Saturday, July 19, 2008

One million served


In March a CNN report advised that seven years after 9/11, less than 1% of U.S. daily flights carry armed federal air marshals.
The Transportation Security Administration denied the report and began an investigation into who leaked the info to CNN, calling it a national security leak.
Then it placed the CNN reporter on the no-fly list.
And in this way the US terrorist watch list eventually reached one million names, according to the ACLU, who call it a waste of time and resources.

Paul Craig Roberts : "It's worse than that. What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies."

Yes. They are being acclimatized to what they surely know is merely bureaucratic bullying.
Are we in Canada paying attention?

3 comments:

Raphael Alexander said...

From what I understand,the job of DHS isn't to curtail terrorism, but to harass citizens into compliance. For instance:

In millions of previously undisclosed records obtained from the immigration courts under the Freedom of Information Act, it was found that of the 814,073 people charged by the Department of Homeland Security, a mere 12 faced charges of terrorism. That statistic represents 1000th of one percent of the total cases filed.

I bet that makes you feel all warm inside.

Paul said...

I'm curious if Obama and/or McCain have stated a position on the no-fly list. A cursory google search doesn't turn up anything. We could likely predict McCain's, but Obama's would be less obvious (or at least to me).

Anonymous said...

In Canada we have the brilliant Bill C-25 to make sure you are surveilled by your financial institution, real estate agent or lawyer (but not your local casino, it would seem). Of course all of this data collection and reporting would NEVER be subject to the US PATRIOT Act. Except if the data collection software company had an office in the US or if the reporting agency shared this information with INTERPOL as they are required to do....

hmmmm. It must be OK. None of our representatives seem the least bit concerned.

Oh well...I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway

peace, babies

waterbaby

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