth about post 9/11 is that you could solve the airline threat by simply keeping guns off the planes (was already done) and fortifying the cockpit door. That's it! Problem solved! No need for TSA, no need to show ID to get on the plane, none of that!
Basically our Government completely failed us and now it wants more power. People should have been asking why they weren't using the power they had effectively in the first place -- instead of why they need more.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Don't act so surprised; neither are the police. Being "investigated" doesn't entitle you to any sort of notification, because it doesn't mean anything. If you get charged with something, then you get to see all the evidence, confront your accusers, all the rest of that good stuff. But you do not have any right to know when you're being "investigated" -- and this is not a new development, there is no basis in law for it traditionally.
So don't point the Big Brother finger at Homeland Security as if they're somehow unique; you could be under investigation by any number of agencies, including your local police, and not neccessarily be aware of it. Unless they're going to charge you with something, they don't have any reason to inform you or anyone else about it.
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