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All US Border Crossings Now Require A 'Terrorist Risk Profile'
conlaw writes with a somewhat intimidating Washington Post article. "The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years ... The risk assessment is created by analysts at the National Targeting Center, a high-tech facility opened in November 2001 and now run by Customs and Border Protection. In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo."
They will keep records of the fact that some collage kids took a trip up to Montreal to go drinking for 40 years... But they will do nothing about the drug smugglers and millions of illegals pouring over the southern boarders.
If some terrorist wants to do harm here he isnt going to give a crap that he is being logged in some database. Heck he will just cross over from mexico with out being checked at all.
I have to return some videotapes...
Don't worry, I have been purposefully avoiding the US whenever I can for the last 5 years or so. Makes travelling to Canada a bitch (I have to stop in Mexico City), but it satisfies me. My understanding is that I am not the only one, either. One day the US will realize how much its irrational behavior has cost it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Now, the vast majority of people coming in and out of this country are legitimate and yet our freedoms are being restricted for a handful of people worldwide that would most likely not appear on that list as there are new "freedom haters" popping up every second -- especially when news, like this, keep coming to light.
I have come to the conclusion that the current plan is to make visiting the US such a privacy-invading, presumption-of-innocence-reversing, bureaucratic ordeal that the number of legitimate visitors gradually diminishes towards zero. At that point it will be safe to assume that anyone who actually wants to come to the country despite all of the above is a freedom hater with murder on his/her mind, and should be 'processed' accordingly.
Seriously though, to a non-American there is such a phenomenal... arrogance to all of this. It's not quite the right word. But there's a presumption that the US is fabulous and sacred and utterly superior and different to all other nations, and that people will accept whatever probing and scanning and recording Washington decides to impose simply for the honour and privilege of visiting.
It might be the case now, but let's see how things stand in 20-30 years.
Read Pynchon.
Not only that, but we now have some sort of government-manufactured rule-based system that assigns risk to 'potential terrorists'. Just wait for the inevitable leak of their methodology (via stolen laptops, incompetence, etc.) and you just gave real terrorists a way to evade suspicion. That's the problem with any "model" for suspicious behavior -- once its known, it's easily exploited.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
I have come to the conclusion that the current plan is to make visiting the US such a privacy-invading, presumption-of-innocence-reversing, bureaucratic ordeal that the number of legitimate visitors gradually diminishes towards zero. I must disagree. The US Government does not give a flying fuck about terrorism. No, the USG is concerned about tax evasion and drug importation. This is not a plan to annoy 'foreigners', this is a plan to watch citizens who have the gall to leave the glorious and wonderful United States, presumably to evade taxes and import drugs, because why else would an American citizen ever leave? Go to Europe - you must be a pinko UN sympathiser. Go to Central America - you must be a pinko anti-American or a drug runner. Go to Canada - you must be mentally ill. Go to the Middle East - you must be a towel-head sympathising terrorist. Go to Asia - you must be a pervert/drug runner/pinko China lover.
From the article:
"According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."
Who is going to rein back those idiots?
America has no dream - only a nightmare.
If our current government would have spent some time in between debating pointless things such as the question of when a fetus is considered a baby, and when it's ethical to end the pointless suffering and grotesque indignity of a human puppet show by disconnecting a feeding tube, maybe they could have found some time to fit in a discussion of the abomination of the PATRIOT act, or the legislation that mandated we track the travel habits of normal law abiding Americans in an effort to stop some vague threat they call terrorism. I'm not one bit afraid of terrorists! Stop trying to protect me from them by taking away the rights that I value.
Every day it seems I get more confirmation that I was right in deciding I should leave this country as soon as I can. A few generations ago my family came to America to escape communism in East Germany after the war, and now I'll be leaving the USA to escape the encroachment of my rights. Things aren't that bad here yet compared to many places in the world, but my family already made the mistake of waiting too long to leave once, I'm not going to make that mistake too. Better to get out early than not at all.
The Republicans are authoritarians and religious zealots, the sane ones either left their party or are such a small voice that they're completely drowned out by the chorus of insanity from the party at large. Ron Paul, who is a real Rep. and not a Neocon, doesn't look like he will be popular enough among the wealthy, the war-hawks, and the religious--or as they call it "the Republican base"--to win. The Democrats are too spineless to stand up for their core values, favoring a centrist stance to garner support from the left leaning Republicans, Independents, and various minorities and they end up acting like Republican-Light(TM). There is virtually no minority party voice in this country that anyone takes seriously. Both sides spend outrageous amount of money, although one actually attempts to pay for it by increasing taxes where the other just spends and passes the debt off to their kids and grandkids. Meanwhile no one is willing to put a stop to America's current adventure in the desert even though we're spending enough money on the war to fund what could be the best health care system in the world, even after you account for typical government waste and inefficiency. The soldiers that come back maimed, crippled, or psychologically scarred are given a standard of care that we should all be ashamed of. And then there are the ones who only come back draped in an American flag.
I would recommend everyone take a serious look at the idea of leaving the US. Figure out what it would take to leave, and how fast you could do it in. There may be a time soon when you have to put that plan into action.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
This reminds me of encryption key escrow, where some bright guy thought we'd all be safer if there was just a big list of passwords all in one place so that the guy with the master root password could get anything he wanted when he wanted. It's the superficially appealing but should-be-scary notion that government would be better if more efficient.
It's as if we think the entire world is scary but the one thing we know is a universal constant is that whoever holds the keys will not be compromised. And yet, to listen to radio DJ's, if Hillary takes office it will be as if a coup had taken place. Whatever you think of that claim--legitimate or ridiculous--the one thing that should not be in dispute is that whatever information is amassed against The People is available for use by anyone who has the keys even if a hostile regime change happens. Some people think electing the other party is such a thing, and others don't. But even if you believe an election is benign, there are potential events in the world that are not neutral and that would be bad. We all draw lines in different places, but we all draw lines. I have my own political biases but they are not relevant here--people on both sides of the present political divides should be equally concerned on this one.
What if someone manipulated an election? What if the value of the dollar fell so low that the only people who could fund an electable candidate were foreigners? What if someone successfully attacked the center of government? What if someone bribed a politician? What if a hacker or a worm/virus/whatever snuck in and found all this data? Surely everyone has some scenario they can think of in which the person sitting in the White House might not be someone they wanted to trust with the kind of data being collected here.
Although many people are made nervous about abuse of information, the scenarios discussed usually seem to focus on an isolated individual doing a little inappropriate peeking or a bit of overzealous prosecution or menacing. But that's not the worst case. The worst case is someone getting past the safeguards of the nation and getting to the seat of power and then having at their fingertips the knowledge of who is a threat and who is not, so they can't be re-taken because they have defensive knowledge on everyone who might oppose them.
The government seems obsessed with the notion that centralization is the key to success, but it doesn't realize that the designers of the original republic did a brilliant job of coming up with a distributed structure that made us all safe--the notion of each state having its own way of doing things, and having all of those states be relatively autonomous. Even to the point of allowing state militias, which as I understand it had the potential duty to protect the state from the federal government if it got uppity. In effect, what they implemented was genetic diversity, which makes it harder to attack the US because there are a variety of defenses in play unevenly and it's hard to devise a uniform plan of attack that will take down every state at the same time. But one by one, we're turning our states into clones of one another, so that a single plan of attack will be more likely to succeed on everything at once. That won't make us safer.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
This enormous expenditure of resources in such an unreliable defense is ridiculous. I was hoping to visit the US sometime, but what I heard of the security checks at the borders makes me scary, even though I've got nothing to hide.
Actually, they didn't all have valid visas, some had expired. Others bought ID at the 7-11 in Falls Church down near Seven Corners shopping center. Bought from the same kind folks that sell fake IDs to illegal aliens.
And our current "security theater" is as absurd as the "tollbooth scene" in "Blazing Saddles".
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Er, how many times do you want to punish people? I had a DUI conviction over 7 years ago in Canada; my license was suspended for 15 months, I paid a large fine (and legal fees), and my insurance rates tripled when I got my license back. I had to take a remedial course on DUI, at my own expense.
So if I want to go skiing in western NY later this year, should I be "punished" again by being denied entry? Even if my wife is driving? Even if I have zero BAC? I thought the deal was you served your time, and then you weren't punished for that particular crime again. Now you're telling me that any border guard can deny me entry for the next 40 years because I have a "criminal record"? Thanks.
What was once true, is no longer so
With all the violence against the English language I've seen here, most of it coming from 'native' speakers, I wouldn't be so sure about that.
For example, I've never seen any of my non-American friends mistake "your" for "you're", something that seems to be very common, but makes the text very difficult to read. Possibly even more difficult for us non-natives since we, at least I, tend to read English a lot more than we hear or speak it.
c++;
Some of what Dr. Paul says does make me a bit frightened when he says absolutely no foreign intervention (what about stopping genocides?). But on the whole he's crazy extreme - which is what we need. The reason we need someone extreme, is because the rest of the politicians are at the other extreme. I think it will balance out in the middle with something more reasonable. If anything, it will break the deadlock the Republicrats have on our system and allow other people with different ideas to get elected. Moreover, he's a doctor, a scientist. We can at least trust he'll at least listen to logic before tossing it out the window and his record says he doesn't just play to the crowd. His positions are typically well reasoned. In any case, if you want a change, act on it. Don't just mouth off and vote for the same piles of crap we have right now. I don't think the guy is perfect, but he IS definitely different, and he's different our side for the most part - so unless he croaks or another guy shows up, I know I'll be voting for him.
... I decided not to go to the USA any time soon right after GWB came into office. Fortunately, I haven't had to break my principles (I'm in Europe, of course).
The funny thing about these profiling things is that they can be used for so much more. For example one of my treehugging hippie political activist friends is on some kind of a terrorist watchlist to the US, and the funny thing is she wouldn't resort to violence to defend her own life, not to mention she's a small woman in a wheelchair... Another activist friend of hers always gets his book shipments from Amazon crudely opened along the way and then resealed. Mine always arrive untouched.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.