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All US Border Crossings Now Require A 'Terrorist Risk Profile'
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 02, 2007 08:32 PM
from the just-wow dept.
from the just-wow dept.
conlaw writes with a somewhat intimidating Washington Post article. "The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years ... The risk assessment is created by analysts at the National Targeting Center, a high-tech facility opened in November 2001 and now run by Customs and Border Protection. In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo."
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So (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
1. What you don't know you can't assess
2. If nobody collects data there's no data to analyze
3. Unless it's analyzed you can't connect the dots
Now, this does not mean you have to build a new Berlin wall, resurrect the inquisition and make KGB/Gestapo's archives look like child's play. But quite frankly it's not entirely outragous if a country would like to regulate who's permitted to enter the country. Making everyone go through the door if the door is wide open and unattended wouldn't help anything.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure they didn't enter via the Canadian or Mexican borders...a fact which nobody ever seems to mention when discussing the security of our borders...
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
A completely irrelevant distinction. Our "borders" are the areas you arrive in the country at. Ellis Island was once our "border". LAX is our "border".
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
And our current "security theater" is as absurd as the "tollbooth scene" in "Blazing Saddles".
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a book written a while back (of which I wish I could remember the name) where the author basically argued that anti-terrorism measures were basically useless because any measure to mitigate threat we put in, they would think some way around it.
Case in point - probably some of the earliest hijackings the terrorist simply carried a bomb or a gun on board.
Want to fix terrorism - maybe we should fix or foreign policy. These people honestly believe they are fighting for a cause and their freedom.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
The GP post didn't say anything about Mexicans; he just pointed out that this plan would be ineffective against someone who entered the country illegally. Being Mexican isn't a requirement for that, though it seems to help.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem, of course, is those in power are democrats and republicans. The republicans aren't going to do anything to tighten down the border because they want cheap labor. The democrats aren't going to do it because they need the hispanic vote.
Without a tightened down border the most they can do about terrorism is attack it elsewhere. So they have devised a simple strategy:
1. Appear to be attacking terrorism elsewhere (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc)
2. Appear to be securing the country here (terrorist watch lists, terrorist risk profiles, etc)
As usual, its about power, and as usual the two parties are in collusion to maintain control.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Wholly Clueless Batman!
Somebody who is "discovered to have snuck in" can already be "immediately arrested or deported or something."
Why daddy? Because it's AGAINST THE LAW TO SNEAK IN.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
So what they're saying is that they are going to use a high-tech facility to match names to a list of people known to cause false positives and is based on poor information at best so that a list of names can be created for the next half century for the government to track the travel habits of its citizens.
Now, the vast majority of people coming in and out of this country are legitimate and yet our freedoms are being restricted for a handful of people worldwide that would most likely not appear on that list as there are new "freedom haters" popping up every second -- especially when news, like this, keep coming to light.
I'm ashamed that my future tax dollars and my children's future tax contributions will be going to pay for this fucking horseshit and no one is doing anything to stop it. Hey, politicians listen up... Want my vote? Put a fucking stop to this waste of time, energy and money. Thanks.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is there is no one else to give your vote to anymore. It's all the same bullshit.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 2008 Presidential election, there are a few candidates who are mostly sane: Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel. Most people seem to actually prefer these rather than the lunatics promoted by mainstream media -- but what answer do people give whenever you ask them about it? "I don't want to waste my vote on someone with no chance of winning."
Well, of course, idiots. If you don't vote for them, then they can't get elected.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be the case now, but let's see how things stand in 20-30 years.
Oh, I think if you ask around, you'll find a great many non-US citizens don't take the view you described even now. I, for one, have actively refused to travel to the United States simply because I object to the government's treatment of foreigners as second-class humans, not deserving of the same basic rights and respect as a US citizen, starting with the whole fingerprinting and photography thing the moment you arrive. Welcome to the United States, suspect #1,075,375!
It's interesting how often on Slashdot we get some discussion going on about infringement of privacy or the like, and a load of US citizens pipe up with how it's an infringement of their Constitutional rights. Screwing over the foreigners is apparently OK, because they don't have any rights under the US Constitution. The rest of the civilised world calls them human rights, and extends them to everyone; draw your own conclusions about how US policy looks to the rest of the civilised world.
Delusional (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad but there are people that think this will result in tangible safety. They don't stop to think that just maybe people coming into the US through the proper means aren't the major threats. I've talked about this is in other posts, but this takes the cake. Every one is to be viewed as a threat. The government is forcing a paranoid world of survivalism on us. I hate being alarmist, and I hate ragging on the government for nothing, but this is serious. This a fundamental challenge to the idea of personal liberty, innocence until proven guilty, and pretty much every other tenet of the philosophical basis for our nation. This is a gross, paranoid, unrealistic power grab. After reading the article I don't have a whole lot of hope. It was a calm rational piece, which is normally what I would want, but this needs to be shown for what it is.
So to all newcomers... welcome to America where we aim to alienate and tread over any and everyone!
Re:Delusional (Score:5, Interesting)
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Great, I can see it now:
Agent: It says here you have a truck full of... "baklava"?
Trucker: That's right.
Agent: Hold on, let me just run it through the ole' computer here...
(interminable wait)
Agent (to the crate of deserts): OK Mr. Bahklever, lay on the ground or we'll shoot!
Trucker: Dude... you're yelling at a pastry...
Agent: ON THE GROUND!!!
Trucker: I don't think it can hear you, man.
Agent: (incinerates truck)
Profile? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a case like this, with so many people and so few terrorists, a profile is not going to accomplish much. If as many as one in ten thousand people crossing the borders were terrorists, it would make a bit more sense.
Of course, if this program were worthwhile in the first place, it wouldn't be if Canada didn't do something similar. There is absolutely no way to stop anybody from crossing the northern border. It's thousands of miles long, unpatrolled, unfenced, and passes through some pretty wild territory.
So, it's another pointless exercise. All it will do is hassle assorted people, many of them innocent, and do nothing to prevent terrorism.
Ok; but where's my luggage? (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, if they track so much information could they inform the airline what happened to my luggage? I was flying from Winnipeg, Canada to Chicago, Il; and on to Norfolk.
Somewhere in here United lost my luggage. They don't have a clue what they did with it.
Re:Ok; but where's my luggage? (Score:5, Informative)
So much for ever visting the US again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Weighed against the benefits of visiting the USA, I would rather go to just about any other country in the world right now. I sincerely hope you folks manage to straighten things out, find your constitution again, resurrect Habeas Corpus and the rights of the individual, and perhaps find your sanity. As it stands the Terrorists out there are winning the so-called war, because they have convinced your government to turn the US into exactly what the Terrorists claimed it was in the first place.
Its so sad to see all this coming to pass. You folks down in the US have my sincere sympathy
Re:So much for ever visting the US again... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't necessarily agree with the way he/she phrased his/her disagreement with the OP, I'll be the first one to admit that someone making a post against a popular opinion (Bush is the devil, the US turning into 1984, etc) will often time result in them getting modded down by 'activist' mods with a deliberate anti-government bias.
Try checking this comment later and you'll probably find it modded Troll/Flamebait/Offtopic, etc. Maybe then you'll understand why he/she went for the Anonymous Coward banner.
Look on the bright side! (Score:5, Funny)
A system totally gone berserk! (Score:5, Interesting)
"According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."
Who is going to rein back those idiots?
America has no dream - only a nightmare.
Time to Leave (Score:5, Interesting)
Every day it seems I get more confirmation that I was right in deciding I should leave this country as soon as I can. A few generations ago my family came to America to escape communism in East Germany after the war, and now I'll be leaving the USA to escape the encroachment of my rights. Things aren't that bad here yet compared to many places in the world, but my family already made the mistake of waiting too long to leave once, I'm not going to make that mistake too. Better to get out early than not at all.
The Republicans are authoritarians and religious zealots, the sane ones either left their party or are such a small voice that they're completely drowned out by the chorus of insanity from the party at large. Ron Paul, who is a real Rep. and not a Neocon, doesn't look like he will be popular enough among the wealthy, the war-hawks, and the religious--or as they call it "the Republican base"--to win. The Democrats are too spineless to stand up for their core values, favoring a centrist stance to garner support from the left leaning Republicans, Independents, and various minorities and they end up acting like Republican-Light(TM). There is virtually no minority party voice in this country that anyone takes seriously. Both sides spend outrageous amount of money, although one actually attempts to pay for it by increasing taxes where the other just spends and passes the debt off to their kids and grandkids. Meanwhile no one is willing to put a stop to America's current adventure in the desert even though we're spending enough money on the war to fund what could be the best health care system in the world, even after you account for typical government waste and inefficiency. The soldiers that come back maimed, crippled, or psychologically scarred are given a standard of care that we should all be ashamed of. And then there are the ones who only come back draped in an American flag.
I would recommend everyone take a serious look at the idea of leaving the US. Figure out what it would take to leave, and how fast you could do it in. There may be a time soon when you have to put that plan into action.
no-one else has stated it outright, so I shall (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, this is the purpose of pretty much all recent anti-terror laws. Across the pond, extension of detention without trial, anti-free-speech laws, compulsory biometric identity cards, these are all designed so that, come the need to stand up against an increasingly oppressive government, resistance will be impossible.
In case it's not absolutely obvious, the whole "war on terror" - which is like a "war on guns", since terrorism is a strategy, not an identifiable enemy - is engineered to create the kind of fear that makes these laws appear legitimate.
(That's not to say there aren't some groups which pose a threat to American security which need to be dealt with. Germany and Italy overran most of Europe and were dealt with in 6 years. The sixth year anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone.)
Humanity has never faced a greater threat to its continuing freedom. We've had governments oppress with hands, with ears, with guns; but never with the sort of technology we have today to monitor, to track, to profile, in my home county and across the world. And every technologist is to blame who does not vigorously oppose government use of his creations beyond government's mandate, who will not quickly abandon any project so co-opted. That's includes you, reader. For it is better to halt the technology's progress entirely than to build a weapon that will ultimately point at you.
Confronting the Central Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of encryption key escrow, where some bright guy thought we'd all be safer if there was just a big list of passwords all in one place so that the guy with the master root password could get anything he wanted when he wanted. It's the superficially appealing but should-be-scary notion that government would be better if more efficient.
It's as if we think the entire world is scary but the one thing we know is a universal constant is that whoever holds the keys will not be compromised. And yet, to listen to radio DJ's, if Hillary takes office it will be as if a coup had taken place. Whatever you think of that claim--legitimate or ridiculous--the one thing that should not be in dispute is that whatever information is amassed against The People is available for use by anyone who has the keys even if a hostile regime change happens. Some people think electing the other party is such a thing, and others don't. But even if you believe an election is benign, there are potential events in the world that are not neutral and that would be bad. We all draw lines in different places, but we all draw lines. I have my own political biases but they are not relevant here--people on both sides of the present political divides should be equally concerned on this one.
What if someone manipulated an election? What if the value of the dollar fell so low that the only people who could fund an electable candidate were foreigners? What if someone successfully attacked the center of government? What if someone bribed a politician? What if a hacker or a worm/virus/whatever snuck in and found all this data? Surely everyone has some scenario they can think of in which the person sitting in the White House might not be someone they wanted to trust with the kind of data being collected here.
Although many people are made nervous about abuse of information, the scenarios discussed usually seem to focus on an isolated individual doing a little inappropriate peeking or a bit of overzealous prosecution or menacing. But that's not the worst case. The worst case is someone getting past the safeguards of the nation and getting to the seat of power and then having at their fingertips the knowledge of who is a threat and who is not, so they can't be re-taken because they have defensive knowledge on everyone who might oppose them.
The government seems obsessed with the notion that centralization is the key to success, but it doesn't realize that the designers of the original republic did a brilliant job of coming up with a distributed structure that made us all safe--the notion of each state having its own way of doing things, and having all of those states be relatively autonomous. Even to the point of allowing state militias, which as I understand it had the potential duty to protect the state from the federal government if it got uppity. In effect, what they implemented was genetic diversity, which makes it harder to attack the US because there are a variety of defenses in play unevenly and it's hard to devise a uniform plan of attack that will take down every state at the same time. But one by one, we're turning our states into clones of one another, so that a single plan of attack will be more likely to succeed on everything at once. That won't make us safer.
Gladly... (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing about these profiling things is that they can be used for so much more. For example one of my treehugging hippie political activist friends is on some kind of a terrorist watchlist to the US, and the funny thing is she wouldn't resort to violence to defend her own life, not to mention she's a small woman in a wheelchair... Another activist friend of hers always gets his book shipments from Amazon crudely opened along the way and then resealed. Mine always arrive untouched.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
This really only hurts the law abiding.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but we now have some sort of government-manufactured rule-based system that assigns risk to 'potential terrorists'. Just wait for the inevitable leak of their methodology (via stolen laptops, incompetence, etc.) and you just gave real terrorists a way to evade suspicion. That's the problem with any "model" for suspicious behavior -- once its known, it's easily exploited.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
tt
Its all symptoms of dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes of terrorism. If the world thinks the US is "The happy country with coca cola and Levi Jeans" then you won't recruit a damn soul. If the world thinks the US is a violent country with a military mad government that claims morals whilst going around blowing up shit they don't like, well you won't need to look hard to find those recruits. Its in fact the infuriating thing about this whole 'terrorism era', we didn't even need to have it. Its like we *chose* to piss off the middle east and make them go crazy and hate us. You don't 'fix' bee nests by hitting them with rocks.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Funny)
I have to ask: are those insensitive clods?
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a bit of a fan of punishing those who have been duly convicted and leaving everyone else to go about their business.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll never get elected to office with that platform - those wishing to control everyone's life for the good of everyone will be upset that you don't agree, the "bleeding hearts" will be upset that you actually punish (vice rehabilitate) those that have been convicted, and the "if you don't have anything to hide, you wouldn't mind us violating the fourth and fifth amendments" crowd will be upset that you don't support Big Brother.
I agree with you, though.
Re:Soviet Vespucciland (Score:5, Funny)
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Er, how many times do you want to punish people? I had a DUI conviction over 7 years ago in Canada; my license was suspended for 15 months, I paid a large fine (and legal fees), and my insurance rates tripled when I got my license back. I had to take a remedial course on DUI, at my own expense.
So if I want to go skiing in western NY later this year, should I be "punished" again by being denied entry? Even if my wife is driving? Even if I have zero BAC? I thought the deal was you served your time, and then you weren't punished for that particular crime again. Now you're telling me that any border guard can deny me entry for the next 40 years because I have a "criminal record"? Thanks.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Cos the way to make sure that criminals have a chance to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society is to make sure that when they get out they become a pariah with little chance of landing a decent job, obtain decent housing, or get the social or medical services they need, right?
We lock up more people by far than any other "civilized" country, and has it lowered the crime rate? Nope. And with background checks becoming easily available to all potential employers and landlords, combined with the climate of paranoia fostered by the government, we almost guarantee that offenders will face a steep uphill battle in trying to become law-abiding, productive citizens again. The only potential saving grace is that they keep lowering the bar on what constitutes a criminal offense, so maybe someday just about everyone in the country will have a criminal record and it will all even out.
well, at least you can still be our President! (Score:5, Insightful)
Recognizing that people make mistakes and that we also make mistakes, that perhaps we should forgive, or even trying to understand what led to the act...all of these have been caricatured and stigmatized as "liberal" soft-headedness. Even pointing out that someone's childhood may have an effect on their actions as an adult elicits scorn and contempt. No doubt there are some "liberals" out there who wouldn't even punish a serial child rapist/axe murderer, but instead of arguing against specific bad arguments, our entire capacity to understand, forgive, and move on has been thrown out like a baby with the bathwater. To understand and forgive wrongdoing you have to have humility, which is not only lacking in our culture but which is actively discouraged.
I've been faulted multiple times for trying to have humility. You aren't supposed to admit that you could be wrong, or that that person in the dock could, by the grace of God and bit of luck, be you as well. Everything is black and white, all the time. Well, unless we're talking about Rush Limbaugh's drug conviction or something like that--people seem to have no trouble handling nuanced arguments about blame and addiction when it comes to Rush. Anyway, I can't tell you how surreal it is for me, an atheist, to be lectured by an evangelical Christian I work with that I shouldn't be so humble, that I should be more proud of what I've done, and so on. Humility and forgiveness go hand in hand, and right now forgiveness, and that whole "don't judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes" thing, has been caricatured and shunned almost out of existence, or at least out of influence, in the USA.
Re:plenty of people come in that way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
The only people who are stopped from getting guns by the gun-control laws are the law-abiding. Getting an illegal gun isn't particularly hard in any major city, and I've been told by LEOs that the market price for them is in some cases substantially lower than you'd pay for one legally (especially if it's already been used in a crime and been discarded).
If you want to get a gun for some nefarious purpose, it's not hard at all. And in return for this situation, we create an onerous burden on people who have no criminal intent, and never would use their guns for any illegitimate purpose.
Likewise, if you want to cross either the northern or southern border of the U.S. without going through the CBP rectal-probing, you can do it. By piling the restrictions on people who come through legal checkpoints while basically ignoring the massive challenge that actually trying to seal a thousands-of-miles-long border would entail, we're creating the same black/white-market division that exists with guns. Only the people who are committed for some personal reason to staying legitimate will go through the official channels. Everyone else will go around it. The result is nothing but a false sense of security and the imposition of unnecessary, do-nothing procedural requirements on those who follow the law.
Thirteen months, actually. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Americans, however, can.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)