Slashdot Mirror
Disabled Woman Denied Entrance To US Due To Private Medical Records
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "In 2012, Canadian Ellen Richardson was hospitalized for clinical depression. This past Monday she tried to board a plane to New York for a $6,000 Caribbean cruise. DHS denied her entry, citing supposedly private medical records listing her hospitalization. From the story: '“I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others.'"
..literally hundreds of others crossed the border illegally. USA USA USA!
Give me your tired^whealthy, your poor^wrich/Your huddled masses^wvisa-workers yearning to breathe free^w"managed"
Only a few more words to go people; you can do it!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Does the D in DHS stand for douchebag?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The US can deny anyone entry into their country for any reason or no reason.
While I think we all agree that flying like many activities is something of a privilege. But at the same time, who really thinks it's a good idea to let some preening, unaccountable bureaucrat decide whether or not you should be granted that privilege with no justification needed?
While the commenter goes on to note that US Customs and Border Protection should not have had access to that medical information (with the poster claiming that is the only "deeper issue" at stake), it's interesting how many issues this one incident bring up.
In addition, we have regulations that can block someone from flying on dubious medical grounds. And that US Customs and Border Protection has the authority to block people from merely flying through the US on their way to other foreign locations.
It's like someone knocked a whole crate of worms off the locking dock.
That is absolutely amazing. (Not in any good way) TSA/ICE people literally have access to this stuff. It amazes me in an utterly horrifying way. That it's more international data sharing at this level should be cause for all manner of scrutiny and corrective action.
I'm sure Canadians and others are just about done with the US and what the government is up to.
USA, a country full of control freaks and paranoia.
We don't want no evil Canadian paraplegic terrorist to assault our defenseless citizens with kind words.
Irrational fear is the new patriotism.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Although I don't really understand why they want to keep depressed people out, it's just a tourist visa, not even a long term thing.
Bruce Schneier calls it "the war on the unusual" - I like "the war on diginity" because it better encompasses the kafka-esque nature of the unthinking and unyielding bureaucracy that produces this sort of result.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If the book was published in 2009 and the exact event stated by DHS for denying entry occurred in 2012, how did the 2012 event get known by the DHS from a 2009 book?
@Whee
This is basically the opposite of good advice, and none of it conforms to any experience I've ever had, or that anyone I know has had. I have a psychiatric diagnosis or two, and I've gotten treatment, and you know what? It's made my life a heck of a lot better actually getting some help. I've never had a doctor try to somehow disregard physical illnesses based on this, either.
The thing with "treatments" in scare quotes is a pretty strong indication that you're not merely unaware of the state of the art in the field, but actively avoiding any risk of being contaminated by actual information about it. And I guess if you wanna be that way on your own dime, that's your business, but when you start telling other people they should avoid basic health care services because you're afraid of them, that's sorta harmful to other people.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Irrational fear is the new patriotism.
No, it is not new. Irrational fear has ALWAYS been the keystone to American "patriotism". Hell, just look at the whole McCarthyism thing.
Disabled Woman Denied Entrance To US Due To Private Medical Records
While it wouldn't necessarily be a surprise to find out that her physical disability (paraplegia) might have had some affect on her mental wellbeing over the years, is it not just a little bit disingenuous to make it the first word of the headline, implying that it was her physical disability rather than her mental illness that caused the issue at the border?
You wouldn't write the headline "Black man arrested for insider trading" would you?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That creature was no bull dyke.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of bull dykes, at all. I've no use for them, and they have no use for me. But, a bull dyke is a woman, after all, and human.
That creature you refer to, who was running DHS, is a full fledged fascist pig, with an agenda of her own. She has no love for the United States, or any segment of the country's demographics.
As little as might like bull dykes, I would have preferred that there actually WAS a militant lesbian bull running DHS.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
irrational fear has been the keystone to all patriotism
nothing american about a human phenomenon
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is exactly why it's the only government in the world I'd trust to obey the law.
best troll ever?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
he's explaining a shitty reality, not condoning it
ever hear of the phrase "shooting the messenger"?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The point is that the NSA knows about everyones personal medical records. And they abuse that information.
All the recent mass murders in the U.S. have got the right wing blogosphere screaming for a crackdown on the mentally ill.
Should we point out to them that all these mentally ill people are loose on the streets and not getting proper treatment because these same right-wingers are insisting on social service cutbacks?
The state of the art in the field is medication. The drugs have changed over time, but drugs have been the first line of treatment for at least 40 years now. I have both experienced myself, and witnessed in others the indescribable suffering and agony that can occur due to drug side-effects, and those that appear due to withdrawal of the drugs after long-term use. Psychiatry would have you believe, I suppose, that the central nervous system is endlessly plastic, and can rapidly adapt and respond to medications being added and removed as one pleases. For the majority, perhaps this is true - but there is a sizable minority who find their mental health deteriorate the longer they are on the medications, and then discover (to their horror) that they cannot discontinue the drug without terrifying mental and physical symptoms, far worse than the original illness. If it should happen to you, psychiatry absolutely _will not_ have your back, or really anything to offer you, as even the drug manufacturers themselves do not know how the medications affect the brain long term.
One might argue that any treatment has risks, but after experiencing what I've experienced, I think people should understand what kind of risk they're really taking. For my part, I do not consider this kind of medication Russian roulette to be a "basic health care service."
Delusional? No, she was treated for clinical depression after a relationship ended. I guess you've never had a soul destroying break up that leaves you alone and utterly bereft of joy in your life. Be thankful for that because it fucking sucks.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Neither does the DHS, or have you ever seen a public anouncement of the DHS to refrain from violence during their next march?
Gosh, guys, what on earth could a person who is paralyzed from the waist down have to be depressed about?!
I think it's fair to say that the biggest threat to the world wasn't communism, it was the interplay of two superpowers struggling for dominance: everyone else is a target to them.
You were both a real threat to the rest of the world.
Land of the free my arse.
It is more overt in the U.S. than in other western countries.
Yet it is far more prevalent in the U.S. than in other Western countries.
Clearly you've never heard of the Daily Mail.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
I could be described as liberal, I think the over reaction to children playing with toy guns, drawing guns etc is absolutely ridiculous. What I find more ridiculous, is peoples inability to understand liberal and conservative are not two molds where everyone thinks exactly the same and has the same reaction and level of intelligence. Stop turning politics into a tribal war thinking there are two distinct sides, and one is out to get you.
The DHS quite obviously have access to sweeping surveillance information on anyone who wants to enter the US. This was obvious before the Snowden/NSA leak. A couple of years before that leak there was a British man who made national news here for being denied entry to the US (and being interrogated for hours) because of a tweet he made not long before he boarded the aircraft (the tweet was of the nature "we're gonna go out and destroy the town tonight" which in British slang means we're going to get drunk and party, but the DHS took it literally as if he were planning to bomb Seattle). To link someone's Twitter username with an actual living person in such a short period of time and have it ready on a border agent's computer when the unfortunate person arrives means they must have had pretty wide and detailed surveillance already capable of making all the links necessary to link a living person with a pseudanonymous Twitter username.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What made McCarthyism bad not the hunt for subversives per se, it was tossing out the constitution in the hunt for subversives.
Gee, now why does that sound so familiar?
It's deja vu all over again.
Those who fail to learn from history...
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Really, +4 Insightful? "Not necessarily irrational"?
Two small quotes:
1. -"... is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism".
2.- "The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. (...) During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would be declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute".
You might want to rethink that "misinformed but not irrational" part, it was a witchhunt. It was, basically: If I do not like what you think, do, say, film, perform, or just who you are, I am going to destroy you, your family, your career and everything you hold dear.
Those quotes come from the first two paragraphs from Wikipedia. Go, read the article. Done? Now go read some of essays and the extensive literature available on the subject, now that you are at it. And by you, I mean the author AND the people that moded that post.
I don't think you have a clear understanding of mental illness.
It's like physical illness, but applied to the brain and mental functions. People get better. People get worse. Some people are very very ill, many are just a bit ill. 1 in 4 people will have a mental health issue at some point in their life.
By "is delusional" you mean "was delusional". This is now managed with drugs, just like someone who lost their leg has their "balance issues" managed with a false limb. I don't think anyone would condone blocking entry to a country because that person had lost a leg in the past.
The decision was appalling, and the fact that it is clear that Canada is giving up private medical records to US authorities is disgusting.
Nice apologia, but it's bullshit.
When people are denied entry on a capricious basis, everyone suffers. Though they don't know it, even the border patrol fuckwads suffer. And then the country produces more fuckwards, who apply for border patrol jobs because they sense an opportunity to bully people. Then they invent a bunch of bullshit rationalizations for being assholes.
I tell everyone I speak to on the subject not to visit the USA. You'd have to be an asshole to give us your money. We're just going to use it to fuck you and everyone else over.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No. It's the law.
I thought the same thing when I read about some of the new laws, both passed and proposed among the states, which require a psychologist to report any patient who hints at rampage fantasies or violent thoughts or some such. Awesome, now people who need help will never confide in their psychologists. And naive innocent people who do so will be marked for life as 'violent tendencies'. Really, who hasn't had the occasional violent fantasy?
It is a real peeve of mine how laws get passed with absolutely zero thought given to what the consequences will be. People change their behavior, but so many of these dumb bills just assume that they won't.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Fear of guns is not irrational. The fact is, someone with a gun can kill you and there's not the damndest shit you can do to defend yourself.
If however someone tries to attack you with a knife you at least have the chance to try and punch them in the fact and stamp on their balls afterwards.
That's why gun murders are a different problem to other murders - they're harder to defend against, and even if you have a gun yourself it doesn't help because a criminal will always ensure they get the jump.
Even outside of that, if you do manage to fire back then there's a greater chance that stray bullets will kill innocent bystanders, something that doesn't happen when you're instead resorting to punching someone in the face.
It's also very easy to stick up, injure, or kill multiple people with a gun - you can quite easily assault a group of 5 people with a gun, but assaulting 5 people with a knife is probably the fastest way to get yourself a good kicking. You may injure or kill one or two of them but the fact you're going to get the shit beaten out of you after that is a rather massive deterrent.
So yes, violence occurs without guns, but guns amplify the problems of it by making it too easy.
This isn't to say I think banning guns outright is the answer in the US - they're too prominent and widespread for a UK style amnesty that has been extremely successful to work, but pretending they're harmless items that don't cause any problems is stupid, it's pretty obvious that they do.
But to turn your "I have never understood anti gun folk irrational fear of an inanimate object." comment around, I've never understood pro gun folks irrational fear of leaving their house without their gun or living without one in the first place. Are you really so lacking in confidence of your ability to defend yourself should someone try and physically attack you or what?
Perhaps you should consider that you possibly don't understand what "anti-gun folk" fear about handguns. They don't fear an interlocking series of components that produces a chemical reaction that accelerates an emitted object or objects. They fear the human abuse of such an item.
I don't think I've ever heard an anti-gun protester complain about a marine carrying a sidearm in uniform, but lots of them seem to complain about how amazingly trivial it is to obtain one even if you're a diagnosed schizophrenic felon (just head to your nearest gun show.)
Death by handgun isn't any more horrible than death by any other method (hell, you could argue that it is more humane if the shooter knows what they're doing - I'd rather die by gunshot to the head than burn to death) - but I have never heard anyone complain that dying by handgun is worse than anything else.
What I have heard people complain about is that handguns are more dangerous than other 'murder weapons' for the same reason that assault rifles are more dangerous than handguns, that hand grenades are more dangerous than assault weapons, that grenade launchers are more dangerous than hand grenades, and a 20mm automatic cannon is more dangerous than a grenade launcher. Each one makes it easier to kill more people than the next.
I assure you that carrying two M9s will allow you to kill far more people than carrying two knives.
So, perhaps you're a bit mistaken about why people don't like handguns. Personally, I enjoy handgun shooting as a sport, but don't carry one - I use a Mark 23 (a little big to carry anyhow.)
Loading...
Americans are not patriotic. Patriotic people wouldn't let their country slide to tyranny, nor let its leaders shit all over its laws, nor keep voting for people who can't even pass a damn budget without turning it into a game of "chicken".
While that's entirely possible, the fact is that they aren't at the top. It's American's turn to show what you're made of and whether you can handle real power. This far, the answers seem to be "pyrite" and "no". And so the USA fades to history, the same as every previous empire who failed the test. But at least the world has calmed down enough that it's unlikely anyone will be ransacking Washington.
Yours isn't, sadly.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Pharmacists are supposed to be more than pill counters. They're highly educated drug experts, far more so than physicians. The pharmacist is supposed to check what the physician prescribed, make sure it's correct, a reasonable dosage, and doesn't conflict with anything else the patient may have or be taking. It's very useful for the pharmacist to know the diagnosis, in order to do his job.