Slashdot Mirror
Justice Department's Bio-terror Mistake
destinyland writes "University professor and artist Steve Kurtz publicizes the history of chemical weapons with performance art pieces. The day his wife died of a heart attack, 911 responders mistook his scientific equipment for bioterrorism supplies. After he was detained for 22 hours, Homeland Security cordoned off his block, and a search was performed on his house in hazmat suits, they found nothing. Now they're prosecuting him for "mail fraud" for the way he obtained $256 of harmless bacteria."
Incidents like this and other such just prove that terror(ists) are winning. Post 9/11, everybody is still in panic.
What was in the package and what was claimed to have been in the package are identical... that's not fraud.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Our gov't reminds me of my little brother. Well not so little anymore, but he still accuses me of cheating every time I win a game. We need more mature people in there!
If they can't charge you under the original accusation, they'll simply find something they CAN charge you with, to save face.
Heavens forbid they apologize for putting him through hell. Oh no, can't have that. That would be a sign of weakness.
"Land of the free" seems a bit passe.
How about:
"We're shitscared!"
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I recognize the merit in, when a legal search is conducted, allowing the use of truly coincidental material found to charge someone with a crime. So long as the search was legal and reasonable. (Drumming up happens too much, of course.) That being said, this smacks heavily of abuse of the law, in a way related to the "Hoax device" BS about the Breadboard incident a few days ago: prosecutors or cops seeking to charge someone in order to justify the fact that they've detained the person, looking for a crime to charge a particular person with rather than observing a crime and charging the person responsible for it.
IANAL, but oughtn't that to be illegal?
Dear Mr. Kurtz,
Our bad!
Sincerely,
The Department of Homeland Security
The game.
As per the main story, the difference between 'Harmless' bacteria and deadly ones is pretty darn slim and hard to tell if you're not an expert in the field. This isn't the same as most other situations as it's organic, and organic things are complex, and complex things are hard to examine to see if they're dangerous or not. They shouldn't have been so harsh on him, or so overzealous in the raid, but I don't see any problems with them testing the stuff. He admits that he was recreating germ warfare experiments from the 50s using different bacteria. He says the bacteria isn't harmful, but his rig is similar to one used on extremely harmful ones. So...we should just trust him that the bacteria aren't dangerous? Circumstantial evidence was heavily on the government's side here, anyone preparing to recreate germ warfare experiments should be looked at closely, even if they claim to be using harmless bacteria.
Now again, they should not have handled it the way they did. They should have been a lot nicer and lest gung ho about the whole situation, but they should have, and did, handle the situation, and that's good.
As for the Mail Fraud charge...I wonder what the story behind that is. That I can see in the article he never denies that he committed fraud, nor confirms it, so it seems entirely possible that they happened across this and decided to prosecute him for it, and it's also possible that they're just trying to hit him with something to make it look like they accomplished something. There's not enough info to really tell...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Like three years old.
HAD
What happened to just admitting they overreacted and were WRONG? The recent MIT student in Boston with a stupid breadboard and now this. I am not surprised that many of my colleagues in academia are moving out of the US to Europe of East Asia to continue their work. As an American, is it wrong for me to equate this action as the start of the end of the hegemony of the United States?
when you can't admit that you overreacted.
They have to move forward in an attempt to stave off lawsuits.
This is known as the "Boston" response.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Remember when we used to make fun of Soviet Russia? Well, in NeoCon America, Soviet Russia makes fun of you!
And unfortunately, it's still very very ongoing. The mail fraud charges are new, IIRC.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I suppose if we can't invade the right country, we're not likely to invade the right house.
I feel like I live in a very strange place.
but until he actually harms someone, he should be free to do whatever the hell he likes
It is a crazy opinion, and it has nothing to do with the case.
So I should be able to breed anthrax in my home, just because I love growing anthrax bacteria?
How about if I'm just curious to know if I'm able to weaponize anthrax spores into a dry powder, so I just do it?
On a more everyday note, I guess it's OK for husbands to hold up a gun and threaten to kill their wife and kids if she leaves him, as long as in his mind he knows it's just a big joke.
Or what about if he just shoots and misses her? No harm, no foul, right?
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The tinkerer's spirit was a big part of what made this country great. Now, if you're an electronics or chemistry hobbyist, people think you're a bombmaker; if you build and fly model rockets, you're suspected of trying to produce some kind of missile; if you've got a microscope and some test tubes, you're assumed to be manufacturing anthrax.
When perfectly innocuous activities make people go totally apeshit with suspicion of their neighbors, the terrorists win.
What really grinds my gears, though, is how common sense goes right out the fucking window... if this guy had anything to hide, why would he have allowed the authorities to see it? If he was up to no good, he'd have dragged his wife's body into the yard and told them she keeled over tending to the garden or something, and never let the EMTs or whoever in the damn house. Failing that, he'd at least have taken the time to hide the dodgy stuff first before making the call-- "I was taking a nap, and when I woke up, she was dead!"
No. Instead, they're thinking, "Wow, what a lucky break, this terrorist invited us in to see all his incriminating terrorist supplies! Homeland Security FTW!"
Fucking morons.
And therein lies the story. They're still at it three years later. Riveting, no. But it is newsworthy when the government seems to abuse its' power and decides to continue to do so for years rather than admit to being wrong. Note that I said newsworthy, but not new.
From the first line of the linked article - "On May 11, 2004, 911 received a call from SUNY Buffalo University professor and artist Steve Kurtz reporting the death of Kurtz's wife Hope from heart failure."
Any artist whose art can be mistaken for a biological weapon ought to be detained imho. What was so bad about paintings and sculptures of people and nature that they had to be completely abandoned by modern artists in favor of making mostly stuff that a scrap yard would turn down as too hideous.
Back on topic, the mail fraud charge really smells of them trying to find something, anything to charge him with to justify all the damage they did to the guy. Hope he has a good lawyer because if the facts are as they seem from a casual reading of the article (a big IF) he might have a good case for a lawsuit.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
This is the beginning of the crack down. The feds are now in control. It was 1 thing for EMS to report it, but a whole nother thing when DHS charged the man.
This is indicative of our legal/law enforcement mindset (or what it's becoming) in our society. I am a staunch (and by staunch I mean I loath the current Rep party and must consider myself an independant) conservative. Anyway, some of you might have read a while back that a group of Hash runners (as in the Hash House Harriers running club) were arrested for marking their urban trail with flour. Why? Someone saw the 'white powder' on the ground and of course assumed that it was a terrorist bio-weapon attack of some sort. The HAZMAT guys were sent. The flour was discovered to be just that. The problem is, once the authorities got their teeth in this, they wouldn't let go. Rather than chuckle and go their merry way, they charged the 'offenders' with Breach of the Peace in the First Degree...a Class D felony. This whole story is known as the Hamburger Hash Affair. To contrast this, I have spent the last year and a half living in a very out of the way part of the middle east. Americans (of which I am one) are not liked here of course. One day while on a hash run, myself and the other Hare were laying track (using flour) and the local police observed us in action. They IMMEDIATELY stopped us and began rather intense questioning. Once we explained what we were doing and showed them it was okay by tasting the flour, they let us go and even wished us luck. Somehow it seems like a little role reversal here. We seem (as a society) to have adopted the "bust'em for somethin'" mentality. I don't advocate letting people get away with crimes, but this is getting ridiculous.
At first I didn't believe him, but after reading this story, I'm not so sure.
Is it really freedom if the authorities can simply switch charges against you when their primary charge doesn't work out? Like this terrorisms converted to mail fraud? Or arresting someone for resisting arrest? Keep in mind, that this is what is purposely being exported to the rest of the world.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Why would you pay $256 for bacteria? Just buy $1 worth and let each bacterium divide eight times.
Do it again and you've got $65,536 worth of bacteria which is serious money.
Hmm, there must be something in the water in Boston that causes the people to go nuts - maybe it is tea leaves...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
All your bacteria are belong to us?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Egg hatcher at a farm is not the problem. But if someone finds an urban apartment stuffed with egg hatchers, Petri dishes, vacuum pumps, and high-speed milling equipment along with some photocopied manuals in Arabic, I would have that observer drop a dime on you as fast as it falls...
And so was this arts professor SOL: Imagine YOU were the (non-specialist) rescuer that saw a woman go down and die in a house full of makeshift but specialized microbiological equipment whose owner is jittery to the max, and claims to be an artist, and cannot describe the equipment's purpose?
Same for the idiot girl wearing the LEDs: handling the bricks of modelling clay out at an airport is not what a blinkenlights dork normally does. Not after the two planes blew up because of women carrying "modelling clay" a few years ago.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Mail fraud?? Couldn't they just drop a bag full of dope in his office like they used to in the old days.
We're from the government and we're here to help!
-- The sad thing is they butcher the government programs make them worse than having nothing... then argue that they should be disbanded because they don't work. FEMA was a fantastic agency under Clinton, on the ball and everything, they weren't posting guards to prevent help from getting to people needing help.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
It is sad to watch (from a distance) a land of liberty and freedom decay into a society that outcasts non-conformists. You are destined to all be wearing brown and driving yugos very shortly.
Do we need a war to wake people up?
Yes, we need a war. A civil war.
A civil war that puts a bullet in the brain of every single politician. Except that there's nothing in there, so better take a leaf from the French and make it the guillotine.
What happened to the politicians that actually worked *for* the country and the people, instead of for themselves? Long gone.
Yes, we need a war, against the "leaders" who have turned against us.
And shit for brains.
Do you wonder why Americans and the "free world" are threatened with terrorist activity? I mean it obviously couldn't have anything to do with how you select arbitrary groups of people around the world, demonize them to make it appear moraly okay to rob them, persecute, terrorise them and kill them to further your interests?
Could it be that so many of your most vocal and prominant figures are so obviously either corrupt or stupid? Or the fact that you insist on challenging other nations for their transgressions with regard to international law and being the world's police force while your own agencies completely disregard the rule of law, as this case highlights?
No, it's probably because every one else is jealous of your freedom.
Big fucking rant here, but I am so sick of seeing absolute shit like that re-inforcing propaganda on a site that is supposed to be a bit more intelligent than the usual fare. Terrorist manuals are avaliable in many languages. Copies of the SAS handbook, anarchist cookbook, etc are out there and they are not in arabic.
I personally feel safer about Iran having a nuclear program than I do about the US having one. How many wars have Iran started in the last 50 years? How about the United States? In those wars, which nation has used WMDs? Which nation has supplied more WMDs to other nations to fight proxy wars? Which nation has taken a decade to go from cooperation to war with at least two former allies?
Sure, Iran has threatened Isreal, but Isreal is a state born from terrorism with a total lack of regard for international law. It is a state that continues to commit human rights abuses on the population it has displaced through the theft of land. It has developed nuclear weapons, refused to sign the NNPT and given it's total disregard for the humanity of any nation around it, and the fact that Iran supports the Palestinian people, I think it is much more likely that Isreal will be the agressor in any nuclear exchange in the middle East. I support Irans nuclear program if for no other reason than to keep Isreal in check.
Your own government commits human rights abuses and supports foreign governments that commit human rights abuses. The most extreme abuses are of course reserved for non citizens, but I believe in the rule of law and a crime is a crime. Please fuck off with your propaganda, it insults my intelligence. And don't come back with that fucking US centric democrat voting liberal shit. I don't understand your political divisions and I don't want to. My opinions are my opinions, this post is predominantly fact.
Sincerest apologies to any intelligent americans who can see through the propaganda but feel insulted by the strong language in this rant.
I don't therefore I'm not.
The website for the defense From the site: "We anticipate going to trial in the Summer of 2008, if not sooner. Your support is needed more than ever." and "We must raise at least $90,000 in the next 10 months to defeat the DoJ's abuse of power in this precedent-setting case!" You can go here to donate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-parker22sep22,0,1326069,full.story?coll=la-home-commentary
From OJ's [if] I Did It: p 132:
Both he and Nicole were lying in giant pools of blood. I had never seen so much blood in my life. . . . I again looked down at myself, at my blood-soaked clothes, and noticed the knife in my hand. The knife was covered in blood, as were my hand and wrist and half of my right forearm.
Another passage from page 132:
Now I was standing in Nicole's courtyard, in the dark, listening to the loud, rhythmic, accelerated beating of my own heart. I put my left hand to my heart and my shirt felt strangely wet. . . . The whole front of me was covered in blood. . .
Nowhere does he say "if" he was standing there, or "if" his hands and knife were drenched in blood, or "if" two innocent people lay dead before him.
So, that's OJ's side of the story.....let's hope terrorists don't get real good lawyers....hey, if Phil Spector can get a 10-2 mistrial, Robert Blake can walk, and OJ can go to Vegas to Stay in Vegas, Osama could get off, and, get a settlement for cash as well--with a good lawyer.
is how when things like this happen, we curse under our breath and then do nothing. By action, the vast majority of us are completely apathetic to the government, the police or any other powers that be, in abusing their powers.
This isn't about abuse of power. This is about citizen apathy.
Just to put this out there again:
In the OJ Simpson murder case the LAPD got caught trying to frame a guilty man. In the circumstances of that case, the jury had no choice but to turn him loose. Tampering with evidence is a big no-no in our criminal justice system. If they'd played it clean, they'd have convicted him easily. But all the important evidence was tainted. mishandled or planted.
And there's a non-zero chance that AC Cowlings did it and OJ drove him around, but I don't think so.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I propose a new tag: Bostoned
Or Bostonned. You know, for stories where a ridiculous overreaction occurs and the authorities act not as if they've made a mistake, but the innocent party has done something, "we're just not sure what we can charge him with."
Land of the Free? Home of the Brave?
> The both end in 'd'. Get off my back. Christ.
...
Wow, and here I thought rhyming had something to do with they way words sounded.
Oh, wait, my mistake. You're trying to make a clever point about never admitting one's mistakes, right?
Right?
Successful terror based groups are everywhere and they have sleeper agents in waiting at anytime ready to strike but you shouldn't be terribly bothered with that. The reason being is that with good training; they'll never be detected by regular people. What regular "Joe's" and "Joan's" should be concernend with is the leadership they are being lead by NOW! Does it represent them? Does it acknowledge their needs? Is it proactive in response to those needs? Does it serve the greater good aswell as the lesser? All of these things have NOT been carried out by the Bush Administration! In any event, stop thinking of the problems that come from abroad. Look at your homeland and see what needs to changed here and just do it! A true terroist is sitting in the Oval Office deciding if he wants fluff,jelly, or both on his peanut butter sandwhich. You know? The tough decisions.
"Those who would sell a little liberty for a little security will lose both and deserve neither."
Every time I get patted down in an airport and my bottle of drink taken off of me I realize that these new broad spectrum anti-terrorism laws are not designed to stop terror. They are there so strip the remaining semblances of liberty we have left to consolidate the power base of the governments that control the western world. In the US ordinary every day people are being charged with new crimes like "terroristic threatening".
We welcomed increased power against terrorists, we helped the laws be written, and now they are being turned directly back on us. How can the law of our own nations possible affect the laws of another nation that harbors terrorism? How can introducing new powers over ourselves possibly enable the governments to enforce those powers on nations outside of their jurisdiction?
And how many tens of thousands of tax dollars were spent prosecuting and further investigating this guy for his $250 samples in those three years, even after they realized what he possessed was harmless?
(yeah, I know, it's old, but it needed to be said!)
HEX offender mugshot ID: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
... they were free to do whatever they liked, mostly, right up until they thought the government was sniffing around too much. Unfortunately for Japan, whatever they liked was "lets set up a full-scale chemical and biological warfare factory, and then use it to poison the magistrates investigating us so we can get back to causing the Apocalypse". Luckily for Japan, they were worse weapons engineers than they were chemists and the most of the sarin gas they whipped up, then released on the Tokyo subway system, stayed contained. So they only ended up killing a handful of people, many of them from stress-induced shock after the news got out that there was a lethal nerve agent on the subway they had taken this morning.
But hey, up until about thirty seconds after they punctured the boxes carrying the sarin on the subway, their little chemistry experiment hadn't hurt anybody! Harmless eccentrics, Japan has plenty of those, why would you pick on them? *
* Yeah, I know, I know, technically they had a few borderline effectual incidents before that, but it wasn't enough to bring down the hammer yet, so for the purposes of illustration we'll write those off as "Nobody got hurt" even though that is factually inaccurate. Nowadays, if you're a crazy apocalyptic nutjob and you make a $300 million chemical weapons plant in downtown Tokyo, the authorities will presumably give you the Nth degree on what you want to do with your chemical weapons. And you know? I am pretty freaking OK with that. Similarly, I am pretty freaking OK with the cops saying "Excuse me, sir, that over there on your kitchen table resembles, to my semi-trained eye, a functioning biological warfare experiment. You'll pardon my curiosity, but I'm going to have to ask you some questions about it".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Remember Whitewater? Six or seven years of fruitless investigation against the Clintons? Found nothing on them? As soon as they found *something*, albeit completely unrelated to the original investigation, they went after President Clinton with a vengeance.
This modus operandi is called "win at any cost."
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Op is a fucking cunt.
"If our artist friend lied in order to trick the ATCC into thinking that he worked for a university that had biological facilities then that seems like mail fraud to me."
When I was in college many years ago, I wrote my parents to tell them I was doing well in nuclear physics. I got a "D". My parents had warned me repeatedly not to lie to them, and I did. Via mail.
I guess the FBI will come knocking pretty soon...
You do know the ATCC is not a government organization, nor was his statement a sworn statement, correct?
This is the reason why they are still trying to jail this person:
"Finally, we were a preparing project on germ warfare and the theater of the absurd."
Can't have people saying that the terra threat responses are absurd!
All hackers are terrorist scum!
am glad that the US and World have been made safer by the removal of this terror threat.
Every day I get up I give thanks to God and Bush that I live in this great nation, where anyone who doesn't behave the way God and the Republican party intended is hauled away to have their balls burnt off.
Long Live the Glorious Union of States!
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
The insidious thing about counterterror efforts is the slow but steady chilling effect they are having on humor and eccentric self-expression.
Twenty-five years ago I was talking to a friend about a book I'd been reading about the Trinity atomic bomb tests. Naturally I kept saying "atomic bomb." As we happened to be in an airport at the time, and happened to be approaching security, he started to look increasingly nervous and finally said something. He was right, of course, but what's the effect?
The effect is that I am now self-conscious about what I talk about in security checkpoints... and airports in general (after all, they're monitoring book titles)... and public places in general. I obviously don't talk seriously about bombs, and by extension I certainly mustn't joke about bombs, and of course the safest thing is not to joke at all.
I'm not going to wear satirical political T-shirts at public events where Bush is speaking... in fact maybe it's just prudent not to wear satirical T-shirts at all.
I've been delighted by the emergence of cheap "blinkies," those little battery-powered LED flashers that use strong magnets and attach to clothing, earlobes, etc. Maybe it would be fun to be slightly outrageous and wear some of those just for the heck of it on New Years' Day? No, after the Boston "mooninite" scare and the MIT student who got into trouble the other day, it's probably best not to wear any blinking lights in public.
Don't do anything to tweak public officials. Since you're not sure what will tweak them, best to just shut up and behave compliantly.
Conform. Don't stand out. Wear "normal" clothing. Don't act in any way that calls attention to yourself. Don't read books in public with political or religious titles (except the Bible, of course). Play it safe. Don't joke.
In fact, best not to smile.
Just like Moscow in the days of the Soviet Union.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
FWIW the guy was a guest lecturer in a class I had and he was a harmless geek (and yes that is a compliment, this is
"Whats next, Santa Claus is real? How about the Easter Bunny?"
How about "Saddam was behind 9/11" (chuckle, chuckle)
Oh, sorry, I got that wrong didn't I? That's right, it was "Ahmedinejad behind 9/11".
That's much better.
check the dirt in any farmyard that's had cattle in the last 75 years. It's not really all that hard to cultivate - isolation is a bit trickier. The bitch is weaponizing it. It's pretty much the same with almost all of the bacterial agents - they're little nasties that we live with every day - just concentrated enough to overwhelm your immune system.
At least I warned you. But, well, have you ever taken so long to read an article and then travel the piles of links and search for more information and go off on strange tangents that when you were done you didn't have anything to actually contribute to the conversation that hadn't already been said but had to say something just because you'd spent so much time researching it? Worse? It was now so late that surely a billion people have already responded?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Cops see everyone as guilty--of what they don't know until they start digging--but guilty nevertheless. Why else do you think the Police keep pushing for ever more invasive search rights to the public's homes and personal property? They know if they could just search one more place they'd get you....
This defines why illegal wiretapping and other invasive procedures should be done away with. A perfectly innocent person who is taken in by police on mistaken charges, then gets some petty mail fraud charge thrown at him. All after his wife's death. Unless we can agree upon what is right and wrong and not have people just make things up as they go, stay out of my business, because I'm guessing sneezing is going to be a felony soon enough.
The reason why it's still dragging on is this:
The Feds look stupid. REALLY STUPID. They've spent a small fortune prosecuting Kurtz, and (on one hand) they don't want to see their investment crap out. On the other hand, they realise they don't really have anything on him. So what do you do?
The same thing the retards in the white house are doing: running out the clock so they can dump the mess on someone else. Kurtz's persecution is political, not legal.
Basically, there are only 2 ways the Democrats can lose the White House in 08 - keep rolling over on Iraq and nominate Hillary. If they grow a spine and nominate someone worthwhile (say, Edwards or Richardson), the Republicans can't win. No way. So, it seems like the Dems are fixing to lose 08, but that's still part of the plan...
Basically, if the Dems win in 08, the Feds will likely drop the case, VERY quietly. On a Friday afternoon around 5pm in the summer of 09.
If the Thugs win, then it depends on which Thug - if its some raving asshat like Guiliani or Tancredo or Huckabee, then Kurtz will go to trial in the summer of 09 and pay a $2000 fine and spend a month of Saturdays picking up trash on the streets of Buffalo. If the Thugs nominate someone rational, then they'll probably be willing to settle out of court, where he pleads guilty to some misdemeanor charge, pays a $500 fine and walks.
but basically, I don't think the present regime can stand this particular case during an election season, so it's probably going to go nowhere until Nov 5, 2008.
It's what happens when you live under fascism - especially an incomplete fascism like the corporatist regime in the USA.
RS (expat)
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is not a case of society giving up any rights. You don't have the right to be above suspicion in you wifes suspicious death. You also don't have the right to be a moron with impunity.
Anyone see that cell phone add where a bunch of people doing different stuff all get an IM and rush off to some super market. They all act very suspicious and then do a cart race in the middle of the store. I think that ad should have a gun shot at the end. I know that will strike some of you as odd or bad, but what a stupid thing to advertise. "Use our products and scare the jeebus out of old people at a supermarket", seems to be an odd message.
I could see the defense lawyer now, "There was a cart coming at high speed down a narrow isle and lots of screaming... my client was afraid for their life and had no chance to withdraw from the situation." That's self-defense, pure and simple.
Same thing with the MIT chick and her play-dough performance art. I would mourn the death of a person in these situations, but I would still find the person responsible 'not guilty'.
They were just using simulators to fly into buildings perfectly harmless it was only a computer simulation....nothing that anybody would really do.
How else do you expect us to get tax cuts passed through Congress?
This fear thing comes from the top. The politicians use it to get you to vote for them, so that they can pass ridiculous measures helping their buddies. The cops aren't really the driving force, they're just caught up in the wave of panic.
and its use, without fear of retribution.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If you're really wealthy,
you don't fly on a common carrier airline;
you don't get into those TSA "criminal parade" line ups;
you use a different airport, different roads to and from those airports
and aren't inconvenienced by all of this crap.
The reason the airlines still do their own security, instead of a federal agency, is because private air transport doesn't want to be subject to all of these 'rules and regs'.
Wake up. If you're rich, you don't have to put up with any of this plebian crap. (Can you even think of anyone telling Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to take of their shoes before walking through the detector?)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I can't, and it really, really pains me because I love telling stories about jerk cops.
However, I've been stopped--each time with good reasons--twice in the middle of the night in the Pentagon parking lot (having an M16 at your window at 3AM is great fun) and a half dozen times within three blocks of the U.S. Capitol building and gotten nothing but warnings. On one of those occasions, in addition to the original offense (blowing through a red light in a screwy intersection), I had out-of-state dead tags (long story). I didn't get a ticket for either. He just said, "look, garage the car and don't let me see it again until it's current."
Maybe it's a strange irony that despite the severely ramped-up security culture around here, they have a sense that they really have much better things to look out for, rather than turning every conceivable thing into that bogeyman for the sake of feeling important.
Good to see the "PATRIOT" Act, etc being put to good use!
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
The security theatre that goes on in American airports these days bothers me a lot less than changes in surveillance laws, frankly.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Anonymous Coward writes
"Notoriuos homosexual and slam poetry enthusiest Rob Malda publicizes the history of his stupidity and refusal to change topicus.gif to an image of the U.S. flag with the correct number of stripes with performance art pieces. The day his gay lover died of a heart attack, 911 responders mistook his scientific equipment for stripe-removal supplies. After he was detained for 22 hours, Homeland Security cordoned off his block, and a search was performed on his house in hazmat suits, they found nothing. Now they're prosecuting him for "stripe fraud" for the way he obtained $256 of flag stripes."
It's not legal fraud. It's not mail fraud.
You're stretching definitions to try to prove you're right. I'd rather have a serious discussion about the gross abuse of government/police power.
but until he actually harms someone, he should be free to do whatever the hell he likes.
Sorry, it is a crazy opinion.
Murder-for-hire conspiracies, egregious drunk driving, germ-warfare experiments in your garage. They haven't harmed anyone YET, but do you really think that as a society we shouldn't try to stop imminent harm, on the basis that it hasn't actually happened yet?
Follow the proto-criminal and arrest him after the murder, after the automobile manslaughter, after the smallpox outbreak? "But you could have stopped it! Why didn't you?" "Well, he was free to pursue his willfully reckless behavior that any reasonable person would know would harm other people in the future, but that harm hadn't happened yet, so we couldn't. Sorry. We only arrest people, we don't prevent crime."
I'm certainly not suggesting 'Minority Report'-style pre-crime police action, but as stupid humans show everyday, the threat of post-hoc arrest is not enough to prevent behavior that we as a society decide is not allowed.
People do harmful things. People PLAN to do harmful things. People PLAN to do things to which any reasonable person would say "Are you an idiot?", and then they do those things, and then those things harm others. Where would you stop the chain? Or would you?
Where that line is, is very gray. And subjective, to the individual and to society. Intent is hard to prove, as it the likelihood of harm (in some corner cases, like this one).
But there is a line, and it is well before "until he actually harms someone".
The United States of America came to be so highly regarded because it was the intellectual center of the world, a place for all to be free and listened to; now the forward-thinkers are more distributed, the US educational system is in horrible condition, and free speech is trodden upon regularly. The nation's leaders continue to extend American interests into places they do not belong, and they compromise the downsides by limiting freedoms at home. This hardly seems fair.
"Myanmar is another name for Burma, a country in Asia. We still call it Burma here in the US because our government refuses to recognize them as Myanmar."
Also because it is the traditional name of the country and people know it by that name. Burmese political refugees that I have known refer to their country as 'Burma' and themselves as 'Burmese'. Places can have more than one name; it's OK. It's like the whole Britain vs. England vs. United Kingdom thing: popular usage confuses them, but it's OK and no one gets upset.
Part of the problem in this case has been around for decades. It's the "we'll get them on something" mentality. As in, cop pulls you over because he suspects you as drunk. Tests show you are clean, not a drop of the stuff in your system. So he then proceeds to look your car over for anything else he can nail you for. THAT was around before 9/11 and is unfortunately increasing.
This is one of the major reasons why the government should not have cameras on the people in the streets for ANY reason. Eventually they'll feel the need to justify the expense. So they'll add more things for them to get from them. They'll get you for SOMETHING.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Why do you think it keeps running and running for so many years, as well as so many other police reality shows? Not to mention the scary/funny detective and forensic crime shows? To reinforce one point. The police are infallible. Repeat after me, the police are infallible. So of course, if the police arrest someone, there must be something they're guilty of. After all see the point above. And if you make enough laws, eventually everyone is technically guilty of something.
"State sponsored terrorism"
You mean, like the stuff we've been doing around the world since the 50's?
"Rouge states that possess WMD's"
You mean, like the US of A?
Countries that abuse "human rights"
Heh, I could go on for hours!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
thats occurs when you give to ignorant, abusive people power over educated epople. im sure none of the policemen know anithyng about chemicals or laboratory instruments. the sad true is the actual society put the security of the nation in unprepared hands.
Everybody knows the US legal system is in bad shape aside from the obvious undermining of the "rule of law" of the last 6 years.
Motive / Intent do not mean anything anymore its just a traditional question without meaning like a greeting "how are you?" Most any answer will suffice.
If you speed and kill somebody or just kill somebody while driving slow and there is no motive: the two should be the same. Sure, fine them for speeding because that is the deterrent but the judge should be able to wave it (since killing somebody would deter most people + proper media coverage would make the most of it.) Americans are so stuck on revenge/punishment ironically they are self described Christians.
When will we start arresting people who are tired?
Drinking levels are so low, you can be in WORSE shape just being tired. Unless really drunk, its largely a matter of reaction time; which is also the argument for speed limits... and getting OLD people off the road and for stopping cell phones.
My neighbor hit a SCHOOL BUS FULL OF KIDS with his car before the state realized he was legally BLIND... Before that he thought he could see just fine to drive. No chemicals needed to impair his judgment, reaction time... just his AGE.
In addition, the PURPOSE for law or for specific laws goes largely unnoticed today. Speed limits are NOT about control although that is what its turning into. If they admit their mistake they shouldn't get sued but if they pull out obscure law out of their ass unrelated the initial mistake you should be able to sue the hell out of them.
Mail fraud law wasn't created or intended for Mr. Kurtz. If the flu could kill you, DO NOT EVER GO ON CAMPUS.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
So you are wrong, it says it was established by the people of the United States for themselves their children in the United States of America. It doesn't say for the people of Europe or Asia, or the world, it says by the people of the United States, for the United States.
Before I school you again, do yourself and this country a favor and read the Constitution, recognize you are ignorant of the Constitution, that your mind was muddled by bad teachers who gave you a misguided representation of what the Constitution was, start giving the Constition the respect it deserves (i.e. follow what is says, not what you wish it said) and do not change it through self imposed ignorance or twisted interpretation, but only through the Amendment process.
Respect the Constitution