Slashdot Mirror
DHS Sends Tourists Home Over Twitter Jokes
itwbennett writes "In a classic case of 'we say destroy, you say party hard,' the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security detained a pair of British twenty-somethings for 12 hours and then sent them packing back to the land of the cheeky retort. At issue is a Tweet sent by Leigh Van Bryan about plans to 'destroy America,' starting with LA, which, really, isn't that bad an idea."
herr DHS. DHS and the Patriot Act, destroying a once great nation one bit at a time.
The terrorists have won.
According to the New York Times report on this subject:
Information gathered during this interview revealed that both individuals were inadmissible to the United States and were returned to their country of residence.
That's the government talking. But they don't say that it was the Twitter posts themselves that rendered the two "inadmissible." They say it was "information gathered during this interview." Presumably the people interviewed repeated many times that it was all a joke, they didn't mean it, etc., so it seems unlikely that the "information gathered" was anything that was said. It seems totally possible, though, that there was something else that flagged them to be blocked at the border during the interview (for example, they had prior drug convictions).
Breakfast served all day!
The US is fast on track to be earth's most totalitarian society.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A critical detail absent from the summary is that these tweets took place weeks before their trip -- they weren't done at the airport. So whereas previously one could not make a joke at the airport, now one may not make a joke anywhere, anytime.
The jokes in question were not made in the airport. They were made much earlier, while still in Britain. DHS just ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. The inability to confirm whether "destroy" is British slang, or that the other tweet in question was a Family Guy quote is absurd.
The corner of a round room
So, you're saying, "It's OK because they're white and thus obviously not a threat?"
No, I'm saying absent any contextual information, 140 characters can be widely interpreted as different things by a global audience. An audience who subconsciously fill in the context based upon their own individual culture, background, beliefs, ideas, worldview, etc.
Happens both in Tweets and in Slashdot posts.
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itwbennett, the author of this story, is now on the DHS no fly list.
They also ticked the: 'Aways subject to full cavity search.' option.
Isn't that the default?
Really?
First: It was a tweet.
Second: It was a joke. When did we get such a stick up our ass that making a joke is cause for arrest and deportation?
Third: Airports are not dangerous. Flying is not dangerous. Taking our national security too seriously though - that to me as a freedom loving American - is downright terrifying. Once the tools are in place, they will be used. They will be abused, and it is *damned* hard to get rid of them.
+1 Disagree
Why doesn't the average American see that the freedoms they hold so dearly and supposedly separates them from the "terrorists!" have been eroded and continue to be?
Here's what I don't get: Why don't more American servicemen and women, past and present, speak out about how cowardly and weak this kind of action makes America look?
Let's just assume for the moment that the "War on Terror" is totally legitimate. If we assume that's true, and these people were really kicked out of the country because of two Tweets, then... seriously? These two spooked us? This is what we're worried about? That's like a big, musclebound guy strutting around all day, sticking out his chest, then leaping onto a tabletop and shrieking as soon as some passing kid pulls a squirt gun.
It's deep in the American psyche to think of this country as the most ass-kickin' badass on the planet. The DHS is making us look like a bunch of scared pussies.
Breakfast served all day!
With all due respect, and with every sincere attempt to be sensitive to the loss of your relatives, I have to disagree that the GPP is vile, lewd, disgusting or hate speech. It's someone pointing out (accurately, IMHO) that we are on the fast-track to fascism and a police state. We may not yet be engaging in the type of infamy that WWII Germany was known for, but the comparison serves as a warning about what could happen if we don't reverse the trend. The worst horrors of the Third Reich did not begin as soon as Hitler took office. Likewise, we have not yet reached a comparable level of evil in our government, but I have to admit, I no longer recognize the country in which I am living.
Incidentally, for whatever it's worth, my father-in-law was a PoW in Nazi Germany. IMHO, I would be dishonoring the sacrifices he made if I didn't warn others that what happened in the past can happen again if we allow it.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
indeed. but this doesn't explain why, after detaining them for twelve hours, they were denied entry to the country. are we to believe that they were unable to convey that context successfully to their interrogators, or that those same interrogators couldn't get on some internets to investigate the whole "destroy" idiom? i can't help but think of the rob corddry character from the second 'harold and kumar' movie when i try to picture the clowns that thought these brits were an honest-to-god threat to america.
do not read this line twice.
Nazi Germany didn't start out like the evil machine it's portrayed as in movies. A lot of the German people had no idea the atrocities that were being carried out in their own country.
While we may not be anywhere near like Nazi Germany as it existed in 1943, how different are we compared to Germany of the 20's and early 30's? We're certainly tottering down the path to a full blown police state with this bullshit; that's undeniable to anyone that's really followed how things have gone in post 9/11 America. Hell, we even have our own ethnic group to demonize in place of the Jews, Middle-Easterners and Muslims. We may not be throwing them in camps and forced to work, but we have no problem shipping them off to Gitmo and holding them as long as we want without trial...
All this shit is supposed to keep us safer, but we just end up with our rights curtailed more and more. We may not be driving through police checkpoints every time we leave the house yet, but I doubt it's going to be long before people are getting thrown on the ground on the side of the road for not producing their "papers" fast enough.
I, too, hate Obama for allowing Twitter to exist.
I suppose that's what you mean, since he has no control over or anything to do with the daily operation of Twitter...
You, sir, are an excellent troll.
So vote Democrat only if you want things even worse than voting for Republicans - because in the end the only people really into fascism are liberals.
I bet you can't name one thing that these dastardly Democrats do that is worse than an equivalent measure by the Republicans (ok, maybe with healthcare).
Also, by definition a liberal cannot be 'into fascism'. Liberal implies a breaking free from constraints, while Fascist implies the opposite with absolute and strict monitoring and control. They are diametrically opposed and cannot be likened to each other in even the slightest way.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The terrorists, who are in this case the US Government, have clearly won. They have taken the freedoms which we have been granted and been too glued to American Idol and MTV to defend. The ironic part is that they have used the 'fear of losing our freedom' to take it from us.
The general population are more concerned with celebrity housewives than who is running the country. They have won. We are now a slave population, and those that speak out against it will be detained and perpetually monitored until the powers-that-be determine they have reached their quota of 'unlawful speech' and have them imprisoned, deported, or executed.
Welcome to the future. Welcome to 1984.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
...so are you going to vote Ron Paul? He's the only politician thats said he'd do exactly this.
It's called a "slippery slope". One "right" at a time and we may find ourselves in Nazi land again.
Except that this is America. It's not and never has been "Nazi land". The appropriate phrase would be "McCarthy Land", as in Joe McCarthy. Not quite as horrific as the Nazis, since he and his ilk didn't kill people by the millions. But still awful enough to serve as a warning to us all.
Those of us who were kids in the 1950s or earlier know that it's nothing new in the US of A. There has long been pressure to go back to that time, including returning women to the kitchen, retracting the Negro^WColored^WBlack^African-American vote, etc., etc., etc.
The appropriate slogan here is probably that old one about the price of liberty ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Just the other guys don't understand the language.
Nonsense. DHS got the joke, they just didn't appreciate it.
There is a significant segment of the population that simply does not appreciate jokes about terrorism or jokes that put the United States of America as the butt of the joke.
Right or wrong, that's what was going on here: Brits making fun about God, Glory, Apple Pie... Send 'em home to good old England where people have much more freedom than here in the United Fascist States of America.
Oh, that's right, the Brits live under constant surveillance that would never be tolerated here...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We had our own camps, too. We didn't kill the Japanese like the Nazis killed the Jews, but they certainly were imprisoned, they certainly lost almost all of their material possessions, they certainly died in the camps due to lack of adequate medical care and suicide, and, in some cases, yeah, they were killed by sentries "trying to escape".
There's plenty of horrific things in our own history that are on par with the Nazi's. How many fucking Native Americans did we put in the ground over the 250 years our nation has existed? How many Chinese immigrants died building the railroads? And of course, the millions of African-American slaves...
I'm not saying that we should allow these things to cast a pall over our entire society, but it's important that we remember these atrocities lest we repeat them. Sugar-coating history, and especially our culpability in these foul acts, does a great disservice to those that fought and lived and died through those times.
While we may not have condensed our atrocities down to a 30 year period like Nazi Germany, we've definitely had more than our share spread out over the 250 years our nation has existed...
indeed. but this doesn't explain why, after detaining them for twelve hours, they were denied entry to the country. are we to believe that they were unable to convey that context successfully to their interrogators, or that those same interrogators couldn't get on some internets to investigate the whole "destroy" idiom? i can't help but think of the rob corddry character from the second 'harold and kumar' movie when i try to picture the clowns that thought these brits were an honest-to-god threat to america.
It doesn't explain why, if the DHS thought they actually intended to "destroy LA" that they put them on a plane back to the UK without any charges.
Terrorists, bent on destruction, and THEY PUT THEM ON A JUMBO JET.
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that the DHS knew full well it was a joke and was simply punishing the tourists.
say you're a scientist, minding your own business, and the rather right-wing government that you're not a big fan of makes you an offer you can't refuse?
Germany went down a slippery slope too. avoid at all costs people who tell you what you want to hear.
at that time, only the lucky, or those with more than the usual foresight left when they could. if your life is in Germany, you're not going to leave until it's too late and there's war. and then you're held to ransom, especially if you have family.
things aren't so black and white.
Seems like the DHS have improved on the lower bound of Richelieu's requirement.
"If you give me six lines written
by the most honest man, I will find
something in them to hang him."
- Cardinal Richelieu
All depends on which part people are upset about. I'm pro immigration, so aliens (spare me the martian jokes, please) are quite welcome. I have tremendous respect for people who will give up their home, extended family and friends to make a new life in a new land. Now the illegal part, there I have a problem. If part of making your new life is disregarding the laws of the land, that's not good. Should we really welcome with open arms those who come here saying the hell with your laws, I'll do what I want?
The sentiment is just a consequence of the fact that we're not resolving the issue either way. We don't make it legal for them to be here, and we don't send them home. Pick one.
Well, McCarthyism and Naziism have a lot in common. They both were heavy on fear-mongering and scapegoating.
But history never quite repeats itself. There's always a different wrinkle. In some ways contemporary America resembles the environment in which far right and fascist parties rose to power in post-Depression Europe. There's economic dislocation and uncertainty, albeit milder, the same longing for a simple explanation to our problems that assigns responsibility for solving them to anyone but us.
On the other hand, the experiences of WW2, McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement have left us less inclined to scapegoat our neighbors; maybe even the least inclined anyone has ever been in the history of civilization. I think it's remarkable that there hasn't been a major resurgence of anti-semitism after the banking crisis of 2008. That's almost unprecedented.
There's the anti-immigrant movement, but I don't think most people who are in the anti-immigrant camp actually think that Mexican braseros picking crops is the source of our economic or international problems. Sure there's bound to be a few, but the sense I get is that what drives the thing is a feeling the world has got out of control, and this issue is one that ought to have a straightforward solution. The immigration issue is like a canvas on which you can paint simple sounding solutions to exerting control (like building a wall -- excuse me, *fence -- along the border).
But then we'll always have race. Racism is alive in this country, yet it's hobbled, forced to take bizarre forms like birtherism because nearly *everybody* agrees racism is wrong. If you don't think that's remarkable, go back and look at papers, magazines and books of the 1930s. Racism was actually seen as respectable, * scientific* even. If that seems inconceivable to us, that represents real progress We still have racism, but it has to pretend to be something else. Politicians who want to exploit have to dance around it. Racism today is a puny, petty thing, still able to damage, but deprived of most of its terrifying weapons. Nobody in the mainstream dares to call for concentration camps, lynchings, or overt racial discrimination in public or economic life. Today it is the norm for even *racists* to reject racism.
It's like Dicken's said. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That has always been and always will be true.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And that message is, "We are watching everything now. Everything."
Check your premises.
You had a good point, but you lost your credibility by claiming that Obama hates the rich. I find it unlikely that he would particularly hate himself for his own wealth (he is a millionaire).
Despite what the Republicans have been saying, the Democrats, Obama, and the OWS folks (most of them, anyway) actually have a relatively nuanced argument. The basic principle is that the wealthy have received the benefit of society in excess of the middle class or the poor, so they should pay a higher percent in taxes. It's the same philosophy behind donating to your university - it helped you get where you are, so you want to give back. It's the same principle that explains why the poor pay fewer taxes than the middle class. The government, if you believe one ought to exist, should be a joint effort. (If you don't believe that a government has a role, I have nothing to say). What "class warfare" exists is in the wealthy attempting to wiggle out of their moral, ethical, and legal obligations to pay a proportion of their income as taxes to the entity that secured their ability to make that income.
A more specific issue is the capital gains tax. "Normal" people work; they get paid, and that income is taxed. But "the 1%" don't need to work (if they don't want to) since the earnings on their investments aren't the same, and they're taxed at a much lower rate. But they haven't produced anything, they're leveraging their wealth to produce more wealth. It's not bad in and of itself, but if you subscribe to the economic principle that people act according to incentives, you can see that we, as a society are incentivizing the wealthy to avoid doing anything productive with that money, since then they might be taxed at a higher percentage than if they'd just let it sit. People also have problems with the "soft power" that the wealth brings, like accountants that can figure out how to pay even less in taxes.
The problem people have isn't with success. They work hard, they make a good living, support their family, pay their bills and taxes and things - but then they see that there's this other class, where if they could possibly get into it, they wouldn't need to worry about pesky things like work and money, because it'd all take care of itself. The objection isn't to the wealthy, or even the disparity, but to the feeling that there's an institutional clique that's keeping them out. And they hear the wealthy still complaining about taxes and trying (successfully!) to get them lowered. And they get angry.
Remember all those old movies or TV shows, where the good man who's being harassed always tries to defend himself with "I pay my taxes"? When did that stop being a matter of pride?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Look, I love equality for everyone and I think prejudice is stupid. But can we please stop pretending that Muslims are a "race" or an ethnic group? They are the followers of a religion, Islam.
Some religious extremists love spreading this lie because it allows them to stop any criticism (legitimate or not) of their actions by labeling it as "discrimination" or even "racism".
Please don't fall for it: there's a very important difference between attributes like ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, place of birth and other characteristics like religion or political ideas.
Everything in the first group is something that people get assigned at birth and cannot change, so discrimination based on them must be strongly opposed. But the stuff in the second group is something that people can change at any time if they want to, so criticizing people for their religion or political ideas should always be fair game.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
It's funny. When the Irish where bombing London, I don't remember the Americans taking that particularly seriously. In fact, as far as I know, a lot of Irish Americans were financially supporting the IRA. Certainly doesn't help when one of your own Congressmen actively supports the IRA, you have to wonder which side he's on. Especially when Peter King is the chairman for the United States House Committee on Homeland Security.
Does he support terrorism or not? Oh that's right - he supports it when it's not in the USA.