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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."
Agreed, I mean we have how many hundreds of thousands who make it across the mexican border every year? The Canadian border is even worse security wise too.
This really only hurts the law abiding.
Obviously this only applies to people crossing the border LEGALLY. People who for whatever reason cross the border illegally will never get a "terrorist profile". Well done, America, well done. Who advised you on this, the RIAA/MPAA/copy protection industry?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
So what they're saying is that they are going to use a high-tech facility to match names to a list of people known to cause false positives and is based on poor information at best so that a list of names can be created for the next half century for the government to track the travel habits of its citizens.
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'm ashamed that my future tax dollars and my children's future tax contributions will be going to pay for this fucking horseshit and no one is doing anything to stop it. Hey, politicians listen up... Want my vote? Put a fucking stop to this waste of time, energy and money. Thanks.
I was trying to think up some kind of response to this but, honestly, it's so infuriating and, more importantly, so stupid that I simply can't.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
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...
This was posted by the Washington, er, Post on November 3, 2006. Whoops.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
"We gather, collect information that is needed to protect the borders," Agen said. "We store the information we see as pertinent to keeping Americans safe."
It's sad but there are people that think this will result in tangible safety. They don't stop to think that just maybe people coming into the US through the proper means aren't the major threats. I've talked about this is in other posts, but this takes the cake. Every one is to be viewed as a threat. The government is forcing a paranoid world of survivalism on us. I hate being alarmist, and I hate ragging on the government for nothing, but this is serious. This a fundamental challenge to the idea of personal liberty, innocence until proven guilty, and pretty much every other tenet of the philosophical basis for our nation. This is a gross, paranoid, unrealistic power grab. After reading the article I don't have a whole lot of hope. It was a calm rational piece, which is normally what I would want, but this needs to be shown for what it is.
So to all newcomers... welcome to America where we aim to alienate and tread over any and everyone!
I got a catholic block.
Great, I can see it now:
Agent: It says here you have a truck full of... "baklava"?
Trucker: That's right.
Agent: Hold on, let me just run it through the ole' computer here...
(interminable wait)
Agent (to the crate of deserts): OK Mr. Bahklever, lay on the ground or we'll shoot!
Trucker: Dude... you're yelling at a pastry...
Agent: ON THE GROUND!!!
Trucker: I don't think it can hear you, man.
Agent: (incinerates truck)
Sort of like most laws designed to prevent people from doing things that might allow them to commit a crime.
I'm a bit of a fan of punishing those who have been duly convicted and leaving everyone else to go about their business.
In a case like this, with so many people and so few terrorists, a profile is not going to accomplish much. If as many as one in ten thousand people crossing the borders were terrorists, it would make a bit more sense.
Of course, if this program were worthwhile in the first place, it wouldn't be if Canada didn't do something similar. There is absolutely no way to stop anybody from crossing the northern border. It's thousands of miles long, unpatrolled, unfenced, and passes through some pretty wild territory.
So, it's another pointless exercise. All it will do is hassle assorted people, many of them innocent, and do nothing to prevent terrorism.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Ok, if they track so much information could they inform the airline what happened to my luggage? I was flying from Winnipeg, Canada to Chicago, Il; and on to Norfolk.
Somewhere in here United lost my luggage. They don't have a clue what they did with it.
No, plenty of people point it out, but the emperor has no shame, either.
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.
You'll never get elected to office with that platform - those wishing to control everyone's life for the good of everyone will be upset that you don't agree, the "bleeding hearts" will be upset that you actually punish (vice rehabilitate) those that have been convicted, and the "if you don't have anything to hide, you wouldn't mind us violating the fourth and fifth amendments" crowd will be upset that you don't support Big Brother.
I agree with you, though.
Well, I have been reluctant to want to visit the US given the rampant paranoia and siege state that seems to be prevalent down there recently, but this pretty much guarantees I won't ever visit again. Its not that I am a terrorist, its not that I am any sort of threat to anyone, and its not that I have anything to hide in fact, its that I don't want to have a profile that will be retained for 40-years, that will undoubtedly end up being incorrect in some aspect, which I can't update, correct, or most likely even view at any point during that period. Its that I don't want to risk having some mistake result in my being whisked away to some foreign country for a torture session that will produce whatever they want me to say (as erroneous as it will be) because I recognize I wouldn't stand up to sustained torture for very long. The chances are admittedly very very small, but why take any chances. When the mad dog in the junkyard is unpredictable, its better to just stay away from it.
:(
Weighed against the benefits of visiting the USA, I would rather go to just about any other country in the world right now. I sincerely hope you folks manage to straighten things out, find your constitution again, resurrect Habeas Corpus and the rights of the individual, and perhaps find your sanity. As it stands the Terrorists out there are winning the so-called war, because they have convinced your government to turn the US into exactly what the Terrorists claimed it was in the first place.
Its so sad to see all this coming to pass. You folks down in the US have my sincere sympathy
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The US won't be able to keep the data for 40 years, it won't exist by then!
Can you say it?
I know you can!
We make the DDR look like Sweden!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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
The purpose of these laws is not to stop terrorism. They are to restrict the law-abiding so the government can become progressively more authoritarian and the instruments will be in place to quickly eliminate those who pose a threat.
Furthermore, this is the purpose of pretty much all recent anti-terror laws. Across the pond, extension of detention without trial, anti-free-speech laws, compulsory biometric identity cards, these are all designed so that, come the need to stand up against an increasingly oppressive government, resistance will be impossible.
In case it's not absolutely obvious, the whole "war on terror" - which is like a "war on guns", since terrorism is a strategy, not an identifiable enemy - is engineered to create the kind of fear that makes these laws appear legitimate.
(That's not to say there aren't some groups which pose a threat to American security which need to be dealt with. Germany and Italy overran most of Europe and were dealt with in 6 years. The sixth year anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone.)
Humanity has never faced a greater threat to its continuing freedom. We've had governments oppress with hands, with ears, with guns; but never with the sort of technology we have today to monitor, to track, to profile, in my home county and across the world. And every technologist is to blame who does not vigorously oppose government use of his creations beyond government's mandate, who will not quickly abandon any project so co-opted. That's includes you, reader. For it is better to halt the technology's progress entirely than to build a weapon that will ultimately point at you.
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
What is the problem? I am on a J-1 visa in the states and go in and out regularly. Why shouldn't they keep a profile of me? At least someone who cares... ;)
I think USA would be a much better country if people learned that coffee should be drank from a porcelain cup rather than a paper one and that beer should be drunk from a glass rather than a bottle. Next you should fix the medical insurance or at least regulate it more seriously if you don't think universal insurance is not good enough. Then you should do something about taking mentally ill people off the streets, this is really quite bad. There are real things that need to be fixed in this country, rather than worry about privacy!
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.
The Americans, however, can.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Not to sound too ignorant here, but when did terrorism or rumors of terrorism become the USA's top priority? Is domestic terrorism the leading cause of death? Is international terrorism for that matter?
From a government perspective, is it to create a threat to introduce fascism as commented by Naomi Wolf http://youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc/? Or government and big business corruption and cronism?
From a citizen standpoint, do we following along because of popular media (24, and the hosts of other TV shows that follows in its footsteps)? Why do we continue to argue whether a specific terrorist prevention mechanism will work or not? Are there not other priorities that should be getting our attention?
-AC
Thats the thing really isn't. You could get some Iranian woman , who might be really white (As many Iranians are) , give her a passport with a name like "Maria Jones" or even "Frances Cohen" or something, swing a cross or star of david around her neck, some fake ID papers and some lessons on affecting a perfect accent, and you have someone that won't raise an eyelid. Comes up on the test as a bit fundamentalist inclined in personality? Sure, she's heading to the US for an Assemblies of God, or Jehovas Witness conference. Theres NOTHING you can do to stop that , and a smart terrorist knows that.
tt
Its all symptoms of dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes of terrorism. If the world thinks the US is "The happy country with coca cola and Levi Jeans" then you won't recruit a damn soul. If the world thinks the US is a violent country with a military mad government that claims morals whilst going around blowing up shit they don't like, well you won't need to look hard to find those recruits. Its in fact the infuriating thing about this whole 'terrorism era', we didn't even need to have it. Its like we *chose* to piss off the middle east and make them go crazy and hate us. You don't 'fix' bee nests by hitting them with rocks.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
... the "war on terror" isn't about keeping people safe, it's about keeping people scared.
Who, exactly?
The only people who are stopped from getting guns by the gun-control laws are the law-abiding. Getting an illegal gun isn't particularly hard in any major city, and I've been told by LEOs that the market price for them is in some cases substantially lower than you'd pay for one legally (especially if it's already been used in a crime and been discarded).
If you want to get a gun for some nefarious purpose, it's not hard at all. And in return for this situation, we create an onerous burden on people who have no criminal intent, and never would use their guns for any illegitimate purpose.
Likewise, if you want to cross either the northern or southern border of the U.S. without going through the CBP rectal-probing, you can do it. By piling the restrictions on people who come through legal checkpoints while basically ignoring the massive challenge that actually trying to seal a thousands-of-miles-long border would entail, we're creating the same black/white-market division that exists with guns. Only the people who are committed for some personal reason to staying legitimate will go through the official channels. Everyone else will go around it. The result is nothing but a false sense of security and the imposition of unnecessary, do-nothing procedural requirements on those who follow the law.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just wait until you see what the NEXT totalitarian to hold office does, now that Bush has lowered the bar....
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Um, Walmart can't send you to some foreign country to be tortured and forced to confess things you haven't done.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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
Actually, more than a year ago. TFA is dated November 3, 2006!
I have to ask: are those insensitive clods?
What was once true, is no longer so
The fad these days is to pretend that people that screw up are evil people and punish them forever, then wonder why reoffense rates are so high (must be those evil people).
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Exactly. Cos the way to make sure that criminals have a chance to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society is to make sure that when they get out they become a pariah with little chance of landing a decent job, obtain decent housing, or get the social or medical services they need, right?
We lock up more people by far than any other "civilized" country, and has it lowered the crime rate? Nope. And with background checks becoming easily available to all potential employers and landlords, combined with the climate of paranoia fostered by the government, we almost guarantee that offenders will face a steep uphill battle in trying to become law-abiding, productive citizens again. The only potential saving grace is that they keep lowering the bar on what constitutes a criminal offense, so maybe someday just about everyone in the country will have a criminal record and it will all even out.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
... 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.
The problem is, people are trying to solve the problem of terrorism. On top of this is a more pervasive/fundamental problem, the immorality of the populace. As TheVelvetFlamebait points out (indirectly), there will almost always be someone who feels they have a valid reason to attack another people/nation. So, what happens if/when the US turns towards those corrections you suggest? Then the people who now argue against torture will be the ones most pushing it, while the ones for torture now will push towards making the system go their way.
This boils down to, as I said, the immorality of the populace. Individuals feel that part of being strong is being willing to commit an immoral act (aka "being pragmatic") if it is "necessary" to fulfill a "greater" end. And thanks to a representative democracy, that means that politicians are elected to do "the dirty work" for the populace, leading inherently to immoral politicians. But, politicians have their own code of conduct that doesn't involve violence in the government (in general). So, persuasion, guile, etc are used in Congress/Presidentcy/Supreme Court.
Noone's law ideals are perfect, however. So, when something "bad" happens under one's own set of laws, it is easier for already immoral politicians to violently suppress those people instead of either (a) working to fix one's ideals to resolve the problem or (b) accepting that ideals are imperfect and bad things invariably happen no matter how one tries, so merely fixing one's ideals for the sake of change is useless. And again, those politicians who don't respond with violence aren't doing what they're paid/voted-in to do and are eventually removed from office.
This is why "dealing" with terrorism isn't the answer; it is one of those "bad" happenings that invariably occurs. The only thing to really argue is morality/ideals. Torture is self-evidently bad. Violating human rights is self-evidently bad. Trying to boil it down to a cost/benefit analysis to somehow justify going against morality isn't the answer. But, then, I consider it more important to be able to live with oneself than to merely live (be it oneself or one's country). Too bad most Christians don't follow that Christian philosophy.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Recognizing that people make mistakes and that we also make mistakes, that perhaps we should forgive, or even trying to understand what led to the act...all of these have been caricatured and stigmatized as "liberal" soft-headedness. Even pointing out that someone's childhood may have an effect on their actions as an adult elicits scorn and contempt. No doubt there are some "liberals" out there who wouldn't even punish a serial child rapist/axe murderer, but instead of arguing against specific bad arguments, our entire capacity to understand, forgive, and move on has been thrown out like a baby with the bathwater. To understand and forgive wrongdoing you have to have humility, which is not only lacking in our culture but which is actively discouraged.
I've been faulted multiple times for trying to have humility. You aren't supposed to admit that you could be wrong, or that that person in the dock could, by the grace of God and bit of luck, be you as well. Everything is black and white, all the time. Well, unless we're talking about Rush Limbaugh's drug conviction or something like that--people seem to have no trouble handling nuanced arguments about blame and addiction when it comes to Rush. Anyway, I can't tell you how surreal it is for me, an atheist, to be lectured by an evangelical Christian I work with that I shouldn't be so humble, that I should be more proud of what I've done, and so on. Humility and forgiveness go hand in hand, and right now forgiveness, and that whole "don't judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes" thing, has been caricatured and shunned almost out of existence, or at least out of influence, in the USA.
The only potential saving grace is that they keep lowering the bar on what constitutes a criminal offense, so maybe someday just about everyone in the country will have a criminal record and it will all even out.
Hopefully someday this will include politicians.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
So by fighting the war on terror like this, we've let the terrorists win. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The US locks up a larger percentage of its population than possibly even all the "less civilised" countries too. Even if you consider some countries' reported figures dodgy - there's a huge gap between those and the US rates. At the very best for the US (i.e. wildly inaccurate figures for some "uncivilised" countries), the US is still going to be in the top few countries in the world for incarceration rates!
Nevermind that the US is also way up there in executing people.
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