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Airlines Have to Ask Permission to Fly 72 Hours Early
twitter wrote to mention that the TSA (Transport Security Administration) has released a new set of proposed rules that is raising quite a stir among groups ranging from the ACLU to the American Society of Travel Agents. Under the new rules airlines would be required to submit a passenger manifest (including full name, sex, date of birth, and redress number) for all flights departing, arriving, or flying over the United States at least 72 hours prior to departure. Boarding passes will only be issued to those passengers that have been cleared. "Hasbrouck submitted that requiring clearance in order to travel violates the US First Amendment right of assembly, the central claim in John Gilmore's case against the US government over the requirement to show photo ID for domestic travel. [...] ACLU's Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). 'If there are that many terrorists in the US, we'd all be dead.' TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. 'Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,' Steinhardt replied."
Say goodbye to last minute business travel = say goodbye to important meetings = say goodbye to business dealings = say goodbye to the economy...
Back when I was young, the Soviet Union required internal passports... Seems to me that things are rapidly progressing that way here.... Maybe it's time to emigrate to Russia now that they're freer than Americans in America.
Knowing exactly when and where someone is traveling to with 72 hours notice...naw this will never be abused.
Clerk at Airport: "I'm sorry Mrs. Clinton, there seems to be a mix up, you're not clear to fly, don't worry we can get it fixed and have you on the same flight in three days. What? Oh the presidential debate is tonight? Hmm, well I might be able to get you on tomorrow..."
I guess last minute flights are out the window then huh? It's not like people don't have emergencies that require them to be across the country by tomorrow. I'm sure the counterargument is that "it does us no good to discover that someone 'suspicious' was on a flight that landed two days ago, he might have been a bomber!", but frankly I don't think the extra security is worth the inconvenience in this case. I know that is a rather cavalier thing to say, but in essence all security measures like this are a tradeoff vs. convenience and I feel this one goes way too far.
I read the internet for the articles.
Where we have our very own Iron Curtain (it just goes the other way).
Here's the progression:
No, we don't let you in.
You can leave, but not with your money.
You can leave, just give us 72 hours to make sure you're not on our list of Bad People (anyone we don't like).
"you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave"
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
All American citizens who wish to retain their freedom of movement should immediately begin informing their local authorities whenever they travel, no matter the distance or means of transport. Imagine how quickly the police, FBI, CIA, TSA, et cetera will get tired reports filed by self-reporting citizens explaining in detail that they need to go to work, stop by the grocery store, or visit their cousin in Roxbury....
Apparently the TSA has forgotten that this is America and we go where we like when we like and how we like (unless we're in prison, of course) without Uncle Sam knowing where we are. Like the commercial says, " we are free to move about the country."
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
How many people have missed their flight and caught a later one the same day?
Imagine being stuck 3 days before you can go home.
We may have to get to that point to satisfy the paranoids who would have me kicked off an airline if I forget to shave.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My grandfather died a few years ago, and I was on a plane the next day to visit with family. Now, it ended up that he wasn't buried until the following week, but if he had been buried sooner and I had had to wait 3 days prior to flying out, I would've missed his funeral.
This'll never fly.
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
The TSA seems to be doing all it can to kill the U.S. economy by making travel even more of a nightmare. I know plenty of business travelers that don't know their schedule 72 hours in advance -- they go where ever they are needed when ever they are needed. The more red tape a country throws down at the border, the less business that people will do here.
I'm sure bin Laden is laughing in his cave right now. He's used a classic martial arts move -- using the strength of the opponent against the opponent. Bin Laden wants to the isolate the U.S. from the world and the TSA is doing a great job of that.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The Government in general, and specifically this administration, seems to want to be Orwellian in what it knows about everyone.
I remember in the 90's when the Secret Service first started closing off traffic near the White House. The easy North/South move on the West side got bogged down from the traffic problems: Penn Ave N of the White House is shut down; E Street S. of the White House is shut down. There is now an area of eight blocks where you can't go West without going North, or South. Under Clinton, the street got opened - for about a week until some bombing far away.
It's not that I object to security. It's just I object to security that pushes attacks onto innocents & away from those who "incited" the attacks in the first place.
I also remember being able to get onto planes without any time consuming security screening. Now we have to wait for everything to be checked forever. The screening does not make us any more secure*, it just takes longer.
Go big propaganda fear-mongering! we didn't need the free time to get to anywhere anyhow. If we did, we'd all be rich enough to have our own planes.
*: The airline screening does not really make us more secure, as there are still ways to get shit on a plane: Metal Detectors test for guns sold in the US, not guns sold outside the US with lower metal content. Or Ceramic guns. Or Knives without metal (say those nice expensive Kyoceria ceramic knives).
If you like: 2/3rds of a passenger planes cargo is other than passengers and their baggage: It's Air Freight packages. Those packages could easily hold a bomb. Or a passenger could check a bomb with a wireless control that can be carried in the cabin.
the only thing that has been done in the name of security that makes planes more secure was making real security doors on the Pilot's compartment.
These guys do not deserve to have a budget. If a terrorist tries to take over your plane, you get up and kick his ass. No need for all this fear mongering and travel inconvenience. It's just make work for security contractors that does absolutely nothing. The best guarantee of your safety are your fists, and not someone elses forms.
This is my sig.
They can have my privacy when they pry it out of my cold, dead, fingers. It's simple, folks. Don't fly. I know, I know, we all want to line up at the gates to the abattoir like good little government programmed automatons, but this will do nothing but show them we deserve jackboots kicking in our doors. Do the right thing. Just don't buy their crap. Don't fly. When the airlines start losing money out the ass, then maybe they'll see we're not to be made victims due to idiot fundamentalist extremists, or government abuse of power, or to said government's inability to protect anyone. Hit them where it hurts, folks: in the pocketbook. I'm willing to bet that if over 200 million Americans decided not to fly for a few months, you'd see them scramble to change things.
I've always dreamed of having enough money and spare time to pack a small suitcase, go to the airport, look at the departure boards, figure out what's leaving in the next couple of hours, and buy a first-class ticket to a destination I've never visited before.
What? I have to know three days in advance everywhere I want to go?
Shit.
I guess I'll just have to dream about having enough money to have my own Gulfstream, since once you get to that level of wealth, the rules that apply to the little people are no longer a problem.
If you can keep up the pace, you can drive by car between any 2 points in the continental US in 72 hours: 60mph * 72h = 4320 miles. If you've got an emergency, you're better off driving, no matter how far.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
From the PDF for the PROPOSED rule changes (not even final yet, still in public comment phase!):
"Additionally, for reservations made within 72 hours of scheduled flight departure time, covered aircraft operators would be required to transmit Secure Flight Passenger Data as soon as possible."
The TSA is just asking airlines to send what they have 72 hours prior to the flight, so they can correct false alarms earlier and do a better job of identifying problems.
RTFPDF.
Sounds good to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hate laws like these. They promote the current trend of being afraid. That's the whole goal of terrorists. It costs so much more to operate an airline now. Millions upon millions of people fly ever year. You have more of a chance of dying in a car crash than dying in a plane. But you never hear that statistic when you see a "Horrible plane crash!" news line.
I refuse to be afraid of this. I refuse to support any measure that would protect me 1% more if it took away my rights. This does that. I refuse to live my life afraid of dying when it takes me 2 hours to get through airline security when it should take 20minutes max.
I don't travel by plane at all anymore because of this. I go to Canada once per year and now I HAVE to get a passport because of paranoid people.
Stop being afraid, start defending your rights or we're going to end up needing permission to travel between states.
Canadian Travel and Airline groups are pissed about those proposals too ( http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/10/12/airtravel-us.html ). Notice that the regulations also specify flights "Flying Over" US Airspace? So flights from Toronto to Cuba (or any other southern non-US destination) would also fall under those criteria. Guess Halifax and Moncton Airports better get cracking on expanding their capacity; all those Southern flights may have to fly from the Maritimes to keep out of US airspace. (That or we'll see more Montreal->Moncton->Caribbean flights so they can use the 'just skirting around the edges' clause of the proposals).
So let me get this straight. There are 500,000 to 750,000 suspected terrorists in this country, yet we haven't had a major attack since 9/11/2001?
There are 300M people in the US. Are you seriously telling me that at least 1 in 600 is on a terrorist watch list?
Something tells me that getting onto a terrorist watch list involves something other than being a terrorist. Otherwise, this just doesn't make any sense.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Don't *even* suggest this. If you have gotten to this point in your thinking, move to China because that's where stuff like this is supposed to happen, not here.
What sort of computers are the TSA using if it takes 3 days to match a name to a database.
What century are we living in?
1 hour before boarding is reasonable. Allows data entry and organization for response.
Anything more is just a sloppy system.
The government has a habit of proposing something and then implementing it. They very rarely make proposals without intending to implement it.
The point is that now is the time for feedback. You can't give feedback on something you don't know about.
Say, you don't work for the government do you? Sure don't want those pesky private citizens allowed to influence potential new regulations or laws that affect them, right? I mean the NERVE of some people - thinking that the government works for the citizens...
With apologies in advance to Jonathan Swift, I think this is a great idea. But I'd go one step further. One could just as easily have driven a Ryder truck filled with explosives and put it under the World Trade Center. In fact, terrorists tried that once, and it almost worked. I feel strongly that we should be required to have a 72 hour screening period before renting a vehicle. Of course, if your car breaks down and you need a rental, you should have joined the "trusted driver" program ahead of time. We should also require such a screening before you can buy a car. After all, terrorists spent thousands of dollars on explosives for that truck, so what's another few thousand to buy or lease a car? I think you can see how important it is that only trusted patriotic Americans be allowed to purchase an automobile.
Further, automobiles only provide the casing for the bomb. We should have similar levels of trust for people purchasing bomb-making supplies. For example, we should require a minimum of a 7 day waiting period and appropriate security screening prior to purchasing fertilizer, as you can easily use that to make a bomb. Don't forget gasoline, either. We need at least a 72 hour screening period before you can fill up at the pump. People who need to fill up quickly should trade their privacy rights as part of our "trusted gas purchaser" program.
But that's not the biggest problem we face. The fundamental truth is that terrorists are people. None of these problems would exist if people prone to terrorist actions were not allowed to be born. For this reason, I would like to recommend a mandatory DNA screening prior to giving birth to children. Any children with terroristic tendencies should not be allowed to be carried to term. As an added bonus, these aborted fetuses can be used for scientific research, and in some cases, can be repurposed as a healthy food source for our nation's underprivileged.
I hope by this point you realize that this entire post is satire. My purpose in writing it is to show just how silly the argument of prescreening for aircraft flights in the name of national security really is. While I can't see the U.S. government actually going so far as suggesting that we eat babies to protect against terrorism, we are rapidly approaching that level of absurdity in our national security policy. I think it is time that we all take a step back, breathe, then laugh out loud at these policies at every possible opportunity. Only through laughter can we adequately portray the current administration and its policies as the laughingstock that they are.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Or even just unexpected commercial trips; I recently flew to Las Vegas in a rented Cessna that didn't pass pre-flight when I went to take off (bad magnetos). I left the bird with the local FBO mechanic and got a ride to McCarran (I was at Henderson), booking a Southwest flight back to L.A. from my Treo during the drive over, as I had to be back in L.A. later that day for an important meeting.
Shit like this will cripple America...
geek. lawyer.
This is just a deliberately outrageous proposal so that their real goals don't seem so bad. Like when we had a guy yesterday saying that $9250 per song wasn't so bad because it could have been $150,000. This is how parents deal with children. Interesting that it seems to work on the majority of the adult population (including many /.ers).
Hardly the ball-buster everyone is making it out to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How dare you throw those facts and common sense into our outrage! We live in a fascist society, and our false assumptions and made up facts about this new policy prove it. Now stop bothering us so we can continue to hide in terror from the made up robotic insects that aren't actually watching us.
When my father-in-law passed away, we had to take a flight the day after we heard the news. My wife is from Indonesia, and it was about a 30-hour plane trip to get there. Adding 72 hours to this would simply be unacceptable as it would likely have caused us to miss the funeral (in Indonesia, it is custom to have an open casket memorial lasting for up to 3-4 days and then bury the body-- this starts almost immediately after the body has been embalmed).
Seems like time to write to Congress.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The fact remains that the very thing we keep hearing those 'trrists' hate, freedom, is essentially dead in this country. For all the talk of how we're supposedly spreading freedom to an occupied country, it's just that, talk, since this administration is hell bent on destroying those very same freedoms in this country.
Between this newest revelation to track when people go on flights, requiring a national ID card, listening to our phone conversations without a warrant to preventing people from paying their bills until the source of their money is ok'd, we no longer live in a truly free society.
Oh sure, I can write this without fear of being arrested, but can I go on a flight without being classified as a threat? What does the file the FBI (and at least one other three-letter agency) have on me (and they do) say?
Bin Laden and his cohorts are probably laughing* in their cave at how they've succeeded in their first goal of undermining our society. How many times a week do we hear about law enforcement going into apoplectic seizures when someone thinks they saw some shifty character hanging around somewhere or an innocent package left behind shuts down some place?
It's a sad state of affairs when the people of this country don't care that their right to be free has been taken away from them. After all, there's those un-reality shows to watch. That the people who only a decade or so ago were crowing about how America is the greatest country on the planet, with all kinds of freedoms not enjoyed by many other countries, are now so willing to go along with this administration's excuses about why the rights enshrined in the Constitution must be taken away to protect them.
The quote about give them an inch and they'll take a mile certainly applies to this administration. Even worse, whoever comes into power next won't have the balls to undo the vast majority of wrongs being perpetrated against society but will instead be more concerned about getting re-elected than serving the people.
The rights of the Constitution had a good run of what, over two hundred years? Not bad all things considered. Now though, we are moving into a new era which will require citizens to involuntarily give up rights which have existed since the founding of the country in an effort to defeat terrorism. It will be a long, never-ending battle but by giving up our rights and acquiescing to the newest form a facist police-like-state, we can be assured that we will be safe and secure in our wiretapped, surveillanced, dwellings.
* I'm assuming that like most leaders, the rules they want to impose on others does not apply to them
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
For all the liberties that have been removed, how exactly have any of the new "security" measures helped prevent any threat coming from outside the country. Anyone intent on doing harm, will find a way through. Terrorism indeed, the U.S. (government that is) is truly terrified. The bad guys are winning.
We should just mark all patriotic Am3rican$ with a simple mark. Something simple like...oh, I dunno', maybe a six, three score, and six.
Without this mark, no one would be allowed to travel. Besides curtailing the nefarious schemes of terrorists it would also help with the large immigration problem. In time, as the populace surrendered to the most excellent goals of this process, it could easily be extended to other activities such as the buying and selling of goods.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
...but the document linked in TFA states clearly that airlines have to provide said data to the TSA 72 hours before departure for all confirmed passengers they have...this doesn't mean that you can't book a ticket under 72 hours, or get on that plane. They realized that 90% or so of passengers are booked over 72 hours to departure, and that way they can clean up the last-minute fliers faster.
That being said, its still bullshit, without a doubt. But its NOT going to stop last-minute fliers from being able to fly.
And again, its not that this isn't complete horseshit, but they're already passing your infromation to the TSA - they're just doing it within 15 minutes of departure now (or 15 minutes after departure for international flights).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
>
>Go fuck yourselves.
>
>Sincerely, the rest of the world.
Attention, rest of the world.
As you can plainly see by this article, we're doing precisely that.
Which is why I'm wondering why in the post-9/11 environment we don't see more "luxury semi-private-charter" type thingies showing up with smaller planes, where they drive you out to the flight line from your home. No time-wasting trip through airport security. No "arrive at least 3hrs before your flight." In fact, if you're 5 minutes late they'd.. just wait for you.
Have you priced it? I have. $500 for a commercial flight, or $3500 for a charter from the Chicago area to North Carolina. Which do you think most people's budgets will let them choose?
Kinda makes the market for that type of service a little small. Anyone who can afford to spend that much on a flight, already does.
Putting moderation advice in your
...all you need is a little $30-40K Piper Cherokee or Cessna 172 and go fly yerself practically anywhere in the USA you damn well please. Instead of driving a brand new car every year and living in some yuppie condo/townhouse, I drive an 10 year old car, live in an older house and bought my own small plane and became a private pilot instead. I can fly three or four hundred mile trips in literally half the time it takes to drive, and roughly about the same net end-to-end amount of total time it takes to fly commercially, or sometimes even quicker than driving or commercial airlines since I can get into smaller airports much closer to my final destinations.
:-)
Drawbacks are: Sometimes obtaining ground transportation from a small Hickville airport is a bitch, and bad weather can keep you from flying a small plane like mine at all unless you've got a deathwish.
Benefits are: I can generally just hop into my own plane and go on my own schedule. Nothing feels better than flying over a traffic-jammed freeway and looking down at all the cars, except maybe flying over a highway patrol trooper that's got some poor schmuck pulled over on the side of the highway with his foot propped up on the car bumper and scribbling on a ticketbook while I glance over at my GPS groundspeed showing me cruising along at over 130 MPH
Every Slashdotter who ever had any thought at all about learning to fly should get over to their nearest small airport that has a Learn to Fly Here program and at least take an introductory flying lesson for $99 or less.
Stop Dreaming. Start Flying.
In fact, its a set of proposed rules that hasn't even come close to be implemented yet. Not only that, but if you read the underlying rules, it states that the airlines only need to send what they have 72 hours in advance. Airlines are supposed to then send updates as the passenger manifest changes during the 72 hours immediately preceding flight. The idea is that they want to be able to work on the manifest in advance as much as possible. This really isn't a big deal, and if anything, would help to remove false positives since you'll likely have 3 days to work out any issues as opposed to an hour or two.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
Not a bad idea. We can probably make major inroads in the struggle for universal health care and other government-managed social safety net products in parallel with this enhanced emphasis on security.
More seriously, what about Priceline, CheapTickets, etc., whose business model is predicated upon people being able to do spontaneous things?
Is TSA going to tell you that, sorry, you can't see your dying mother because you moved too far to drive and she didn't give sufficient notice about her sudden illness?
Some security/useability line is being crossed here.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I've met many individual American people. They have almost universally been friendly, kind, intelligent, and really, indistinguishable from my fellow Canadians apart from their opinions on health care.
I constantly wonder how a government that is supposed to represent those people can end up sending its poor overseas to fight and die protecting the interests of oil companies. Or any of the other crazy shit your president signs into law.
Don't worry, Americans. The rest of the world doesn't dislike you as individuals. In fact, if you want out, consider moving up north. I welcome any of you that want to flee a sinking ship.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
At my job we aren't so young and most have families and we still have to make last-minute flights from time to time. On more than one occasion this year I've had to book flights within 72 hours of departure.
I can tell you that in many business cases there is absolutely NO WAY that this proposal is workable. People MUST be able to make travel plans up to and including the day of departure. 3 days is just not workable and the business community simply would not tolerate implementation of this proposal.
There are also far to many last-minute trips made on compassionate grounds. What about flights arranged to see dying loved ones, or to transport donor organs, or to get special treatment at a distant hospital? Hell, you can get a passport faster than 72 hours under normal cases for such reasons. If your identity can be verified well enough to get a passport that quickly then clearing you for a flight should be much easier than that.
Three days? That'll never fly. MAYBE three HOURS, but not three days.
It goes beyond that though--the same proposal not only wants lists for all flights arriving or departing US locations, it wants flight lists for ALMOST EVERY FLIGHT THAT PASSED OVER US AIRSPACE as well...which means they'd like the government to demand passenger lists from Canadian and Mexican airlines for many of their flights that never touch American soil. Not enough to violate their own civil liberties--in the name of safety everyone's liberties must be unduly curtailed.
And here are some numbers that I find also help to put the whole terrorism thing in perspective:
Deaths in the U.S. in 2001 due to
heart disease - 700,000
cancer - 553,800
stroke - 164,000
accidents - 102,000 (Car accidents - 42,000)
influenza - 36,000
terrorism - 3,000
Where is the war on cancer, or the war on drunk driving? You're more likely to die driving to the airport than on the plane.
"Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life" [vhemt.org]
Excellent point. I just wanted to mention that Clinton had three assassination attempts in his first year. To quote the New York Times "Since Mr. Clinton moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House has come under assault by a small plane that crashed under the President's bedroom last September and a deranged gunman who was recently convicted of trying to assassinate the President a month later when he fired shots that struck the building but did not injure anyone. In December, the mansion was struck by bullets fired from somewhere to the south, but investigators never determined if they were aimed at the White House." (link). He was the one who closed the road (see the congressional record here.
These kind of things don't make it into the mass media, you have to dig for them (it would upset people, after all.)
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
In the PDF, they note that three days provides a good deal of time for them to correct or correlate information from other government agencies. Have *you* ever tried to get anything from even a single government agency in under 30 minutes?
Again, all they are asking is for airlines to send what they can three days before, and then send updates - hardly onerous!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The US is still in the 19th century as far as rail travel goes compared to the rest of the world. Maybe this will help us realize that there are other options.
Why bother? Just fly naked. No need for hand-baggage, being naked will be the in-flight entertainment...
To ./ community and internet community in general: If you've ever complained about your rights being stripped but have not lifted a finger to help - then you are part of the problem.
No, you're not an innocent bystandard, or a spectator, or someone who is "too busy", or "too lazy", or "doesn't care enough", or whatever the excuse. You are all involved and impacted whether you like it or not. Therefore, this is about personal integrity.
I submit to you that you are by now aware of the crises in this country. You are all educated. You are also aware that this is a fixable problem. It may be difficult, but its fixable. To a person of integrity, the choice is clear. Such a person takes action and does her best to be part of the solution. So what have you done to help?
If you refuse to stand up for your own values(which requires action), what good are you?
What I am curious about is this: how many legitimate security threats have been stopped by the regulations in place now? We know they go after nursing mothers, girls with techno-trash style sense, sick people with serious, life threatening conditions, etc. I've also seen them stop people with jars of maple syrup, pickles and other substances, and once even an idiot muling drugs from Canada to Chicago. But, again, how many REAL terrorist style bad guys have we heard about them taking down? By my count, admittedly incomplete though it is, the number is very close to if not actually equal to zero. Then there are those really silly things like the "no-fly" lists. They check your name!! How many real bad guys are going to use their real names? I can just see it, "Name, please? Hmm? Oh, I'm Carlos the Jackal. Sorry, sir, could you step over here? You are on our no-fly list." Seriously, now.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Your numbers actually pale in the light that given US population, lets say 380M, will require a steady death toll of about 5M per year to keep the population at the same level with an average age of 75 years. Coming to 69% of all death are caused by old age and 0.06% of the death are due to terrorism.
So, the major thing that needs to be forbidden is to die of old age, since that seems to be the cause of 2/3rds of all problems. Maybe everybody needs to be screened to prevent them from aging? Or maybe everybody should be on artificial support so that we can fix the statistics.
Where is the war on cancer, or the war on drunk driving? You're more likely to die driving to the airport than on the plane. The difference is when you die in an act of terrorism, it's more likely to be televised and thus breed dissatisfaction among the survivors with the coincident administration of government for failing to prevent it. People who die quietly (relatively speaking) don't provoke as much outrage.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If you're real name is anything like your screen name, you're lucky if they ever let you fly again.
And we should back that up with a 72 hour waiting period before stealing a vehicle that could be used to transport a bomb.
We can beat this terrorism thing if we just pull together.
(Maybe if we keep this up, the terrorists will find our antics so entertaining that they will decide to keep us around for a while).
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Have you seen the average american?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Hmm, what would be interesting is to see numbers of people in *other* years dying of the same causes. Here's a link to the NSC [http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm] on the number of deaths for the year 2006 from most of the above causes.
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, wait a minute - he already does.
Though I agree that the headline is somewhat sensationalist, I think we all have to keep in mind that the root of the problem lies in the fact that TSA is trying to make a stupid process more efficient. (Instead of say... eliminating the stupidity altogether.)
Let's review some basic ideas:
1) Knowing who people are doesn't (by itself) prevent terrorism at all.
2) Even if it could, IDs could still be forged.
3) Even if IDs couldn't be easily forged, this would still be a violation of the rights of American citizens. By this I mean that, the government has no innate right to stop you from traveling UNLESS and UNTIL they can charge you with something specific.
The main concern I have is that in trying to make things "easier", the TSA/DHS/Fed. Government is generally are simply breaking all the limits and chains that are placed on them for good and sound reasons. Things should NOT be easy for the listed organizations. They should require work and effort. This is the only way to ensure that they will actually do their job instead of just creating a big list and adding people's names to it.
In other words, imagine the lists of lists we might have in the future in current trends continue:
+ No-fly List
+ No-drive list
+ No-shop list
+ No-protest list
+ No-publishing list
+ No-(Insert your activity-here) list
I don't want to live in that country. How about you?
Only because they didn't place it very well.
To quote from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3069653/: On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center merely shook but did not collapse. But it was a close call. Later, the WTC's architect would tell jurors that if the van had been left closer to the poured concrete foundations, they would have succeeded. The tower would have fallen.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Hence the entertainment value (watching the women scream in horror as the Slashdotters walk on).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
End of line..
This was all over the Canadian news last night, as they also want the passenger lists of any flights merely flying over American airspace, for example, Montreal to Mexico City. They were originally going to have this rule apply to domestic flights that happen to cross American airspace (which is common with a flight like Toronto to Vancouver), but have thankfully backed down. Oh yeah, and people now have 10 days to comment about these new rules.
But it is about the impact on the economy. Consider this: In the days following 9-11, the US stocks lost $1,200,000,000,000. Thats 1.2 trillion if digit grouping isn't your thing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks#Economic_aftermath). Thats also just stocks, not counting what we've spent on wars, other anti-terrorist programs, and other junk that hasn't made the USA one ounce safer.
My opinion on the topic? The government should not regulate passengers on planes. Should the government regulate international travel to the US? Maybe. Depends on the program, who it filters, etc. I think it comes down to good intelligence on who the crazies are. So far the majority people people flying planes into buildings for the purposes of terrorism are Muslim Arab's. I think 99% of Muslims Arabs are great--its the 1% that are crazy suicidal maniacs we need to worry about. Lets start there. It would be great if our 'friends' in Saudi Arabia would help us out with this...but thats another issue. If other religious or ethic groups start doing similar shit then they should be filtered out.
Ultimately governments cannot stop determined individuals who are bent on terrorism. It comes down the world population, who out of a love of freedom and their fellow man and with complete disregard to their personal safety restrain and fight violently those who would cause terror.
The fallacy in your argument is that deaths from heart disease are not concentrated in a single time and place. No one community has bear the burden of 700,000 deaths in 102 minutes.
Heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc., can be more or less defined as diseases associated with aging and old age.
These deaths consequently rarely comes as a complete surprise - and the shock can be absorbed through mechanisms that have evolved over thousands of years.
But, as a society, we have often failed miserably in managing the single incident - the defining moment - that erodes confidence in the government and other social institutions, is marked by massive loss of life, property damage, economic losses that ripple through the entire economy - the WTC and Katrina continue to cast a very long shadow.
Where did you get your hand on such propaganda?!? Come with us, please.
...
Why the hell are you trying to make excuses for the terrorists? You're no true patriot. We can only hope that in a few years, spreading misinformation like this will be outlawed.
When I was a kid, 20 years ago, my world view was that the only country in the world where people would be stopped because of their papers and turned back with no reason, - was the Sovjet Union and its vassal states.
Submit my name 3 days before travel and maybe be refused on short notice? Sovjet. Hearing stories about small issues in immigration escalating and you ending up being sent back? Sovjet.
You're still a good country. Please don't become a bad one...
I lost my sig.
On a long enough time scale, most everything balances out.
The premise of the libertarian movement is small governement. There is a reason that a candidate like Ron Paul is getting so much press and support now - the actions of the government are becoming onerous and encroaching on basic human freedoms.
What the world needs now is a large group of people to collectively tell the state (Read: US FEDERAL GOVERENMNET) to "Back the fuck off" and stay where they belong: defending the country against known threats, domestic and international and creating real domesitc security (not this fake, fear mongering/engineered solution cycle).
"Watch lists" are part of LAZY POLICE WORK. If there is a person that is planning something - investigate them, charge them, arest them. Follow the laws we have now. All the rest of this crap in the name of security is just plain ineffective, lazy behavior driven by the need to cover their asses and assauge their fears that they will be accountable if any thing happens.
The reality is that there is no way to stop terrorism, and people have to get OK with that. If some sicko wants to kill a bunch of people, he or she will. If some sicko wants to fill a truck with fertilizer and gas, and drive into a building, they will. Tough shit. Somebody should have listened to their pleas for help long ago. Living is a world that makes it impossible for someone to bring down a plane is not a world that I want to live in, becuase it means draconian crontrols on freedoms. Those same freedoms we fought for and won hundreds of years ago, and many have died defending. I'd much rather we build a world where people DON'T WANT TO BRING DOWN PLANES. That is completely possible, and if we spent our energies there instead of the current track, we would all have happier, healthier lives.
The debate is not "should we have watch lists or not". The debate is, "who came up with this ridiculous crap and how soon can we remove them from power?"
Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are better defined as diseases associated with lifestyle choices and environment. For example, heart disease and stroke are very strongly linked to smoking, a lack of exercise, and a high-cholesterol diet. And while it may take a while for these factors to catch up with you, they aren't exactly "caused" by old age.
These causes of death are risks which can be easily reduced by changing our everyday behavior. A healthy diet, fresh air, and exercise will dramatically reduce your chance of dying from these causes, while also improving your life in other ways.
I think that GP is right - as a society, we have often failed miserably in managing the factors which really cause death and suffering: diet, exercise, and environmental quality. People are scared of terrorists because they've been trained by the government and the media to be scared of terrorists. Meanwhile the real killers of most Americans, the multinational agribusiness industry, are highly subsidized by the USDA.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
I get that on intrastate trips in New Mexico, just driving from Las Cruces to Albuquerque. It has been going on for decades.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
maybe, but that would certianly hurt your yields.
Three days? That'll never fly. MAYBE three HOURS, but not three days.
Forget that. Three minutes is 3 minutes too much. If I want to I should be able to to drive to the airport, pick a flight going where I want and buy a ticket with cash then and there without any "Papers please"!
FalconShould there be a Law?
The cost of this would likely be in the hundreds of millions to the airlines. A completely out of control politically motivated TSA, you must be afraid of terrorist all of the time, see all the precautions you have to take to be able to fly safely.
Business are going to have to relocate out of the US otherwise any urgent multinational meetings will basically take basically 10 days, 3 for the booking and 2 for the flight and repeat to escape the mad house.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You're absolutely right, that the US government is asking for passenger lists including D.O.B., address, and phone numbers for any flights flying over US air space.
So, if I'm on a flight from Vancouver to Cancun or (gasp!) Havana, (you guys south of us should really try vacationing in Cuba, it's dirt cheap, and you can drink the water, so I'm told...) the US wants to know about it.
Or, in other words, they want to be able to extend their ridiculous no-fly list to include people who don't live in the US, and who don't plan on setting foot on American soil, flying on Airlines that might not even do business to the US.
The fundamentally ridiculous part of this "data mining to catch terrorists" is the idea that, OK, we're looking for a needle in a haystack. So, if we make the haystack bigger, then somehow the needles we're looking for will magically appear.
Never mind that the false positive rate is going to be several orders of magnitude greater than the actual incidence rate of "being a terrorist" or "planning a terrorist attack on the US".
So this only sounds like a good idea to those people who don't care about arresting/detaining/harassing innocent people.
I hate to make a 'slippery slope' argument, but one of the hallmarks of a police state is keeping a file on your citizens, even if they're not suspects in a criminal matter.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
But it'd make a pretty sad life.
It's a pretty interesting world out there. Whether experiencing one of the many wonderous things man has achieved or being within a meter or two of a herd of wild elephants while they bath and play in a watering hole there's an awful lot of great things to experience in the world.
You don't need to do it. But it's a bit of a pointless life if you are contented by mere survival.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
You are forgetting that we have to arrive in our own country too. Do you think we are treated that much better? The people that are hired for these jobs are trained to treat everyone like a suspect in a crime and most of them have the mindset of thugs. I don't think you want to turn your immigration procedures into the kind of Police State welcome that we receive whenever returning home. The U.S. is by far the worst country in the world in this respect. The Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves if they could see it. We used to be about welcoming people from other lands. Now we are about lining them up against a wall, strip searching them, interrogating them, intimidating them, harassing them so much that they would never even think of returning to this strange land where everyone is a suspected terrorist until proven otherwise. We *are* becoming a police state and are already being recognized as such by many foreigners who can laugh at how "free" we are. I might laugh with them, but it is just sad.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
as a society, we have often failed miserably in managing the factors which really cause death and suffering: diet, exercise, and environmental quality.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my diet.' Similarly, I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my exercise.'
I could see there being some social movement to encourage a better diet and more exercise, but I am not keen on government being the mechanism to 'manage' either of these.
I suppose in the future, when we all live in high rise apartment buildings along light rail transit corridors, possibly the government will be 'managing' our exercise by lining us up twice daily for sit-ups. While there are doubtless social planners looking forward to wielding that level of power over people 'for their own good' I don't think it will be accepted.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
You're one of those, huh? Let's see...
I have personal control over:
heart disease
Glad you can change your own genetic code!
cancer
Same here - care to share your cancer cures?
stroke
Unlikely considering the level of fear you seem to be experiencing on a regular basis...
accidents
So I guess you don't walk, bike, or drive. Good for you!
influensa
Nice bubble!
Why don't you just go learn some math and relax buddy. It will help you prevent those strokes!
You have to start somewhere, name's as good as anything and better than most. Would you rather they require a full headshot to make a reservation? Or perhaps a blood and stool sample?
Yea, there's a starting point. In the USA it's called the Constitution of the USA, and nowhere in it does it give the government any power to require people hand over their id, for any reason!
FalconShould there be a Law?
I suspect that most of the Founders would be thoroughly disgusted by what we've done to ourselves. On the other hand, they knew this was coming: Jefferson himself pointed out that governments rarely improve with age.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Granted, we all have to die somehow - but you seem a little defensive! Allergic to bees, perhaps? Again, the math:
Your chances of getting killed by a terrorist (from here):
But while keeping such potential dangers in mind, it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by al Qaeda or al Qaedalike operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor. Even if there were a 9/11-scale attack every three months for the next five years, the likelihood that an individual American would number among the dead would be two hundredths of a percent (or one in 5,000).
From here:
All figures below are for U.S. residents.
Cause of Death Lifetime Odds
Heart Disease: 1-in-5
Cancer: 1-in-7
Stroke: 1-in-23
Accidental Injury: 1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident*: 1-in-100
Intentional Self-harm (suicide): 1-in-121
Falling Down: 1-in-246
Assault by Firearm: 1-in-325
Fire or Smoke: 1-in-1,116
Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.): 1-in-3,357
Electrocution*: 1-in-5,000
Drowning: 1-in-8,942
Air Travel Accident*: 1-in-20,000
Flood* (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-30,000
Legal Execution: 1-in-58,618
Tornado* (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-60,000
Lightning Strike (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-83,930
Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting*: 1-in-100,000
Earthquake (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-131,890
Dog Attack: 1-in-147,717
Asteroid Impact*: 1-in-200,000**
Tsunami*: 1-in-500,000
Fireworks Discharge: 1-in-615,488
I think ending medicare would help health prices decrease. Free markets work - government-subsidized price floors don't.
Does it sound drastic? The nation's chief accountability officer, the Comptroller General, has been preaching for years about financial doom if we don't fix medicare and social security.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/60minutes/main2528226.shtml
http://www.gao.gov/cghome.htm
Seems Ron Paul has a plan to save our economy. What's your candidate got?
It's a simple question: Is freedom of movement a RIGHT? I believe it is. For the record, I have a problem with DRIVER'S LICENSES as I think the rationale that the government has a right to restrict travel on PUBLIC roads is crap. This doesn't mean I have a problem with traffic laws in general. If someone violates traffic rules restricting their travel *IS* appropriate. I just don't think there should be prior restraint. Overly restrictive rules get put in place, get relaxed. I can carry sciccors again. That was damn stupid. That's called a free society where sometimes things will be too restrive, and other times too permissive - and we'll always be in one state or the other. In a FREE society it is the RESTRICTIONS that must be justified, not the freedoms. If you think most of the stupid TSA rules actually improve security, you're deluded. Most of them are there to create "busy work" jobs and provide the ILLUSION of security. For example, restricting people from bringing computer equipment onboard aircraft would provide real security, as it's easy to hide explosives in electronic equipment. But that would piss off the airlines that depend on business travelers with laptops as their bread and butter. Instead they restrict LIQUIDS, not because of the danger (it would be near-impossible to bring most liquid explosives on an aircraft due to their volatility), but because this means the airlines can charge you $5 for a bottle of water. It also means that (hopefully) the passengers will be using the toilet less. Every flush costs them money.
Our tolerance for this nonsense the problem, not the imaginary terrorists. I like how you hide the reality of that behind "certain felonies" like there are none that would matter. I would have no problem with the law if it applied only to those convicted of, say, HIJACKING. That would be pretty short list. But the list includes "lying to federal officials"(which I don't think should even be a crime) and "conspiracy". So MOST of the people are on the list for trivial or petty crimes that have nothing to do with hijacking.