War On Terror

In May, Bruce Schneier wrote this:

Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

Well, we now know the response:

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border
No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies

The Washington Times ran an interesting story last week:

Want some torture with your peanuts?

Just when you thought you’ve heard it all...

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below).

This bracelet would:

• Take the place of an airline boarding pass

• Contain personal information about the traveler

• Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

. . . and weep for the Fourth Amendment:

And people wonder why Congress has an approval rate of 9%.

Sheesh.

UPDATE: FISA passed in the Senate, 69 - 28:

WASHINGTON - The Senate approved and sent to the White House a bill overhauling controversial rules on secret government eavesdropping Wednesday, bowing to President Bush's demand to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

Here in the Midwest there is a real and significant problem with meth - to the point of paranoia on the part of both the population and government. This has led to laws restricting access to certain precursor drugs and chemicals, reports of environmental damage (meth labs tend to produce some really nasty chemical contamination), and the development of special task forces of local, state and federal police agencies to target meth production and distribution. It is the War on (Some) Drugs on steroids.

So it is fairly easy to see how something like this can happen:

Town Finds Drug Agent Is Really an Impostor

GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this tiny town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.

Have you ever been a tourist, and taken pictures of your trip? Have an interest in architecture or large engineering projects? Perhaps like to draw or paint plein air? Or maybe you're a writer wanting to make notes about a particular location you want to use in a book or story?

Welcome to the Terror List:

Terror watch uses local eyes

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases.

It's a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs' mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.

* * *

In his own inimitable way, the Rude Pundit this morning posted about the absurd FISA legislation currently being debated in the Senate. The non-obscene central point:

If Madison or Benjamin Franklin could, they would bitch slap the Democrats in Congress for legalizing the ability of the President to authorize spying on Americans with no oversight, no cause other than whatever whim the President wants to call an emergency. And to the Republicans who pinched each other's nipples in joy at how the Democrats raised their haunches for easy access, the Rude Pundit hopes you trust the hell out of President Obama.

That's the thing that amazes me: the Republicans, almost without exception, are willing to turn this kind of power over to a Democratic president. Who will likely have a solidly Democratic House and Senate behind him.

Have they lost their minds?

Wow:

Court gives detainees habeas rights

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

And here's a Reuters story:

Top court allows Guantanamo prisoners' appeals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have the right to go before U.S. federal judges to challenge their years-long detention, handing a stinging setback to the Bush administration.

What he said:

And to finish:

Jim Downey

Man, I love the UK, particularly Wales. Have been there half a dozen times, and enjoyed it every time.

But I have to admit, the whole creeping and creepy 1984 mindset about CCTV there drives me nuts. The Brits are well on their way to being a true surveillance society. As I have written recently:

I am constantly dismayed by just how much Great Britain has become a surveillance society, to the point where it is a dis-incentive to want to travel there. In almost all towns of any real size, you are constantly within sight of multiple CCTV cameras, and there is increasing use of biometrics (such as fingerprint ID) as a general practice for even routine domestic travel.

Brilliant:

Man, it'd been awesome if the Pope had said, in that "Fuck, Josef Mengele is about to inject my eyeball" voice of his, "Shit, that really contradicts my image of a nation of bloated, reality show-watching materialists who don't give a rat fuck that their government tortures and murders, who would rather suck a horse's dick than actually help the poor, and who toast their TVs whenever they hear about the latest execution, but, hey, sure, George, we'll go with your description for the next coupla days."

Read the whole thing.

Bush & the Pope deserve one another.

Jim Downey

Man, I don't know which aspect of this news report is worse, the religious nuttiness or the authoritarian response:

Praying passenger removed from flight

Orthodox Jewish man ignored flight crew instructions during religious ritual

NEW YORK - A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane before it took off, ignoring flight attendants' orders to return, was removed by an airport security guard, a witness and the airline said.

The Orthodox Jewish man, who wore a full beard, a black hat and a long black coat, stood near the lavatories and began saying his prayers while the United Airlines jet was being boarded at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday night, fellow passenger Ori Brafman said.

* * *

When the man finally stopped praying, he explained that he couldn't interrupt his religious ritual and wasn't trying to be rude. But the attendants summoned a guard to remove him, said Brafman, a writer who had been visiting New York to talk to publishers.

If you know me at all, from personal experience or just from my writings, you might be a bit surprised to know that when I was a kid I was considered bookish, uninterested in athletics, a bit nerdy. I distinctly remember being pushed to close whatever book I was quietly reading, and to go outside and play 'like a real boy'.

Ah, great - the military has a new techno gizmo to use in the Global War on Terror: a hand-held lie detector! From the article:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

Oh my, it's worse than I thought. All I can say is... ew!

And please boycott Nike.

Hello, I'm reeling with a lot of new ideas gathered from you people, and this is a rewrite of my first blog entry which basically sucked.

Here's one of the main reasons I came here.

My brain was altered by the Methodists' "dogmagicians" starting when I was almost 6 years old.

Before then, my agnostic dad kept religion out of my life and off my back, but my mother couldn't live with herself, let alone anyone else, so she split and I got moved into her parents' home and church.

Something has to give, when the people you love and trust tell you with a straight face that a guy was killed and then a few days later, he woke up and walked out of the tomb and flew up to heaven where he's been hanging out ever since, waiting for the big day.

So what exactly is it that gives?

Kids in the cult I was forced into get the dogma drill around 5 or 6, by which time they've begun to feel good about their ability to figure things out for themselves.

Teen Says TSA Screener Opened Sterile Equipment, Put Life In Danger

James Hoyne, 14, has a feeding tube in his stomach and carries a back-up in a sealed clear plastic bag. Hoyne said two weeks ago a TSA officer insisted on opening the sterile equipment, contaminating his back-up feeding up tube which he later needed.

"I said 'Please don't open it' and she said 'I have to open it whether you like it or not. If I can't open it, I can't let you on the plane,'" Hoyne said of his conversation with the TSA screener.

TSA officials apologized to James and said they're looking into the incident to see what corrective steps need to be taken.

I'm a big fan of the TV series Foyle's War, with its excellent acting and attention to historical details. It provides a brilliant insight into what it must have been like in the United Kingdom during World War II, and shows both the bravery and the cowardice of a population under real threat from a superior enemy. In particular, those episodes set early in the war (during the Battle of Britain) show how the possibility of invasion by Nazi Germany pushed people to do both inspiring and dispiriting things, but mostly how the entire population just 'got on with it', coping with the threat and their fears pretty damned well.

Which is why when I read things like this, I just cringe:

Hundreds Evacuated from North Sea oil platform after 'dream' sparks bomb alert.

Sure you do. And now you can post those comments on the TSA's own blog: Evolution of Security - with the motto "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part."

Well, at least some part of our government still believes in evolution.

So, what's the deal with this blog? From the 'about':

This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process.

They promise that they'll allow any comments that aren't profane, abusive or political. Depending on how they want to define those terms, that would keep out about 97% of what I would want to post there. But maybe that's just me.

And of course keep in mind that anything you say may be used against you. (Well, OF COURSE I'm kidding about that. I'm sure the fine people at the TSA would never abuse their power in any way, shape or form, and have nothing but our best interests and happiness at heart. Seriously.)

Check it out, if you're brave enough.

Jim Downey

Try to wrap your head around this:

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.

In what is no doubt more FUD about the War on Terror, an honor student at a Chicago-area high school was suspended and issued a citation for "reckless conduct" by the local police. Why?

For bringing his multi-tool containing a 2" blade to school:

CHICAGO, Illinois, Jan. 17, 2008 (NBC) -- Christopher Berger is an honor student at Grayslake Central High School.

He's also a choir singer, as well as a former football player who spends half the day training to be a firefighter.

"I've never even had a detention," Berger said.

His exemplary record now includes something new: A police ticket for reckless conduct given last week after school officials discovered a multi-tool flashlight in a jacket he left in the cafeteria. The tools include a 2-inch blade, screwdriver, pliers and other gadgets prohibited under school policy.