H/T to Economicrot.
December 24, 2011
September 30, 2011
“Some things are eternal, like the stars above and the conflicted feelings towards the United States Canadians have in their hearts”
Matt Gurney recommends that the US worry about Boston before the start putting up fences on the US-Canadian border:
Oh, Lord, here we go again: The U.S. is (kind of) considering erecting a fence along parts of the U.S.-Canadian border, as well as various high-tech monitoring systems. This latest variation was floated by the American Customs and Border Protection Agency, but quickly dismissed by that same agency as merely a hypothetical after the report caught the media’s attention.
Whenever the U.S. considers — or hypothetically muses about potentially considering — additional security along the northern border, you can count on Canadians whipping their heads ’round in shock. “Keep out us?” they ask. “But … we’re Canadians. That’s like being American. Why would they want to keep us out?” Many of those same Canadians are the ones who become outraged if the United States does not genuflect in the requisite manner at the holy pillar of Canadian sovereignty and international importance. That’s non-negotiable for Canadians, because we’re not Americans, and Uncle Sam, with his war machines and ghetto scenes, had best not forget it. But as soon as Americans agree that we’re separate countries and try to act like it, much outrage ensues.
It’s a particularly irritating manifestation of the Canadian inferiority complex, but probably can’t be helped. Some things are eternal, like the stars above and the conflicted feelings towards the United States Canadians have in their hearts. At least this time, though, we’re not alone in looking kind of silly: If there’s anything as dumb as the Canadian double-think on whether we’re American enough for America, it’s the bizarre notion among our southern siblings that if they pay enough attention to Canada, they’ll be safe from terrorism.
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September 29, 2011
Quebec may create its own gun registry
Matt Gurney examines the Quebec government’s declared intention to create a provincial gun registry:
In July, Quebec’s Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil told reporters that his government was considering a “Plan B” in the (highly probable) event that the federal Tories scrapped the long-gun registry — the creation of a provincial registry. Quebec is particularly sensitive to crimes committed by firearm, and has been more wedded than most provinces to the faulty notion that registration provides public-safety benefits. The Supreme Court has already ruled that firearms registration is a federal responsibility due to the public safety nature of gun control, but Quebec could theoretically try to establish a registry for firearms that treats them as simple property, no different than dogs, cats or boats. It would be a political stunt only … but then again, that’s all the registry has been since the beginning: A costly act of political theatre in which politicians impose burdensome red tape on lawful firearms owners and proclaim society somehow safer as a result.
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June 16, 2011
Horwitz: Yes, it is a police state
It’s been a long time since 9/11, and the biggest losses have been in civil liberties:
As regular readers know, I’m not one for hyperbole, so perhaps some are thinking that my title is ironic. Nope, I mean it. An accumulation of events in recent months leads me to no other conclusion than that we are in fact living in a police state in the good old US of A.
The list of reasons is fairly long, but we can certainly start with our favorite gropers at the TSA. In my ideal world, airline safety would be the responsibility of those with the most directly to lose financially from doing it poorly: the airlines and the airports. But even in a world where government has taken on that responsibility, we should be protected by the Fourth Amendment against “unreasonable” searches. It’s one thing to walk through the standard metal detector, which seems reasonable, but when we are expected to pose virtually nude in a submissive position for government agents, and when refusing to do so earns you a feel-up that would count as sexual battery in most states, that is something else entirely.
If I had told you 20 years ago that in 2011 this is what would happen every day to thousands of travelers — including toddlers and the handicapped — at U.S. airports, you would not have believed me. And on top of everything else, it doesn’t work! It’s mere “security theatre.” When residents of the United States have a legitimate fear of being sexually abused by agents of the State when engaging in peaceful air travel, we live in a police state.
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May 2, 2011
Radley Balko: “He won”
A distressing round-up of the lifetime achievements of the late Osama Bin Laden:
We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .
- We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
- We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
- In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
- We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
- The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
- The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
- Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
The list, unfortunately goes on.
Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.
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April 18, 2011
Oh, stop worrying: everything is going according to the plan!
Julian Sanchez notes a fascinating parallel:
Batman’s archnemesis the Joker — played memorably by Heath Ledger in 2008′s blockbuster The Dark Knight — might seem like an improbable font of political wisdom, but it’s lately occurred to me that one of his more memorable lines from the film is surprisingly relevant to our national security policy:
You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.”
There are, one hopes, limits. The latest in a string of videos from airport security to provoke online outrage shows a six-year-old girl being subjected to an invasive Transportation Security Administration patdown — including an agent feeling around in the waistband of the girl’s pants. I’m somewhat reassured that people don’t appear to be greatly mollified by TSA’s response:
A video taken of one of our officers patting down a six year-old has attracted quite a bit of attention. Some folks are asking if the proper procedures were followed. Yes. TSA has reviewed the incident and the security officer in the video followed the current standard operating procedures.
While I suppose it would be disturbing if individual agents were just improvising groping protocol on the fly (so to speak), the response suggests that TSA thinks our concerns should be assuaged once we’ve been reassured that everything is being done by the book — even if the book is horrifying. But in a sense, that’s the underlying idea behind all security theater: Show people that there’s a Plan, that procedures are in place, whether or not there’s any good evidence that the Plan actually makes us safer.
April 7, 2011
Wil Wheaton gets the “special” treatment from the TSA
The TSA just got another rave review from a traveller who got the full treatment and didn’t like it:
Yesterday, I was touched — in my opinion, inappropriately — by a TSA agent at LAX.
I’m not going to talk about it in detail until I can speak with an attorney, but I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours replaying it over and over in my mind, and though some of the initial outrage has faded, I still feel sick and angry when I think about it.
What I want to say today is this: I believe that the choice we are currently given by the American government when we need to fly is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and does nothing to enhance passenger safety.
I further believe that when I choose to fly, I should not be forced to choose between submitting myself to a virtually-nude scan (and exposing myself to uncertain health risks due to radiation exposure), or enduring an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his hands in my pants, and makes any contact at all with my genitals.
When I left the security screening yesterday, I didn’t feel safe. I felt violated, humiliated, assaulted, and angry. I felt like I never wanted to fly again. I was so furious and upset, my hands shook for quite some time after the ordeal was over. I felt sick to my stomach for hours.
This is wrong. Nobody should have to feel this way, just so we can get on an airplane. We have fundamental human and constitutional rights in America, and among those rights is a reasonable expectation of personal privacy, and freedom from unreasonable searches. I can not believe that the TSA and its supporters believe that what they are doing is reasonable and appropriate. Nobody should have to choose between a virtually-nude body scan or an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his or her hands inside your pants and makes any contact at all with your genitals or breasts as a condition of flying.
H/T to occasional commenter “Da Wife” for the link.
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January 27, 2011
New entrant into the “Security Theatre Kabuki Hall of Fame”
Step forward, our first inductee for 2011, Gatwick Airport security staff:
Airport officials ordered a holidaymaker carrying a toy soldier onto a plane to remove its three-inch gun — because it was a safety threat.
Ken Lloyd was stunned when he was told he could not go on the plane with the nine-inch model soldier because it was carrying a ‘firearm’.
The Canadian tourist and his wife had bought the toy, which holds a replica SA80 rifle, during a visit to the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp in Dorset.
Well caught, security super-heroes! Here’s the vicious piece of deadly weaponry they bravely prevented from being smuggled aboard the plane:
December 3, 2010
Happy holiday travels!
H/T to Economicrot. Many many more at the link.
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December 2, 2010
It’s apparently not “wrong touching” when the TSA does it
Daniel Tencer says that the TSA’s guidelines for calming children are the same things sexual predators use:
An expert in the fight against child sexual abuse is raising the alarm about a technique the TSA is reportedly using to get children to co-operate with airport pat-downs: calling it a “game”.
Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, says the TSA’s recommendation that children be told the pat-down is a “game” is potentially putting children in danger.
Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is “one of the most common ways” that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact, Wooden told Raw Story.
Children “don’t have the sophistication” to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator, he said.
The TSA policy could “desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children,” Wooden added.
H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.
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November 30, 2010
The big hole in the TSA security screen
Even if the TSA is backing down on requiring pilots to go through the full pornoray scanner or humiliating pat-down, they’ve continued to leave a huge security hole open — apron workers and contract ground support staff:
Although the X-ray and metal detector rigmarole is mandatory for pilots and flight attendants, many other airport workers, including those with regular access to aircraft — to cabins, cockpits, galleys and freight compartments — are exempt. That’s correct. Uniformed pilots cannot carry butter knives onto an airplane, yet apron workers and contract ground support staff — cargo loaders, baggage handlers, fuelers, cabin cleaners, caterers — can, as a matter of routine, bypass TSA inspection entirely.
All workers with airside privileges are subject to fingerprinting, a 10-year criminal background investigation and crosschecking against terror watch lists. Additionally they are subject to random physical checks by TSA. But here’s what one apron worker at New York’s Kennedy airport recently told me:
“All I need is my Port Authority ID, which I swipe through a turnstile. The ‘sterile area’ door is not watched over by any hired security or by TSA. I have worked at JFK for more than three years now and I have yet to be randomly searched. Really the only TSA presence we notice is when the blue-shirts come down to the cafeteria to get food.”
H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.
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November 23, 2010
QotD: “Shut up and be scanned”
More on your authoritarian media . . .
Earlier today, my colleague Matt Welch ran off a list of newspaper editorial boards who are lining up behind TSA. The headline to this post is the actual headline from the L. A. Times’ editorial. Given such cowardice about defending civil liberties in the face of hysterical hand-wringing about national security, I was going to post a snarky comment about how the L.A. Times would probably have told Japanese-Americans to “shut up and report to your internment camp” back in 1942, too.
Then I did some Googling, and discovered that the paper pretty much did exactly that. As did a number of other papers.
Radley Balko, “Shut Up and Be Scanned”, The Agitator, 2010-11-22
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Wendy McElroy: This rumour has “legs but no body”
After reading one of the several stories about the TSA considering (or already having) an exemption from the invasive “pat-down” for Muslim women, Wendy McElroy tried to find the truth of the matter:
“Sexual assault” and “child molestation” are just some of the accusations leveled at the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) revealing scanners and full-body pat-down procedures, which were introduced on November 1.
At long, long last, the public is saying no to the savaging of personal liberty.
But a bizarre attack from a different direction should cause concern for at least two reasons. First, the particular accusation against the TSA is almost certainly incorrect and could dilute the credibility of other criticisms. Second, the attack seems rooted in anti-Muslim fears and feeds back into them.
The rumor: The Department of Homeland Security may exempt Orthodox Muslim women from the sexually invasive scanners and physical exams that others must undergo as a prerequisite of air travel.
On what evidence is the rumor based?
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Don’t print these off and attach them to your luggage
A few bumper stickers/luggage tags from Hit and Run:
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