TSA Bans Flight If You Refuse To Show ID 734
mytrip notes a CNet blog entry on the recent TSA rule change banning flight to anyone who refuses to produce ID. It's OK if you claim to have lost or forgotten your ID — you undergo a pat-down and hand search of your carry-on bag and you're on your way. The new rule goes into effect June 21. "The change of rules seems to be a pretty obvious case of security theater. Real terrorists do not refuse to show ID. They claim to have lost their ID, or they use a fake. TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie."
Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
All that IDs provide is another hoop for everyone to jump through, including hackers and terrorists. They are useless as a security measure to anyone who doesn't have the authority to validate them.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
It would have stopped 9/11, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Maybe the next president will do something to fix the utterly idiotic "security" games the TSA insists on playing with airline travel. I'm not putting money on it, though.
Re:idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, an update from the Bush administration: We are not at war with Oceania. We have never been at war with Oceania. Miniplenty has upped the quality of their cigarettes this year by 30%, and has doubled our chocolate output! Hail, Big Brother!
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck DHS and the TSA. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. They're far worse (if they aren't yet, they will be, just wait) than any terrorist ever could be.
Sad part is, I'd move to another country if I knew of any better ones out there. Anyone know of a mostly English-speaking country that doesn't walk all over its citizens' rights? I know the UK is right out, and I hear Australia is pretty bad too.
Continuing a long trend of officers (Score:4, Insightful)
As pointed out, since you can lie easily, this is really just about control and dominance.
Silly American . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Flying now equivalent to being arrested (Score:5, Insightful)
[emphasis mine]
So... refusing to identify yourself at the airport is equivalent to refusing to identify yourself when you're arrested.
Let's stop piddlefucking around and admit that planes are now airborne maximum security prisons. Because that's exactly how their "security" is treating passengers.
Conservative Fascism (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering all their core principles are right out of Mein Kampf... developments like this are hardly surprising. Warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, citizens being held in secret and without trials: brought to you by either Nazi Germany or Conservative America. Take your pick.
Big bueracracy means people need to justify jobs! (Score:3, Insightful)
This can happen in the corporate world, too: feeling the need to spend one's entire budget just so that it won't get cut in the following year. But at least there's likely to be someone who might find and correct that inefficiency. In government, there's incentive to keep it growing all the way up to the top.
So the next time you see some policy that doesn't make sense, think about who just got to keep their job because of its existence.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! [nerdkits.com]
Refuse flight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not the point anymore... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Coverring their ass (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about covering their asses.
It won't prevent a big screw up, *BUT* in case of big screw up, they can show up the fax, and ask their phone company to confirm they actually did receive a faxed document (and didn't fake it quickly in MS-Paint which would be about the same quality) and thus claim "see, we did our part, we're innocent, you can't sue us".
But apart from that, I agree with you. An ID is not a magical bullet that will solve everything, specially not security.
Mainly, it's just a quick tool to quickly assessing the identity and age of the bearer, when convenience of speed is important and implications of misidentification are low.
(A teen passing out on booze isn't very likely to kill hundreds of thousands of victims. As of that matters, neither are terrorists. Natural catastrophe, on the other hand... )
Re:Continuing a long trend of officers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conservative Fascism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Australia's got a bit better now that Howard got booted out. Canada used to be better before Stephen "whatever you say Mr. Bush" Harper became PM. Still, none of those where ever remotely as bad as the US in terms of being police states. Don't know how UK compares.
Wait, wait, WAIT just a moment here... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't get a boarding pass without showing your physical photo ID (at least in the US, where TSA has jurisdiction). So how did you "lose" your ID from the point where you checked in and picked up your boarding pass, and the point where you got to the metal detectors and security checkpoints?
I call bogus on this. If this was really for security reasons, a photo ID would be required 100% of the time.
Security theatre indeed.
The airline industry in ten years. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's take the downward trend of the overall airline experience and extrapolate. We'll examine the state of airline travel in ten years. All of the following has been verified for accuracy by traveling to the future.
In ten years, this is what it will be like to travel across the country by airplane:
First, you'll buy your ticket online for prices starting at $1400 or so, plus a $200 security fee tacked on for every flight segment. This is for each direction; there will no longer be "round trip" fares. All fares will be nonrefundable and nontransferable, and being late for your flight means automatic forfeiture of your fare and ticket, as there will no longer be an option to wait "on standby" for another flight or to change your ticket if your plans change.
When you show up at the airport, the first thing that happens is that you're put through one of two processes. Most people will go through a general process, which will be as follows: You get in line at the check-in, where you are questioned as to where you live, where you work, where you're flying, the purpose of your flight, what you're carrying in your luggage and on your person, whether you've purchased any electronics in the past six years, including electronics that you're not bringing on board with you, how much you paid for them, and why. During this time you will present ID and be photographed and fingerprinted; these will be input into the agent's laptop, which will immediately search through a government computer network of known terrorists, known criminals, known fugitives, people who are delinquent on child support payments, people who owe taxes, people who have been arrested in the last five years (even if not charged or convicted), people who are on the sex offender registry, people who haven't showed up to jury duty, people with bad credit, people who didn't register with the Selective Service System, people of other than Mexican origin who are in the country illegally, or people with unpaid parking tickets on their record. A match on one or more of these results in your being taken to a special room for additional questioning. There will be many false positives, so you'll wait in line for hours before being admitted into the interrogation room. This will mean that you'll probably miss your flight without a refund of your fare and with no compensation or rights whatsoever. If, by some miracle, you are seen in the interrogation room before your flight takes off, you'll miss it due to the length of the questioning process.
If you were not pulled out of the check-in line for interrogation, you go to the next step, which is to be weighed; at this point, you'll pay a dollar for each pound that you and your luggage weigh, plus $100 for each piece of luggage, $50 for your carry-on, and $25 for your personal item that you'll bring on board. Checking in will be free, but to obtain your boarding pass, you'll have to pay a $10 printing fee. The routing labels placed on your luggage will cost $5 each, and tags to put on your bag with your name and address will be a dollar each.
Now it's time for security, which happens in several stages. First, you'll bring your checked luggage to the TSA luggage scanner, where they'll pile up bags for flights that are about to take off somewhere on the side while scanning and pushing through the bags going on flights that aren't taking off for another two hours. One out of every ten bags will be chosen randomly and moved to a holding area where it will be held for a month and then returned to the airport, which will try and search for the owner, a process that will be extremely backlogged and won't succeed very often due to shoddy record keeping. Of those bags that are not randomly selected, each bag will be scanned electronically, and following that, each bag will be opened to wrinkle up the clothing. Then the bag will be passed on to the baggage handlers, who according to the 2013 Airport Security Passenger Luggage Contents Protection and Loss Prevention Act will be required to produce proof of
Re:The real enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:0, Insightful)
Your papers, please. (Score:1, Insightful)
How many times do I have to point out the obvious? This sort of eroding of civil liberties is precisely the mechanism by which terrorism seeks to overturn governments. And the sickening part is that these same governments are entirely complicit in this mass upheaval of basic democratic--nay, human--rights.
Put yourself in the terrorist's shoes. Compared to the state, you are vastly underfunded, have no legal recourse, and are entirely disenfranchised. What hope do you have of taking down an entity that is far more well-established than you? Of course, your only option is to subvert it by attacking the citizenry. The government's response is to enact more and more restrictions to "protect" the people, until one finds themselves living under a police state. Of course, the attacks haven't stopped--but now the people are either going to revolt, or the economy is going to collapse, or the government has become the real terrorists.
And the government is complicit because they believe that a fearful populace is one that is most controllable. It is not in their interest to educate the people to think for themselves and question authority--they ARE the authority.
History has shown us time and time again that it is not difficult to overthrow kingdoms, republics, dictatorships, or democracies. All it takes is an idea one is willing to die for. The so-called "war on terrorism" is not successfully fought with weapons, nor with diplomacy. It is fought with knowledge. It is for that reason that the United States is losing to a group of fanatics.
well, it won't catch terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
i already take off my shoes at the airport. and, because my job requires me to fly quite a bit and get where i'm going, i produce id (passport, usually). and every time i take the baggie with my toothpaste and travel-size deodorant out of my carry-on, i throw up in my mouth a little bit.
but i keep doing it.
because i have to pay the mortgage.
i can't remember who said this, but someone once said the 20th/21st century equivalent to the nazi war criminals' "i was just following orders" line will be "well, i had a mortgage to pay"...
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
What about airlines employees (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:1, Insightful)
Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Perception != reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
Conservative Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
What a classic set of liberal distortions!
Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.
Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.
In the free market state you Americans idolize, corporations and citizens should have the same treatment under the eye of the law. No more, no less.
Actually, we view corporations as distinctly less than the rights of citizens. However, corporations, via our shares, are our property, and therefor, we resist what the government would do with it. But, make no bones about it, in the eyes of a conservative, owning a stake in Exxon Mobil, or even the entire company, is no different than the legality of owning a pencil. It is my company, my pencil, and I can do with it what I will.
Re:It would have stopped 9/11, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you assume that it takes X seconds to process a regular ID showing person, and 2-3 minutes to process a non-ID showing person and if you assume that a few thousand people each day can't show ID, it makes sense to reduce the number of people who don't show ID.
When this doesn't significantly reduce wasted time, watch for the 'if you forgot your ID you can't fly' policy.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
When they boarded the plane, chances are they were just another passenger with a passport, like all the others.
The only thing ID verification does is show that you have a piece of paper with a picture on it. It could very well be someone else's piece of paper, with your picture schmoozed in. It could also be a complete fabrication, fresh off the dye-sub. It doesn't say "Terrorist!" or "Not a terrorist!", it says "This is a picture of Joe Random. If the person in front of you looks like this picture, you should refer to them as Joe Random."
It's not like Cletus the Rent-a-Cop is going to scrutinize every little detail, call three different unrelated people to check references, and actually care. Let's face it: if crazies weren't getting on planes in the first place, Cletus would be out of a job.
If I were to march into a crowded lobby tomorrow morning and spontaneously open fire on random civilians, I'd be a terrorist. Today, I have no criminal record whatsoever. Tomorrow I could be Canada's most wanted. Looking at my ID won't save anyone's life. If looking at someone's ID tells you they should be arrested, that person should have been behind bars in the first place.
This is just the beginning i am afraid (Score:2, Insightful)
From the movie Southland Tales
International travel has become more restricting to some past decade and pretty soon United States seem to be becoming to require Southland Tales style interstate visa. At least starting from foreigners, i fear. Unless i drive my own car, big brothers can track where i am from the records i leave behind, such as using airline, train, rental car around states. as soon as it becomes very efficient and cost effective to construct such data base, or Big brothers may have already began to contruct such system in order to track "terrorists". Travel visas to another country where it is required are not too difficult to get. It basically comes with your ticket from tour company. Asking for VISA is basically asking people to prepare the legal papers that show purpose of visit to the gov'nt even if you are well known in the area(even high ranking officers, celebrities are required). Requiring some kind of ID is much cheaper than to track down everybody's life. In North Korea, you are required permission to travel to the shop down the alley from the government. someday, US govn't probaly don't even need those from spying everything around us.
Re:Your papers, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to argue that such erosion of civil liberties is bad for the United States, such a case can be made. But to argue that this was the terrorists' intent is to project your own beliefs onto them.
This is the new Amerika (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Soviets don't let you travel without paperwork - we would never do that because we are a free nation."
"The Soviets tell everyone that the restrictions are 'for their protection', but it is a lie."
"The Soviets distort the news which is reported to the people."
Fast forward 25 years
Being shaken down for "papers" and "inspected" by the powers that be when we travel (air, auto, borders) or sign up to do an honest day's work.
All while living under an administration which distorts information as a matter of policy, supporting war with lies.
Not only that but we are losing out economically to a nation which is officially Communist.
So what did we win in the "cold war", exactly ?
I'd move away, but that would be allowing them to win.
Lets make THEM move away and get on with the business of restoring our nation !
Re:Conservative Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations exist primarily as a means to shield owners from the liability that results from actions performed in the service of the corporation.
They aren't anywhere near the same thing.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
So, al-qaeda conspiracy = likely, government conspiracy = unlikely. See how that works out?
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Flying now equivalent to being arrested (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:1, Insightful)
As long as parties like airports, webhosts etc can provide they collected some documentation, ANY documentation, their ass is covered in court for negligence, If it isn't negligence then it has to be malicious intent by the individual showing fake ids. You are then free to pursue the hacker or terrorist instead of the airport, airline or hosting company.
Contrary to your opinion you are not the only one with a few brain cells on the planet. The reason most companies do security theater, is that it is the bare minimum necessary to meet their local laws / compliance and free them from blame when things go south. The actual losses from enforcing a bulletproof authentication mechanism would outweigh the occasional loss incurred by id theft and fraud.
To add to the injury fining companies for using poor security mechanisms like this, always feels like blaming the victim, and no one feels compelled to push such laws through.
Re:The real enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
I'm sorry, I can't keep up that charade any more. If you lose all self control because someone asks you for ID, you are fucking idiot and you shouldn't be leaving your town anyway.
Seriously, WHAT CONSTITUTION RIGHT IS INFRINGED ON BY HAVING TO SHOW ID?
Flying without ID (Score:2, Insightful)
All of the airport ID checks are security theater, not just this recent change in regulation. Identity in very few cases conveys any sense of risk. If I know that a guy is named John Smith, and he's REALLY REALLY named John Smith, that doesn't tell me a damn thing about whether or not he's going to blow up a plane, or stab a flight attendant, or do whatever else gets to the Allah Virgin Merit Badge nowadays. Identity is only useful when you can correlate a person to a threat level. The "No Fly" list is, I guess, supposed to be a way to make that correlation, but it's obvious that it's a failure, and really, it'd be near impossible to create any kind of database that made ID-based security features meaningful without a far greater level of privacy invasion than the average citizen is used to, because it's not just enough to compile a list of bad guys, you have to compile another list of guys that are A-OK.
Ever heard of posting as AC? (Score:3, Insightful)
But you wanted your name on your post, so you had to log in. IOW, you had to identify yourself
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Conservative Godwin (Score:4, Insightful)
See where I'm going with the this? If the Fourth applies to ID here, then it has to apply EVERYWHERE!
Now, I understand that we don't want federal police officers asking us for ID at every corner. (Not that they don't have better things to do) I think it has something to do with the fact that you wanting to travel makes it reasonable.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what do you suggest? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. After 9/11, nobody is going to sit back and wait while the hijackers "take this plane to Cuba". Anybody tries anything funny, like light their shoelaces, and if the passengers don't kill them, they'll get duct-taped to their seat for the remainder of the flight.
Meanwhile, the terrorists are looking for a weak spot. Someplace where law enforcement has overlooked. If we take some responsibility for our own security, there won't be any weak spots, regardless of TSA oversights.
Re:The real enemy (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, some were against a bill of rights for the very reason that they felt that the ignorant would see them as your only rights. As a compromise, the ninth amendment was added to make sure people understood this fact:
Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
As you have demonstrated, it didn't fucking work.
Next, um, while I'm no Constitutional scholar, I'm pretty sure that the Ninth Amendment doesn't mean translate to "Everything not mentioned here is also a right".
You could have made a more convincing case by going with Amendment X, anyway.
Re:Flying now equivalent to being arrested (Score:3, Insightful)
Facetious as the comment is, I've watched America change during my lifetime, from "who I am, where I go, and how I get there is none of your damned business" to "Komrade! Your papers please!!" for public transport, gov't buildings, and what's next? ID required for children entering a public schoolhouse?? some already require ID for parents!
We are becoming the very thing we fought against during the Cold War. Welcome to the backside of the Iron Curtain, Amerikan style.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the difference between me and the common terrorist, is I fully realize the fact that killing a few thousand people won't change a damned thing. How many tens of millions have died in Africa, or South America ? They're in no better shape than they were a century ago.
How many deaths can change the world ? A billion, perhaps ? I don't know of any terrorist organization that could command that sort of power without rotting from the inside out. Not even the U.S. Gov't, with their legions of suicidal troops, can trigger change on this dying planet.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the US is fucked up.
I'm not sure if you're under the impression that the idea of terrorism is fantasy or if you're just trolling for Insightful mods by discounting terrorism as a real means to an end. Based on the fact that you haven't backed up anything you've said, I'm forced to guess the latter.
According Wikipedia (so it's official you see), "terrorism is a term used to describe violence or other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians by groups or persons for political or ideological goals". Based on this, I would surmise that if the guy did as he said, whether he's a terrorist or not depends on why he's doing it. If it's because he's a psycho nutjob who kills for kicks then I'd say no. If he's protesting some government action, trying to get the government to change it's policies, or doing it in the name of religion then I'd say he probably falls under "terrorist".
The whole point of terrorism is (as the name obviously suggests) to utilize fear and terror to achieve your goals. Indiscriminately killing unarmed civilians is a pretty good way to spread terror.
Re:Real terrorists (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there are two things at work.
First, this is meant to remove the doubt over whether it is okay to travel without papers. Can't have trouble makers of the Samuel Adams stripe running around asserting their rights.
Second, the law enforcement mentality is predicated on the infantile presumption that fear of punishment is what prevents people from committing crimes. Once someone decides they don't give a damn (or, worse, that they want publicity) law enforcement is lost.
I weep for my species.
-Peter
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, you'd be a criminal, guilty of multiple homicides.
To be a terrorist, you'd have to have some specific political agenda your action is trying to push. This word "terrorist" has gotten so overused, it's beginning to become meaningless. We need to fight that trend.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
9/11 raised the ante significantly. Now, all hijackings are automatically assumed to be attempted homicide. The first guy or guys that stand up and say "this is a hijacking" are going to get their nuts stuffed down their throats by fifty angry passengers who reasonably assume they have nothing to lose and everything to gain, regardless of the weapon brandished. Look what they did to Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Hell, look at what they did on United 93 on 9/11*. The stakes had been raised no more than a quarter hour before and the passengers caught on right away. Hijackings with knives and shit are over. Just plain fucking OVER.
But no, the TSA isn't about logic or reason. It's pure reactionary theater by a bunch of fucking tards. Take, for a prime example, the ban on liquids on quantities greater than 3oz. This was enacted because a ring of would-be terrorists was broken up and their plans included either the premade smuggling of or onboard mixing of a "binary component" liquid explosive, TATP. Trouble is, it's complete bollocks. No chemist with half a brain would do anything but laugh at the notion of people trying to synthesize TATP on a plane without someone noticing. Likewise, no sensible knowledgeable person would take seriously the idea of anyone successfully smuggling in enough pre-made TATP to bring down a plane without blowing themselves up. But do we get a reasonable analysis of the threat and a reasonable security response? No, we get blanket bans that are the equivalent of swatting flies with a 4X8 sheet of plywood.
* If you think the plane was shot down, please, just shut the fuck up. You're an idiot.
Re:Real terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, give me a break. This isn't that hard to understand; even you can handle it:
They won't let you fly if you say "I don't want to show ID". They will let you fly if you say, "I forgot my ID". That won't stop a single bad guy ever. It doesn't solve any problem at all even a little bit, except for people expressing opinions the TSA doesn't like.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh...but, you're forgetting about the "RealID" act....sure it is being held up a little, but, when it comes through, your brand new US National ID will be issued to identify and track you in all your movements. I'm sure you'll no long be able to go anywhere or do much of anything transaction-wise in years after it is all implemented. Travelling without it will be the least of your concerns then I dare to guess...
Maybe not..but, sure paints a scary picture doesn't it? That and I've yet to see a govt. law or rule that hasn't be abused and used past its intended original use later one by some creative politician or lawyer...
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:4, Insightful)
"Overreaction is what governments do best!"
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:1, Insightful)
And in other news, scientists continue to be baffled at the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Explosion, Spontaneous Flight of Planes into Buildings, Spontaneous Human Beheading, and other various incidents of things filled with people exploding, or being blown up. The best explanation forthcoming from the scientific community to date is that these events are the result of:
OK, seriously? "There are no terrorists?" And you got modded "Insightful?"
Look - if you had ever held a security clearance and worked for some part of the military, you wouldn't be making ignorant statements like that. It's just *not* *true*. Yes, there are actual people, with actual faces and names, that actually plan to harm people for reasons that are largely religious in nature. This is the world we live in. Declaring "it ain't so" doesn't make it true.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Conservative Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
We can be monitored by the government every second of our lives and every action we take can be subject to government approval but as long as you can make money and complain about it's all good?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conservative Freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
Imo, what you're saying is the same as what I'm saying, you're just putting corporations under the umbrella of property rights. On the contrary, imo social cohesion and civil rights are more important than property rights when a conflict arises.
-------
Left wing: The poor mooching off of the rich
Right wing: The rich mooching off of the poor
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, were they in your back yard, or were you in theirs? I'm not dissing the original mission in Afghanistan, but it's not hard for me to understand why some folks that had nothing to do with the Taliban might resent our presence there. I wish we'd bring you and your buddies home. Soon.
Re:Meanwhile at the customs... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's actually a good reason for asking that question. It's a knowledge-based verification, to try to catch someone who might pickpocket a passport off someone else in line. It's not a foolproof security measure, but if you happened to see someone who looks like you in line and swipe their passport it might be difficult to memorize their birthday and their prior itinerary in the few minutes you have before you're next in line (if you try to steal it earlier your theft is less likely to go unnoticed). On the other hand, you'll surely remember your own birthday, nationality, and whether or not you've been to a given country, so the questions cause minimal inconvenience to those going through immigration.
Not from terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
This is silly and misses the point. They protect us from something far more dangerous to the regime: People who refuse to have their rights flushed away.
Re:It would have stopped 9/11, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
As your government starts cutting funding on 'mandatory' programs, you'll see more of this sort of thing across the board.
Re:Conservative Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep in mind that they cannot *outright* discriminate against any minority. They must check as many 80 year old ladies as middle eastern looking men, even though the majority (yes, not all) of the terrorists in the past 20 years have been middle eastern looking males.
What this does is effectively make sure that they don't discriminate against any Enrique Rodriguez's*, only the Abdullah Mohammad's* in the world. Before, the idiot Joe on "guard" duty couldn't tell the difference between the hispanic people and the middle eastern people. Now, they can simply look at the ID and pick out Mr. Abdullah Mohammad for intense questioning and let the Rodriguez's go about their merry business.
And think about it, if they don't bring an ID, they are searched. So even if the middle eastern men do not bring their ID's, they are still searched.
This is simply an attempt to discriminate under the table, if you will.
Before you mod, please understand that this was posted under the assumption that all of this TSA idiocy actually does something to prevent terrorism.
* My profound apologies if any of these names are remotely close to your real name. This was not the intent, I was merely illustrating that it is much easier to discriminate against names than it is against physical appearance, as it (probably) gives fewer false positives. Again, please accept my apologies.
Re:The real enemy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an indication of the sad state the world is in. Think about it. You are apologising in advance in case your rather obvious fictional examples of names used in a possible situation might actually be someone in the slashdot readership.
Come on now - you're making an example, using typical nametypes.... does political correctness really have to stretch this far? "oh, noes, I might *offend* someone! Better apologise straight up."
The proper answer to anyone who might possibly be offended (who actually complains) is "Sorry about that - now fuck you, grow some skin, and stop whining about some trivial thing."
Fucking political correctness, it gives me the shits.
(end rant)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this is the most stupid explanation of terrorism threat that I have read in a long time, and that tells something. If you really believe that the reason behind the current wave of global terrorism is "largely religious in nature", you're part of the problem.
ZERO seconds to NOT check ids... (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember when the ID requirements were just to keep people from selling each other unused tickets on the cheap.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
One person going into a mall and shooting everyone isn't terrorism. One person planting a little bomb in a mall, then sending a message 'if you don't all worship the Sith I'll plant a nuke next time', IS terrorism. Using the nuke isn't necessary to be a terrorist, but *threatening* to *is*. It's the *fear* of danger which makes terrorism work. The point of terrorism isn't to kill people, it's to frighten the people who weren't killed.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is the new Amerika (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
And the fact that they were not on the passenger list was obviously just an oversight...
I must be a crackpot
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't negotiate with Jihadists anyway. They will either convert, subjugate or kill you, and that's it.
Perhaps not the best example. The Palestinian "politicians" are terrorists.
Totalitarian, not Comunist. (Score:1, Insightful)
Where we are heading is closer to National Socialism than Comunisim.
I am trying to be careful with my phrasing because I am being serious, and trying NOT to trigger Godwin's law.
Terror is a response (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorist attack itself was a pin prick against a giant. The problem is that the giant in response decided to saw off its own hand to keep from ever being pricked again.
While the attack itself did minimal economic damage and a barely noticeable effect on the number of people living and dying in the US (especially next to such terrors as cancer or heart disease), our response to it did horrible.
I am not even pointing to the government response alone. The government did terrible damage to itself by implementing policies that make business harder, travel harder, and importing students and skilled laborers harder. Lets not even considered the more intangible damage done to civil liberties. Even worse, people's own reactions turned a minor disaster into a major disaster. Being terrified of airplanes despite the fact that you are vastly more likely to be struck dead in a car did terrible economic damage. Fear that lead to reduced spending did horrible economic damage.
My point is this. Terrorist are hardly worth mentioning for the acts that they commit. They rank far FAR below other dangers that are likely to kill you. McDonald's and swimming pools kill far more people than terrorist do in the US. Cars kill vastly more people, and yet we manage to soldier on in utter indifference. The only thing that hurts about a terrorist attack is our very own response. If we want to defend against terrorist attacks in the future, prevention isn't the answer. Snatching low hanging fruit, like reinforcing plane doors and telling passengers to kick the shit out of anyone trying to get into the cockpit is fine and relatively cheap. Where the REAL savings would come from is if policy makers could find a way to dampen their own and the publics responses to terrorism. The damage is done when we react by chopping our own limbs off. If we could find a way to not react so violently, terrorist attacks, while hardly a good thing, would be FAR less destructive.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, 9/11 had no effect whatsoever on the World.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't about stopping terrorists (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Conservative Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you delusional freeper, you are not entitled to income. It is not the government's job to prop up your investments.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:2, Insightful)
No non-governmental terrorist organization is even in the same league, by several orders of magnitude.
And please don't try to make a distinction by saying, "Oh those deaths were just collateral damage. We really didn't mean to kill them". Yeah, and the 9/11 attackers didn't mean to harm anyone either. When you fly fuel-laden airliners into skyscrapers, obviously many people are going to die. Likewise when you launch Blitzkrieg against a heavily populated nation, and then try to keep it occupied and your puppets in power against the will of many of its people.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point. Isolated incidents that result in the death or imprisonment of the principal(s) don't effectively push agendas. Terrorists need to be around and dangerous after the atrocity is over so they can make use of the fear they've created.
"I decided to blow myself up and take a dozen random people with me because there aren't enough green M&M's in the regular package" doesn't change anything.
Re:Your papers, please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually yes, there is.
As your post correctly says, it would be ridiculous to suggest they directly care about or are motivated by any issue of our civil liberties. However they do indeed consider it part of a means to an end.
From Sun Tzu's Art of War:
Bush (and his entire administration) has a simplistic cartoon image of the enemy. The administration has declared that any coverage of what bin Laden as been saying is giving him free airtime and is giving aid to terrorists, has even played any such coverage carring coded instructions for an attack. And thus the media has been cowed into self censoring any such coverage. No coverage of what he's actually saying and no media analysis of what he actually wants and no media analysis of the terrorist whys and hows.
This is why The War On Terror has been so badly botched. The administration has a cartoon image of the enemy, and the public has little-to-no understanding of the enemy. Bush blindly did exactly what bin Laden wanted him to do.
Why did bin Laden instigate the 9/11 attack? What was the logic behind it?
Most people can't answer that. Saying bin Laden is evil is a hollow cartoon explanation, that evil people do evil things is a useless insightless answer. Saying "They hate our freedom" is a total fiction, a convenient administration soundbite to rally the public.
There was a chain of logic behind 9/11. It was an evil and tortured logic, but an identifiable and comprehensible logic. One must understand that logic to properly understand and fight that enemy, to understand not to unwittingly do what the enemy is hoping you to do.
First, what do bin Laden his cohorts ultimately want? What is the ultimate intent? A pan-Arab Caliphate. To unite the entire Arab world under one Islamic theocracy. That is bin Laden's utopia, that is his perfect answer that will supposed solve all the problems he sees of the world. bin Laden fundamentally doesn't give a shit about the Western World, he's perfectly happy for the rest of us to (figuratively and literally) go to hell.
So bin Laden's notion is that with the aid of Allah all Muslims should and would rise up and overthrow all of the corrupt Arab governments (and yeah those governments are generally pretty corrupt) to institute one unified Islamic rule. Of course bin Laden has gotten nowhere with that, and he decides that the only reason this plan has fails is because the Evil Western Nations have been protecting and propping up those corrupt Arab governments. And yeah, we have been protecting and propping up the Saudi Royal Family. And yeah, Saddam Hussein was all ours, he was a brutal dictator but he was a completely secular ruler and we gave him HUGE material support as a counter point to Iran. And we have been propping up other such governments for oil stability and other strategic interests. He doesn't "hate our freedoms", he hates us for stabilizing the Mideast and for working to keep Arab governments from collapsing in chaos, because he has the notion that such collapses and chaos would lead to an Islamic Utopia.
bin Laden's tactical and strategic ideas are based on his Afghanistan fighting against Russia, and his view of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. His view on rallying fighters to the cause is to provoke the enemy to overreact, to provoke the enemy to brutality, so that the enemy loses support and so that the enemy creates bin Laden's army for him. What is the purpose of the terrorist attacks on Israel? To provoke Israel to strike against the terrorists, and to provoke
It does actually protect us (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing is more scary to a police state, an overreaching government, or a bureaucracy, who's sole purpose is to expand and justify themselves despite any evidence, experience, or theory, to the contrary.
Re:Refuse flight? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't like it, vote with your wallet, and drive the whole damn industry out of business. They deserve it for letting the government walk all over them and their customers.
Re:Terrorist elves are real!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perception != reality (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole charade is meant to keep you scared, so they can keep pushing their incremental steps towards a totalitarian police state.
Maybe you should locate your nearest free speech zone and go protest, well out of sight of the government officials with whom you have grievances.
Re:Yeah, about fake IDs (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, by the way, was the SOP for most airlines in a hijack situation. Do what the hijackers want and nobody will get hurt, they'll fly the plane to some other country, and we'll negotiate to get the passengers back.
9/11 will never happen again, simply because anybody who threatens a plane full of people, even with a gun, will be carried off in a body bag.