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DHS's 'Secure Flight' Program Proven Insecure
News.com is reporting the somewhat unsurprising news that a government program we were assured was 'perfectly safe', has actually been proven to be a privacy nightmare. The 'Secure Flight' program matched air traveler information with commercial databases in the interests of national security. The charter for the program specifically forbade the TSA from accessing this information; the organization got their hands on it anyway. The Department of Homeland Security has released a report, detailing these findings and analyzing the situation. The News.com piece makes it clear the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice; it was only linked to from a DHS subsite, and has not shown up on the DHS or TSA main pages. From the article: "The report from the Homeland Security privacy office takes pains to say that the privacy compromises over Secure Flight were 'not intentional,' and includes a list of seven recommendations to avoid similar mishaps in the future. Those include explaining to the public exactly what's going on and creating a 'data flow map' to ensure information is handled in compliance with the 1974 Privacy Act. This isn't the first report to take issue with Secure Flight. Last year, auditors at the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the program violated the Privacy Act."
Am I the only one who had read "the 1984 Privacy Act" ?
...it hasn't any right at all to be anything but a Boolean, at least at first. DHS has a right to check for the answer to the question 'Is this person a terror suspect?', and perhaps 'Is this person a known friend or confidant of a terror suspect?'. ONLY if the answer to one of those questions is 'yes' have the underpaid security monkeys at the airport got any right whatsoever to see any information on people. All too often, the quest for 'security' is just another grab for power and intimidation.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I wonder how long it will be before we hear politicians praising a new bill to remove these constraints, framing it in terms of a "wall" which prevents the TSA from effectively securing our skies, like they did when they wanted to let foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement exchange data?
See, this is why I'm always skeptical of these things. And for some reason, critics are always written off as paranoid or unrealistic. I wonder if they said the same things when people warned that the new "small" income tax would quickly grow?
the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice
It's an old trick to release news on a Friday night, when less people are going to see it. Also, any day in which a major news story (superbowl, oscar night, day after elections, etc.) is scheduled -- those are the days to read the newspaper carefully-- those are days that are typically used to obscure potentially damaging news.
In a 24-hour news cycle it's much harder to hide bad news from the public, but there are still golden times when the government and others are virtually guaranteed no one will be paying attention. Kudos for bringing this story to light.
The whole reason for the "Secure Flight" program is yet another way to put countless Americans into one giant database for corporate exploitation.
It's just another way businesses are making money by talking about you behind your back and you're completely cut out of the profits from the trading of your personal information.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Sorry dudes in the US; you really, really need to clean up your privacy laws to actually protect the individual and not to favor major business (and making identity theft darn easy in the bargain).
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Sorry, but "not intentional" doesn't cut it when something happens that was explicitly forbidden in the charter of the program.
If I sign a contract that specifically says I can only get X under condition of Y and Z, then breaking those conditions invalidates the contract. Secure Flight should be terminated and TSA be made liable for any and all damages.
Why is it that governments and corporations can fuck up constantly on a scale that makes you dizzy while any natural person doing a fuckup on a similar scale would be locked away for life?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Murder rate in the USA is 16,000 PER YEAR.
y /Missile-Not-Flight-77.html
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
911 shouldn't have changed a damn thing. Yet it seems as if the Bush team has milked it to build the bedrock for a police state. Given their political donations come from the same private interests that profit from such draconian right wing lunacy, it looks like the Bush team staged it themselves, quite honestly.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20Histor
Getting security "locked down" is the wrong answer. Getting the nazis out of office is the right answer.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Correction.
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3030. TOTAL.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Governments do plenty of things that infringe on people's rights in order to try and curb the rate of murder. For example, the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA doesn't allow handguns. Even if you interpret the US Constitution as not allowing each individual person to own guns (as groups like the American Civil Liberties Union do) the Illinois State Constitution http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/con1.htm/ explicitly provides for that, leaving little if any room for such interpretation. That seems like a way the government is screwing with people's constitutionally-provided rights -- but it's just not the federal government doing it.
I suppose you could say that the right to have a gun isn't as popular with some people, so fewer people care about that right being infringed, but it's still a constitutionally-stated right
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
Chooo! Choo! All tokers know that, duh!
You can't take the sky from me...
Your comments about the murder rate vs. terror rate and torching the constitution were strong.
You lost me with the conspiracy theory about the neocons planning 9/11. As much as I distrust Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their puppet, the theories about missles hitting the Pentagon just aren't credible to me. At most, I will believe that 9/11 was a happy accident which Cheney leveraged to enrich his friends at Haliburton. He sold it to Bush as an opportunity to finish what his dad had started. Rumsfeld? Well, that guy wanted to prove a war could be fought on the cheap and wanted to take credit for that accomplishment. Turned out it can be fought on the cheap, so long as you're not concerned with winning.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
But even if they didn't explicitly plan it, Ossama was trained, funded and armed by the CIA, back when the Taliban were labelled "freedom fighters" (is that like "freedom fries"?), what goes around comes around.
You can't take the sky from me...
Whereas in the UK, we voted for a bunch of people hwo arent supposed to be Neo-conservative, and ended up with a police state anyway.
If you think this sort of things dont happen in european states, your wrong. Were just better at keeping it quiet.
Heard a great line on any questions today (A BBC Radio 4 comedy quiz show):
The americans had a revolution because they were sick of being told what to do from London.
Boy did THEY manage to turn things around.
9/11 was not a person murdering another person, you frame this as if it were a typical crime we should pursue through our court system. When in reality it was an extremely large entity attacking our country, not just singular persons. So terrorism is just a crime we pursue in criminal courts? When the movement is as large and concerted as it is, you cannot simply frame it as a typical crime. You may lie to yourself, but the rest of us see (save for the sheep).
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
What the hell is a "terror rate"? Besides that -- the goal of terrorism isn't to kill, it's to terrorize. You're saying the equivalent of something like "We shouldn't worry about forest fires because almost no forest fires were caused due to 9/11."
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
What the fuck does that mean? The number of murders per year climbs over time (but not necessarily constantly; sometimes it drops, too) and that means we should torch the constitution? Could you please insert some logic in there?
Besides that -- the number of people in the US has been constantly growing. Guess what: when you have more people, there are going to be more murders. On top of that, technology has made it easier to kill over time. It's also made it easier to discover murders & murderers, so naturally, the number of reports will climb. Can you show me a single country that's had such a massive growth in population and technology in the US that hasn't had their number of murders per year climb?
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care.
/. said, "Terrorism and 'for the children' are the root password to the constitution".
This is exactly why I care. Once the tools are given to a gov't agency, they will be abused, and used to target other groups that weren't the original objective. As one poster on
Note: they can get away with violating the law, because there isn't any penality when a gov't official, or a gov't contractor violates it.
You were really sounding reasonable until you started spouting that conspiracy bullshit.
9/11 was not a person murdering another person, you frame this as if it were a typical crime we should pursue through our court system.
There was never any reason NOT to handle it through our court system. I DO frame it as if it should have been handled in a different way. I frame it as if the president and his entire cabinet should have been investigated, impeached, and probably tried for treason.
When in reality it was an extremely large entity attacking our country, not just singular persons. So terrorism is just a crime we pursue in criminal courts?
I don't believe Al Quaeda exists in the form it has been advertised. Perhaps there IS an AQ somewhere, but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with 911.
If you ask me, the amount of technical expertise needed to conduct 911 already points to not a bunch of camel riding freedom fighters from afghanistan. It points to a western military organization with experience of command and coordination of complex military operations.
The NAME of the date alone points to an AMERICAN source, since the term 9-11 is only meaningful to Americans... Unless you think osama thought of it. I guess he could have watched "cops" on tv from his tent. ??
Car bombs in occupied Iraq do not point to alquaeda. OF COURSE there were going to be car bombs. The U.S. military went in and invaded. That same thing would probably happen in the U.S., too, if it got invaded. It doesn't mean Al Quaeda materialized. It means people (let just call them "Iraqi patriots" / "Iraqi freedom fighters" the same way the administration would have done if they were overthrowing a communist government) objected to the unprovoked and illegal military domination of their country.
Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. I have no reason to believe he ever stopped bing a CIA person. That's only boosted by the fact that they never caught him. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just costly, bloody unjustified military moneygrabs that have served to distract from Osama's failed manhunt. Those wars siphened billions towards military contracts.
When the movement is as large and concerted as it is, you cannot simply frame it as a typical crime. You may lie to yourself, but the rest of us see (save for the sheep).
Yes, in fact it MUST be framed as a typical crime. If it HAD been, it would HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED PROPERLY.
But 911 was never properly investigated, and the Bush police state after-the-fact isn't a suitable replacement for the proper investigation that they failed to conduct.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
No, I'm saying 911 was a single event, and if you ask me it looks more like an event planned against hte american people by their own government in an effort to galvanize them against an invisible enemy, in order to gain a more absolute form of dictatorial control. That's what 911 looks like, if you ask me.
v iolent_crime/murder.html
Fighting a war against an invisible enemy, and using that as a justification for searching everyone who passes through an airport, train station, you name it, already encroaches on basic civil liberties. The fact that the enemy is unseen makes it all the more insidious when the right wingers are asking for permission to spy domestically. It gives them the same sort of blank check request that joseph mccarthy had back in the commie witch hunts during the 50's. Have you such a short memory for history as to overlook the terrible right wing history of the 50's?
here. this is the recent murder rate. it's been close to 16000 for a long time.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/
3030 killed in 911. that's the only terror attack ever done on that scale on us soil. you think that's a good reason to say "screw civil liberty, privacy and forget about not getting searched. forget about the right to carry a can of coke or a letter opener on an airplane. forget all that it's just not worth it.
you are tire kicking. your whole post is just tire kicking. look at the whole argument and fill in the gaps with your own mind.
Secret trials and detentions, patriot act, roving wiretaps, expanded police powers to read things like email, gone to an airport recently?. there's alot more than I know about but there is plenty.
Sheesh. Wake up, people.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I agree with you about what is happening in the US. And as a fellow European it is sometimes too easy to gloat, unfortunately. But when it comes down to it, what we are witnessing these days is the rapidly increasing downfall of the largest democracy on earth. The US IS (currently) the worlds most powerful nation. It's fall into a police state would affect all of us, in a very bad way. It's hardly a laughing matter.
I know it sounds crazy. I can hardly get myself to look at it with credibility, but the facts ARE in line.
e
0 9736411725&q=wtc+3
The third WTC building on 911 collapsed without ANYTHING touching it. It just collapsed straight down as if it had been demolished. They even abandoned it first. It was UNDAMAGED until it collapsed.
The HOLE in the pentagon was not large enough for the plane that struck.
The jet fuel of an airliner doesn't burn hot enough to melt the structural steel that was used in the WTC buildings. Yet they found molten steel in the wreckage.
Get on line and look at the video wreckage of that third building.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=911+collaps
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-78427415
That was not an airplane strike, it was demolition.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
No, it means that since 9/11 did less damage to us than we regularly do to ourselves, we shouldn't use either as an excuse to destroy our civil liberties.
I've always compared it to the death toll from traffic accidents (which exceeds the 9/11 death toll every *month*), but I like the murder comparison even better.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/av.caesar/wtc/wtc7_2.jpg
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3990/wtc7roof7
It well known by people on the ground that WTC7 was going to collapse.
Here's some accounts from firefighters on the scene that day. They describe the severe structural damage, large fires, and the potential for collapse.
Wrong.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e207/Mercury2/p
Beyond that, you still have to explain the downed street lights along the highway, and the damage generator.
You should watch this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YVDdjLQkUV8
Absolute idiocy. The steel certainly doesn't have to melt before it fails. And what does the alleged molten metal actually prove? Explosives don't melt steel, and they certainly aren't capable of keeping that steel molten weeks after they've been detonated.
Thermite/thermate doesn't fit the alleged phenomenon either, unless you're suggesting that there was so much of the stuff at the site that it was burning for weeks in order to keep the metal in a liquefied state. (We've all seen videos of thermite at work. The metal resolidifies within a minute after the thermite is expended.)
Here's a better video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dWemhf8fZ2w
It clearly shows the eastern mechanical penthouse collapsing into the building a full 5 seconds before the western penthouse collapses, followed immediately by the rest of the building. Not nearly as clean as you'd like people to believe by showing them only one video of the collapse.
Stop fooling yourself, please.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
It depends on your definition of "hunting rifle", I guess. My understanding is that Chicago outlaws "assault weapons" as well; however, I can't find documentation of that anywhere. I guess I didn't mean or want to start a debate about "gun control". I just wanted to say that the government's violation of Constitutional rights isn't restricted to the context of defeating terrorism, but everyone seems to get the most worked up about those scenarios. The ridiculous Supreme Court ruling re: personal property is another example (Kelo v. New London?). But I am sure that has already been debated many times here.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
This seems like a small incremental threat increase given
that the information is already available to anyone who
wants to buy it. Anyone foriegn or domestic regardless
of criminal record can buy data right? That TSA got what
everyone else can access seems a small thing.
What are the greatest threats? Which of these will most likely get you?
National Debt
Trade Inequity
Job Exportation
Oil Dependence / Oil exaustion
Terrorist Attack
Government Intrusion
False Inprisonment
Identity Theft
Neocons
Pinko Liberals
Automated Vote Fraud via Hacked Voting Machines
Contaminated Food or Water
Dumbed down Education
Microsoft World Dominance
I am curious. Which one do you think will actually
make your life "suck" first. Or add one that I
missed.
You can't take the sky from me...
that photo-shopped photobuckets pentagon thingey pic - where's the jet? just a wii bit curious ?
No we didn't. Bush had to get a court ruling to get in the first time and the second time he did not have the majority of the popular vote even if he got the electoral votes.
Bring back Sirius Punk!
The lease holder gave the OK to "pull it".
I didn't know you could do that. Can just any building be "pulled", just like that?
("Silverstein's spokesperson, Dara McQuillan, said in September 2005 that by "pull it" Silverstein was referring to the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building, and confirming that they should evacuate the premises.")
You can't take the sky from me...
I was recently having a discussion about this with the "older generation" of my wifes family (my wife is American , I'm British). One of them is a former marine colonel from the cold war era. It scared the hell out of me to hear them in total support of things like this. I asked the question "Isn't this the exact type of thing you guys fought against?".
The answer basically boiled down to "we must trust what the government says without question". Thats not freedom thats blind stupidity. As said as it may sound, the sooner that generation dies out the sooner things will can begin to heal. That may sound harsh but sadly true. remember we're the ones who are ghoing to be left behind to deal with the cleanup. At this stage the best we can hope is too be able to limit the damage being done.
I don't know about you my fellow frogs, but I'm getting a little hot............
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
"Pull it" is not a term for explosive demolition. No where, no how, no matter how many times the conspiracy theorists say it is (none of them are demolitions experts). The owner of Controlled Demolitions, Inc. has written a short paper about WTC7 (don't have a link at the moment, getting ready to leave for the holiday).
"Pull it" means to literally pull the building over with cables or the like. You don't do that to a 47 story building.
Read this closely: http://911myths.com/html/wtc7_pulled.html
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
You are retarded. Simple as that. Get you head out of you ass and look at the drivel you have been spewing -- it is pathetic that you are in such denial.
"Pull it" is not a term for explosive demolition. No where, no how, no matter how many times the conspiracy theorists say it is (none of them are demolitions experts). The owner of Controlled Demolitions, Inc. has written a short paper about WTC7 (don't have a link at the moment, getting ready to leave for the holiday).
"Pull it" means to literally pull the building over with cables or the like. You don't do that to a 47 story building. Larry Silverstein is not a demolition expert.
He's an old real estate tycoon. You kids and your fancy demolition talk. Why, in my day! Get off my lawn! We had to walk to work in snow, and when you wanted your building pulled down, you said to pull it! I said get off my lawn!
I read your page carefully, it's crap. Their interpretation of "pull it" isn't even the one I quoted from Larry's spin doctor (their definition of "it" is "a unit of firefighters").
That site you linked makes it sound like Larry's referring to live firefighters as inanimate objects, if he was referring to firefighters directly, he would have said "them", not it. For people deconstructing's someone's words, you'd think they'd bother to check what his official interpretation is.
Now, onto the crux of the argument: Buildings do not fall naturally onto their own footprints.
I can explain felled lightpoles (marines with powertools), how do you explain the implosions?
You can't take the sky from me...
The key to it is building 7 at the WTC, the "contractors" that were in all three buildings the weeks previous where the security cameras were turned off and people had to not use certain floors for the still to this day unnamed "work" that was done, and the "dancing israelis" with the video cameras and "moving vans" that police dogs hit on as being previously used to transport explosives, who were quietly arrested by local cops and then re taken by feds and quickly deported without much media coverage. If these situations were truly investigated, along with the amazing coincidence of the DOD running planes smacking into buildings as a "terror exercise" on the same exact day, we might maybe could unravel this.
Unfortunately., the shadow government rot and corruption runs up and down and sideways, inside the government, and outside the government in the mainstream media and big business. That is the harsh truth that the people have to recognize.
What happened on 9-11 was a stealth coup near as I can read it, or more accurately, a further consolidation of a long running stealth coup.. I don't know yet what total involvement various PNAC players had in the actual hijacking, or even if there was a hijacking as we know it or remote controlled planes were used, but they are the ones who ordered Norad to stand down and not follow normal procedure with hijacked planes, and I defy any government paid shill (yes we know you get paid to troll message boards, you sould be ashamed of yourselves) or neocon regimist supporter to explain how osama could have arranged that little bit of reality. Go ahead and explain how osma got the procedures in place when hijacking was reported to change. How exactly did he do that? He got on his satellite phone and called up norad and told them to not intercept those planes? Orly? He called all the air traffic control towers and told them to ignore those blips on the screen because they were part of an "exercise"? Orly?
Somehow, I find that rather hard to swallow, but you must swallow that if you want to believe the government's official fairy tale of how the events went down that way on that day.
There are also numerous whistleblower governmental insiders, cops, soldiers and others, who were time after time ordered to STOP looking at linkages with terrorists at a certain point where the next step looked squarely at caucasian people in suits, either black suits with ties or fancier suits with ribbons and medals. Ordered to shut up and go away and stop talking about it, or face serious repercussions. That is a serious clue. This is 2006 and some of those lawsuits are still not resolved, obfuscation and delay, totally from governmental orders, is what is happening there. Again, there is no way osama could have ordered any of that. No possible way in hell could that occur. I don't know how much more smoking gun evidence is needed for anyone to just stop believing the fairy tale at their proclaimed face value. It is *ludicrous*, beyond my ability to comprehend why anyone would believe that nonsense promulgated by known liars.
In other words, one would have to be either a complete fascist supporter or a total retard, one or the other or most likely both, to not recognize that 9-11 was an inside job at least at some seriously powerful levels. There is more than enough for real investigations beyond the 9-11 whitewash report, which is just this generation's version of the warren commission whitewash report.
The implications of some governmental and big business powerful insiders being in on it are simply enormous, because that would require a radical emergency restructuring of government by the people, in the full historical sense.
I do not think at this time there are enough true patriots (people who would put nation over personal safety and paycheck) or honest people (people who can look at what data is available and arrve at a 2+2=4 solution) either inside government or inside either of the two main strea
No, it's the sheeple who see it as a large entity attacking our country.
Now, it may have become that because of our actions since then, but when it happened it was a small, isolated group of crazies.
Whether that group of crazies was religious fanatics in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan or Washington, we will likely never know. I suspect it was most likely simply a happy accident for the religious fanatics in Washington.
How about, we shouldn't worry about terrorism - because if we don't get scared, terrorism has FAILED.
The response should have been an investigation, and a change in hijacker handling policy (previous policy was to just give them what they wanted) and a "cockpit door stays locked at all times" policy. And then we should have started flying again the next week, with EXACTLY the same airport security as before.
Everything that was done by the government was instead calculated to terrorize the population, as a power grab.
Like all government assurances, this is just lip service. You notice that no one is going to prison, no sanctions have been issued, etc.
You might sound a bit more credible if you simply read the constitution while not thinking so concretely, the quote from the second amendment is:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Meaning the right to bear arms is granted to a well regulated militia, not to private citizens. This has been discussed for ages, but gun fanatics like you will continue to say, "... see, Daddy told me I could do it, waaaa!" It's an abomination that private citizens are allowed to own such weapons with the sole purpose of murder.
And you might sound a little less like a coward if you simply read the section of the Illinois state constitution that was linked to (remove the last slash), and scrolled on down to "Right to Bear Arms."
To be fair, banning AK-47s is somewhat related to preventing terrorism.
Based on what? Name one terrorist incident that involved AK47s.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
To be fair, banning AK-47s is somewhat related to preventing terrorism.
Based on what? Name one terrorist incident that involved AK47s.
You're kidding? Right? You can't possibly be this ignorant.learn something
You can't take the sky from me...
9/11 was not a person murdering another person, you frame this as if it were a typical crime we should pursue through our court system. When in reality it was an extremely large entity attacking our country, not just singular persons.
Previous terrorist attacks have been handled through criminal courts. Including those in the US, including those involving paramilitary terrorists.
I can't speak to the poster's ignorance level; however, terrorists generally don't bother with small arms in this country because it takes too much time to inflict a high level of damage with them. By the time you'd kill a few dozen people, if you could even kill that many, you'd be dead yourself. The death ceiling for explosives is much higher.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
Pointless that is, to attempt convincing conspiracy theorists with facts.
A review of the posts in this string makes that abundantly clear.
For a dispassionate, rational, fact-based review of the 9-11 events
refer to SKEPTIC magazine, vol 12, No. 4, 2006.
www.skeptic.com has an overview of the issure's contents,
but alas only the dead tree version has the details.
Not that conspiracy buffs will ever let facts get in the way
of conjecture and accusation.
For them, the only thing worse than some malevolent force
pulling the strings, is the thought that there are no strings
holding their make-believe tin-hat world together.
An evil enemy they can handle, but not uncertainty or ambiguity.
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
When the movement is as large and concerted as it is, you cannot simply frame it as a typical crime
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Al Queda was a large organization?
Of course you don't, because it never was. That was another lie fed to you that you lapped because you didn't have the integrity to do any research and blindly swallowed the story the administration was selling. Hell, they've lied about just about everything else, so what makes you so completely out of touch with reality as to suppose they were telling the truth about that?
You may lie to yourself, but the rest of us see (save for the sheep).
You are one of the sheep you fucking nitwit.
You're the one spouting unsupportable nonsense in order to justify destroying the US constitution.
When you make decisions based solely upon fear that is fed to you, you prove yourself to be a coward.
This is the home of the brave, Sparky. You don't belong here. You're a fucking liability to our liberty.
What, so banning ak47s and glocks will keep them out of the hands of terrorists? You can't be that stupid. Banning all guns will only make it difficult for normal people to possess them while making any attacker's job easier. Oh, and you still haven't named any terrorist incidents that involve ak47s (I want something in the USA).
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
A "data flow map"? You mean, like a data flow diagram, a pretty standard diagram in software engineering taught to CS students in senior-level undergrad systems-design courses?
That such a diagram apparently *doesn't* exist should be worrisome.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp ?ID=3321
Old news. Do try to keep up.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
>A free society is vulnerable in ways that a police state is not, but accepting that vulnerability is part and parcel of freedom.
Police states kill their citizens by the thousands or millions every year. Free societies are safer than enslaved societies. If you seek security, don't swallow a dictator's promise to provide it.
That video was about as convincing as the CG "chemical weapons" trucks that Colin Powell showed to the U.N. to get support for invading Iraq.
Could they have made one showing Martians attacking the pentagon too? You know, it knocks over some telephone poles before it starts firing Martian death-rays into the building without damaging the lawn.
From the write-up and the article, it is clear, that the beef we have with the system is its invasion of our privacy. That is not the meaning given to the term (in)secure in the context.
Does the system have flaws, that could allow a terrorist to bypass it? That would've made it "insecure"...
But, I guess, "Secure Flight System proven too invasive" just is not as good a sound-bite...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
are using up all their mod points now.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Explain me one thing:
Why is that whenever any of our administrations fears an attack or has been attacked by an enemy (internal/external), our hard won freedoms are the FIRST to disappear ?
Is it because the Govt. fears US more than our enemies?
Is it that the Govt. considers US as threats more than enemies?
is it that the Govt. feels the populace must be stripped of their rights under the guise of protecting the same rights?
Fighing a war for peace is like fucking for viriginity.
Why can't our rights be EXPANDED during such emergenices so that the citizens could contribute more and appreciate the freedom they like.
Tell me why.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Look, all of this is further evidence, if any was needed, that it is possible for the government to be simultaneously brutal and incompetent. Keep in mind that the rationale for the Bush junta's continuing use of draconian methods is that the additional heavyhandedness is needed so that they can be more effective in fighting terrorism. But they have repeatedly demonstrated that they're capable of extreme repression even when it has no effect on terrorism, or even promotes it.
All that these screening programs demonstrate is that the TSA is either ignorant of the consequences of false positives in statistically-based methods of detection, or they know the consequences and just don't care. Here's a thought experiment. Consider a conservative estimate of the number of passenger flights in the USA (635 million domestic only in 2005, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics), and assume that 100 of those involve terrorists with the intention and capability of taking down a flight. Now let's say that the test is unbelievably sensitive, and can correctly pick 90% of those terrorists out of the general population. Let's also assume that the test is far better than it's likely to be in protecting the innocent, and only throws a false positive (falsely identifies an innocent person as a terrorist) in 1% of the cases.
In that case, Bayes' theorem shows that the odds that a person flagged as a potential terrorist by the screening is actually a terrorist is slightly less than 1/72000.
And remember, in the real world, the signal/noise ratio is likely to be even worse.
So unless the bad guys are singularly inept, a kind way of stating the conclusion is that the screening isn't helping you all that much.
Based on this dismal calculation, a more correct course of action would be to invest heavily in human intelligence and to shitcan the snooping programs. It might also be wise to round up the idiots who thought of this in the first place and reassign them to work that's more likely to save American lives, such as patching up potholes on the interstates. Assuming, that is, that they can be trained to push hot asphalt into holes.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
The News.com piece makes it clear the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice
I'm as cynical as the next Slashdotter, but I find that conclusion a bit paranoid. I find it at least as likely that somebody or other mandated that the report be finished by end-of-year, and in typical bureaucratic fashion, it was finished last minute, right before somebody went on leave for the holidays.
Aside from that, the report was pretty much just a reiteration of what everybody already knew. Old news. Maybe they didn't want to bring it back in the spotlight, but good luck getting news agencies to report or update a story older than 24 hours anyway, let alone a year.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
But what you can't explain is the lack of tell-tale signs that accompany a controlled demolition: rapid and successive flashes and explosions. None of these were reported on that day. Yes, some people heard what sounded like an explosion here or there, but this isn't Hollywood, kid. You can't bring a building with one or two well-placed explosives (especially ones that no one can see).
Overly simplistic, much like the mind it came from no doubt. You fail to take into account the hundreds of people traveling on the highway that morning, not to mention the hundreds of others that came soon afterwards. Why did they see nothing like you describe?
You've also ignored the generator which I pointed out. Weak.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
You might have a better argument if your understanding of the english language and US history was improved.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" is a what is known as a clause. It is not a limiting clause but a justifying one. That means that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is not limited to the needs of a well regulated militia. That said, even if I was to accept your assertion that it applies only to the militia, I have news for you. At the time the 2A was written, the militia was all able bodied males aged 17 and up. Today, it is all able bodied males aged 18 and up.
Of course, I don't subscribe to the idea that the 2A covers the right of a militia. It quite clearly states that it is the right of the people. And it is those same people that are explicitly vested rights in the first, fourth, fifth, ninth, and tenth amendments.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
Important correction: Lincoln's interests were initially to preserve the Union, period. The original draft of the 13th Amendment, or what would have become the 13th Amendment, would have preserved slavery forever. Original text:
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
During Lincoln's first inaugural address, he expressed his support for the amendment. Southern slave owners objected because they not only wanted to continue to keep slaves, but also to expand the territory in which slavery was legal. Later, near the END of the Civil War / War Between the States, Lincoln had a change of heart and genuinely believed he was fighting a moral war against slavery, but that is NOT the reason the war began.
While slavery was a despicable institution, I believe that Lincoln in fact did a disservice to black Americans by abolishing it by force; Brazil was the last holdout for slavery, and Brazil still abolished slavery before 1900. If the American South had been left alone, slavery would have died out on its own, without the cost of millions of lives (disproportionately Confederate lives). But how was Abolition detrimental to US blacks? Because they bore the brunt of the resentment from Southerners during Reconstruction. If Abolition had resulted more organically, like the Civil Rights movement, I think blacks would have had more respect and less discrimination. The fact that abolition was imposed by a hostile (to the South) government, and that those from the winning side (the Union) profited so handsomely during Reconstruction, diluted any moral argument against slavery.
This is all completely speculative, of course. Would life have been better for blacks if slavery had ended 30 years later, in a different manner? Would the suffering of slaves during that 30 year period be justified by the gains of future generations of black Americans? No one can say for sure. Draw your own conclusions, but don't think Lincoln's motives were pure or that he ever intended to be a "Liberator."
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
You might find this comment (by me) interesting. Just pointing it out because I'm a couple days late to this discussion.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
But what you can't explain is the lack of tell-tale signs that accompany a controlled demolition: rapid and successive flashes and explosions. [...] Overly simplistic, much like the mind it came from no doubt. So, you're claiming that buildings DO naturally fall down on their own footprints, I see.
What color is the sky on your world?
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...