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Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing
JoeGee writes "On December 8th, Canadian sci-fi author Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy and Blindsight, was crossing the US/Canadian border at Port Huron, Michigan when he was involved in an altercation with US Border Patrol agents. According to Watts, he was beaten, left half-naked in a cold cell, and finally dumped on the Canadian side of the border with no coat. A legal consultant from the Electronic Frontier Foundation was successful in helping a civil rights lawyer in Michigan free Watts. Watts faces US charges of assaulting a federal officer. Based on the accounts, one can assume Watts did so by hitting the officer's hand with his face. If convicted, Watts faces two years in a US Federal prison."
So, did they just forget about the other mandatory bullshit charge, resisting arrest?
We visited Canada this summer and our experience with the US border patrol when we were returning home leads me to entirely believe the story as told by Watts. I've honestly had better and more pleasant experiences with the East German border patrol in the mid-80s.
You know, I would totally agree with you, but time and again bad guys have been caught trying to sneak through the security gates. Why they go that way instead of following your advice, I will never know. However, as long as they are going that way, we might as well try to catch them.
Qxe4
Does the name Ahmed Ressam ring any bells? He was caught crossing into the US from Canada with a trunkful of explosives — intended for Los Angeles' airport...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Listen... I am willing to give officers the benefit of the doubt... if there is doubt. The problem is I have seen too many times when officers are given the benefit of the doubt when there is no doubt. If cops assault someone without provocation or they use what is clearly excessive force they should be punished for it.
If someone escalates a situation with a cop, it is supposed to be law enforcement's job to de-escalate it. If things get out of hand momentarily that's one thing, but if law enforcement escalates the situation themselves they aren't any better than a criminal in that situation.
Some people think Chicago didn't get the games because of border issues.
Athletes' families, friends, blabla all getting in the states? What about North Korean athletes? Iranians and so on
Don't know if this incident is true but this is just another one (real or not) that shows how bad the experience can be.
The only real threat at the CAN/US boarder is people bringing handguns into Canada (where they are illegal) and selling them to Toronto street gangs.
Hand guns aren't illegal in Canada. I have my restricted FAS and own a handgun. It just means that there are more hoops for me to jump through to own it up here. I goto the local range about 40mins from my hometown to go shooting. Toronto is a half liberal pissing hole that things that handguns are the doom and gloom of everyone. It was to the point where the Toronto Police Service was going to march on City Hall because of the gun ban until the mayor and city council saw common sense. Where do the police go for firearms practice in the city when they want to ban their indoor range?
You know what the big problem is? Is that 5 years ago there was half the problem with travelling into the US as there is now. I really don't want to go. I live within 1.5hr give or take a few of 4 major border checkpoints. Why do I want to put myself through that hassle, when I can travel to other countries in the world that have easier travel and access. Well if you want to erect the fortress and piss off your northern neighbour, that's a good way of doing it.
It's funny however, the biggest problem that Canada deals with from Americans is teenagers. Little bastards who come over here to drink, cause havoc, smash shit up, or cause criminal offences then run back across the border. Goto any border city and they'll tell you what kind of pissing match it is to even try to get US border guards to stop them.
Om, nomnomnom...
I am a Canadian citizen living in Canada.
I have been entering and leaving the USA for pretty much my whole life.
I am 53.
A few years ago I stopped going to the USA, except when absolutely necessary.
One of the most dangerous places I can think of is a US border crossing.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I prefer to give law enforcement a bit of its own medicine when I can, so I assume they are guilty until it is proven otherwise. This is the way every LEO I've ever met has treated me.
Exactly. Or more accurately, assaulting an officer means trying to defend yourself from aggressive police.
I read a story about a homeless mean getting beat by cops for resisting arrest. The only charge? Resisting arrest of course. They had no reason to harass him in the first place, other than to give him a hard time for being homeless on public property.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
The day that we do pull out of there - which will be with our tails between our legs - will subject the peoples of Afghanistan and nearby states with the same dangers and indignities they'd face if that day were today. The only difference between now and then will be the body count.
I say this in the following capacity:
1. I deployed to a remote Sunni area of Iraq in 2007-08 with lots of rocket, mortar and small-arms fire.
2. I know dozens of people who have deployed to Afghanistan, including close friends.
3. I am at risk of deploying there myself shortly.
That said, I was against this intervention from the start. I am against it now. We should pull out yesterday. We cannot win. Afghanistan has proven intractable to central governance even with 105,000 Soviets there and the will to use armaments that we blanch at. There is no reason to expect that a lesser number of US troops will have any more luck. Only more death lies along that route.
Obama is playing LBJ's game of placating the public to the hilt, but he will understand failure soon enough.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
If he's smart, his lawyer has subpoenaed the surveillance camera footage before it's miraculously "lost". If they claim there isn't footage I'd have someone out there photographing the camera that was pointed where he was at when the incident took place cause I guarantee there was a camera recording the incident, they have camera's all over those places and half of them are hidden/non obvious.
The other thing I would do is take out ad's on both sides of the border in the paper asking for witnesses to come forward. If his account is correct he shouldn't have a problem beating the charges provided they can locate a witness or video, and with them he's got a slam dunk civil rights suit against DOHS. I'd also take out a civil suit against the border guards directly that the government will be forced to defend, and if not you get the pleasure of going after their personal assets as well.
To visit the family cabin on the US side of the border, I can say that about 50 percent of the US Customs agents are assholes on a power trip, pure and simple. Some at our border crossing have had sexual harassment charges leveled against them.
I've run into a few jerk-off Canadian Customs agents as well.
I hate putting myself in the power of these individuals - it seems the sky is the limit with regards to outcomes.
He must have forgotten where he was. After all, in Canada (and most of the free Western world) I'm pretty sure you can get a straight answer to the question "Why am I being detained?" from law enforcement without a preliminary beating about the head and shoulders.
The DHS doesn't give a shit about individual civil liberties or rights...effectively they behave as if they were the American Stasi, and should be viewed as such.
As history demonstrates, the most dangerous times to live in is when a Empire, particularly a bankrupt one is losing power.
To shore up the losses, at first legions of goon squads will become quite common place as those will be the best jobs.
(I love the propaganda on the "goon mobiles" or public police squad cars. I watched one video where one officer beat a unarmed mentally deficient man while the other tasered him with the Camera in one "Goon Mobile" capturing the side of the other "Goon Mobile" that had "Protect Honor Public Safety" written on it.)
I think Bugs Bunny said it best: "What a Maroon!"
Don't fight the Goon...at least not yet. Wait till the Empire is sufficiently weakened to the point where even the goons don't hold any loyalty or they are forced to shoot or incarcerate their own mothers or children.
Then you know its time to organize as time will be on your side.
But until then, your going to get run over, beaten, electrocuted or even Microwaved to a slow simmer so don't resist the goon squad.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
You do realize that America has over 2 million of its people in jail, with a good proportion in there for political reasons.
Like all successful police states these people aren't busted for expressing anti-Government views. Instead laws are passed taking away fundamental rights (remember your bill of rights is not an exhaustive list and IIRC amendment #9 basically states this) then the undesirables are targeted.
The favourite rights to be removed are things like the right to grow plants and have the products in your possession.
While this is bad enough, it's your country and if the citizens like having a police state so they can feel safe that is your right.
What really pisses me off about America is the way you treat foreign political activists. If they're lucky they get extradited and spend years in the inhuman American jails perhaps being raped. If they're not lucky they get tortured and/or killed.
Also you push other countries around to remove the same rights from their citizens. See drug laws and the most recent thing being IP laws with ACTA being pushed by Americans to take away my right to play the DVD I purchased on my computer and my right to make personal copies of stuff and lend stuff to you to make personal copies.
Shit, when the leader of a political party that I voted for is being threatened with the death penalty on a trumped up charge of money laundrying (making him a king pin) and a charge of selling seeds, a law that has only been enforced against political activists, there is something wrong. One article, http://peacesecurity.suite101.com/article.cfm/marc_emery_and_the_bc3 google Marc Emery for many more.
Of course like all police states if you are a respectable citizen you don't have much to worry about. Just keep your nose clean and you won't have your life ruined by being accused of diddling children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I crossed the border several times to go to track driving schools. First border crossing, I was nervous. The Canadian officer was curt, and mostly concerned about the fact that I was unemployed at the time. Probably picked up on my being nervous. I just didn't want the hassle of being searched or giving the "wrong" answer.
Second border crossing, the Canadian officer was friendly and while they are trained to engage you in banter to judge how shady you are (which clearly Mr. Watts failed, want to guess why?), he seemed genuinely amused that I was taking MY car to drive on a racetrack. Have fun, he said, and handed me my paperwork.
Both times back, the US crossing was completely unmemorable. Drove up, handed over my license, answered some quick questions about when I came into Canada, what I'd done, and whether I had anything to declare. 2-3 minutes, tops- long enough to run my plates and license in the computer and see how fidgety I was. Nobody at any of the events I went to (all of them American) had anything bad to say, and some of them had been coming to the track for years.
I lost my license right before a trip to Canada, and called around trying to figure out if a temporary replacement license was sufficient. I eventually got put through to one of the actual border officers, who was audibly in the middle of his lunch break, munching on his sandwich. For a cop on his lunchbreak being pestered by some dumb shmuck, he was not only helpful but...chipper. He wouldn't make any solid promises, but he did ask me when I was coming, my name, and a few other things, and said if he was on shift when I came back into the US, he'd help if he could and take the fact that I called ahead etc under consideration, but he said I definitely needed to make sure I'd be OK getting IN to Canada. So he gave me the number for his Canadian counterparts, and cheerfully wished me a good afternoon and best of luck trying to get a 'real' license or some other government ID out of my state government (didn't.)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. A very curt, annoyed, angry Canadian customs agent answered the phone, and read me the fucking riot act and demanded to know how I got the number for their office, why was I calling them, who was I, what the hell did I want. When I explained what I wanted (mainly to know if I'd be permitted into Canada with my temporary license, and was there anything I could do to smooth the wheels, like bringing extra documentation of some sort, anything to help), point-black refused to answer or discuss anything with me, and hung up after angrily saying "NEUO!" to several questions.
Please help metamoderate.
This is disappointing. The States has been well known for a while as the most hostile and least welcoming country in the world. I refuse to fly to the States after all the awful stories I've heard from friends that have been there (border control, the people are apparently fantastic once actually inside). However a Canadian friend suggested I fly to Canada and drive to New York (somewhere I would like to visit). However, after everybody pretty much backing up the posted story with their experiences, I guess that is out too. Not a huge loss, as the States is just one small place and there are thousands of other more friendly places to go to, but still it's a shame to cross something from my To Do list for such a reason.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Now, when a police officer is in a situation like that, he usually likes to have complete control of the situation
A situation like what? Somebody who is asking him a question? Police like to talk about how they need to protect themselves. They need to wake up and understand that they are in an unsafe profession. It is their duty to GIVE UP their own safety in return for the privilege of being able to arrest and potentially kill people. You don't get to have the same level of safety as everyone else. Police love to use excessive force because it keeps them safe. While this probably does help keep them safe, they need to suck it up and realize they have no RIGHT to be safe. If you want the right to be safe, don't go into law enforcement. The civilian population has a higher right to safety than the police, expressly because the police are the only ones with a monopoly on legal force.
A few weeks ago in my locale, a police officer shot an unarmed 12 year old girl with a bean bag gun. Was the girl belligerant and uncooperative? Yes. Did the police officer perhaps make himself safer by beaning her? Yes. However, the man is a coward. If you want every day at work to be safe, why would you choose law enforcement as a profession?
If the police being safe means that people get beat up and shot, then they don't deserve safety.
A lot of these posts don't seem to get the fact that he was leaving the US to enter Canada. And US Customs were stopping Canadian vehicles to search them. This is very bizzare behavior by US Customs, if they needed someone stopped normal policy would be to Inform Canada Customs to stop them before they "offically" enter Canada and send them back to US Customs. So what was US Customs up to that the "US" did not want "Canada" to know about?
People in general have been gunned down in stores, malls, their home, in alleys, street corners, etc. The four police officers being gunned down recently is the aberration of multiple victim public shootings that have been reported for years. In short, those four police officers, if anything, merely cause a statistically inflation of police officer occupational deaths for one year.
Would you feel the same way if firefighters, in seeing a school burning down, would refuse to rush in to rescue trapped children? Or would you acknowledge that firefighters (and police officers) chose their profession with the intent to, if necessary, lay down their life to save others?
Besides, discretion is about "cautious discernment" not "excessive force". You seem to view police officers as if they are weapons, with their only choices being to shoot/beat or not. Instead, police officers are people, with the ability to question, order, detain, and/or arrest. None of this translates into a need for reckless abuse of people.
PS - If you believe that the danger of a job should be a factor in what consideration we give to people of a profession, how do you feel about farmers being able to beat and arrest people? Farmers, IIRC, have a higher fatal occupation injury rate than police.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Certainly, that's how it should play out in the US: Verbally refuse all searches. Every. Single. Time. Be polite about it, but be clear. And if they decide to search anyway, do not do anything to physically impede them -- that fight comes later.
At a border crossing, though, you're not yet inside the US. You have not yet succeeded in entering the country. The Constitution need not apply.
Therefore, I think it's best to be as agreeable as possible when crossing a border. They want to look in the trunk? Offer to open it for them. They want paperwork? Produce it. They want to ask you questions? Answer them. They want everyone out of the car so they can dig through it? Let them.
IMHO, of course, but I'm very aware that my rights as an American only exist when I'm on American soil.
Kid-proof tablet..
The expectations you listed bear a STRIKING resemblance to what tourists were told to expect and do when traveling from the US to places like the PRC, USSR, North Korea, and maybe Iran on those rare occasions that a US citizen might conceivably have had a need to back during the latter days of the Cold War. Street smarts is one thing, but having to take precautions like THIS, having to spend your time imprisoned in your own skin by FEAR, is the very kind of thing that identifies police states.
-
Anyone care to offer asylum to future US citizens who manage to escape the "land of the free"? I think perhaps someone should give it a thought. Preferably, in a nation that respects human rights, of course.
Except when your crappy government starts tramping all over trade tariffs despite being ruled in non-compliance by international courts and holds their wealth over our heads as a way of influencing policy ...
America does indeed buy influence in the form of highly unfair trade arrangements, or ignoring the stipulations of less unfair ones.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Then ask why the USA spends more on 'defense' than the next 5 countries on the list combined.
The USA projects its power well. That tends to have an effect on decisions made elsewhere.
Have you never played Civilization? The player at the top of the game is the combined target of ALL other players. If you are in 1st place, you need to make sure you're in 1st place with a VERY comfortable margin.
With our dollar high and our relatively strong economy in face of global recession, I can see why the border guards are trying to keep us from spending our hard earned money visiting you down there.
[sarcasm off]
When the fingerprinting and other unnecessary "security" measures that attempt to treat me as a potential criminal rather than a visitor cropped up, I discussed it with my wife and we decided to avoid any future travel to the United States until reason again prevailed. In the mean time, Europe is very pretty, and welcoming.
- Canadian
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Read Harlan Ellison's "The Tombs", an account of when police and the system almost ruined his life back in the 50s over possession of a single little handgun.
When crossing into Canada, you do not encounter any US Border Patrol at the Blue Water Bridge. At the Port Huron crossing, when crossing into CA, there's a toll taker (it's a toll bridge) on the US side, you cross the bridge, then stop for Canadian border inspection.
The process is reversed when entering the US (pay toll on CA side, go through border inspection on US side).
There's something not right with this story.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yeah, why can't we all be like Canadians?
Sorry to break your bubble, but your country is not doing well because you are nicer, better, or smarter people, it's because you have a powerful and stable southern neighbor and because your ancestors managed to grab a huge landmass rich in natural resources and with no hostile neighbors, and to keep people out so that it remains settled sparsely.
As for those laws that people keep imposing on you, that's related to your political and economic significance. Where do you think companies and activists are going to lobby? Canada? Why would they bother? They lobby in the biggest and strongest nation because that's the nation that can then push other nations to comply. If the US weren't kicking you around, the same kind of laws would be imposed on you by some other nation. And if you were big and strong, you would be imposing these laws on others.
But you may get your wish: Americans are getting really tired of foreign adventures. If the US turns inwards, you may find yourself getting pushed around by the EU (British, French, Germans). But you already have experience with that, don't you?
Was it Bush or Cheney that threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the stone age? Then there's the trade deal stuff that Australia and many other places fell for. We don't all want to live in France where their answer to silly US policy is a rapidly extended middle digit.
You are correct that it's a choice, but there is a bit of pressure and the choice can be made by uniformed idiots.
Civilization is a game targeted at world conquest by military means. There is no form of economic cooperation, trade, or anything but military conquest. It's not the real world.
We would all do far better if we chose not to spend trillions on war and instead allowed those trillions to remain in the hands of the people and used as they saw fit for free market exchange and production.
Many might say we would be better off if we were not trying to run am empirical international policy and instead tried working on market exchange as a means of getting along with others. It's more effective.
But by writing this I'm probably getting marked as a potential internal-terrorist by the government for not spewing nationalistic rhetoric about Hope, Change, Coercion, Theft, Extortion, and (lame & imaginary) Rights.
Looters and Moochers!
and the last 8 years of the War on Terror have not helped.
The silly thing about the War on Terror is that I'm currently more terrified about what my own government is doing than what the terrorists are doing. And I feel equally helpless to stop it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Your description of US boarder Guards/Homeland Security describes Calgary Police Service.
There is a fake war on crime in Calgary. The media is controlled by the Calgary Police Service, which can be seen in the way CTV Calgary and CBC Calgary presents news stories. Their removal of comments which do not support Calgary Police Services adds to this statement.
Calgary Police Services claim they are shot at daily, marked, hunted and attacked by gangs. Every week they ask for at least 100 to 1000 more Police, in order to protect the City of Calgary. Recently Calgary Police have been seen carrying C-8 Rifles (AR-15 carbine), primarily used by the Canadian Military, during traffic stops, and other actions. At least one person have been shot and killed with a C-8 rifle by the Calgary Police to date.
When they get a call about a child using a pellet pistol or rifle in his parents back yard, the media reports "firearm seized during raid on Home in the South East", of course not mentioning the nature or use of the firearm. The media will just report a firearm was seized, it is not clear at this time the true intent of the firearm, but drugs and gangs might be related to the case, investigations are still on going.
Police will also search homes of lawful registered firearm owners, arrest the owners for a silly made up charge, and release the press release as a large cache of weapons were seized from a home in Calgary. Why do they do this? to increase support for hiring new Police, passing new bylaws, and support for covering up mistakes they have made.
A single person with a pocket knife becomes a knife wielding criminal, who intent with the knife is unknown at the time.
When they kick a dog to death off duty, it becomes a dangerous dog attacked an off duty Police who defended his life by killing the dog. The dog in at least one case was a Yellow Lab known to be friendly with young children.
The issues presented here on Slashdot, is not just issues with the boarder guards, but an issue with all law enforcement. We need to increase the common level of education in everyone, in order to correct the issues with our current law enforcement groups.
If we do not start increase our educational level, and the free flow of information, we will become more and more of a police state. Not just here in Calgary, but everywhere in North America.
Hegemony may describe the current situation, but it only exists with the consent of most parties involved. This isn't quite like Roman times, when the Romans used military force to spread their will around, and anyone who objected was killed. The US may have a strong military, but it's not that strong, and is already stretched to its limits dealing with two backwards middle-eastern countries. The Romans, at their peak, were able to conquer and subdue the entire European continent and more. Napolean got a hegemony because he won a series of military campaigns against the other European powers. The US is not a serious military threat to Europe, Russia, or China. If these other places all told the US to STFU about copyright BS, drug BS, or whatever, there's nothing the US could do about it. What are they going to do, start a major world war over copyright extensions? They're having enough trouble convincing the people to carry out long-term wars with backwards countries over (alleged) WMD and terrorist acts; the people certainly aren't going to stand for wars with advanced powers over BS like copyright and drug laws.
When people are killed, they tend to die.
Maybe you mean that the ratio of "had aggression directed at them" to "was killed by said aggression" is higher for policemen - but even if we assume that everyone who is ever angry at a policeman immediately ends up killing the cop, the data still shows that fewer policemen die. If we assume that aggression against policemen is more likely to be fatal, the only possible conclusion is that policemen don't draw aggression as much.
In short, you argue that policemen are more well-liked by everyone than, say, timber cutters. I don't see how that meshes with their job being especially dangerous.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
In defense of the Brits, the structure of their navy during and right after the Cold War was in large part because of a division of labor and resources determined by NATO (and the US military). The British Navy was designed, during this period, to work as a part of a larger NATO/US Navy force tasked with dominating the North Atlantic.
And can I add - OMG how off-topic is that? We're talking about the SF writer Peter Watts getting the crap kicked out of him by some thug border guard. A lot of cops are nice guys, a lot aren't. If this is the driving element in this case, I suspect the charges against him will be quietly dropped in a couple months. The DA offices in the USA are notorious for their attempts to avoid embarrassment by any means necessary. First they'll try to get him to plead out, offering him probation or some such. If he refuses, they'll threaten him for a few months, then, very quietly, so quietly in fact no one will hear about it, they'll drop the charges. I've seen this very scenario play out in a friend's life. I even experienced a trivial version of this little dance, when I was once charged with reckless driving and decided to contest the charge.