Why we will not be visiting the US in the forseeable future

[Kerberos]

No, it only looks like a non sequitur to someone who misses the point. Politeness, as Godmode describes it, is deference. The free and brave do not kneel so easily.

Really? So people who oppose what they see as excessive government intrusion in their privacy out of, because they either don't think it helps significantly or think the terrorist threat is exaggerated in the first place are actually cowards and slaves? Why you do learn the most astonishing things on this forum. I had no idea that the words meant that.

Hope that helps. Tomorrow we'll tackle the concept of "irony."

Ohh, goodie, I can barely wait to bathe in more of your unique insights on the English language.

 

[Gurdur]

You do not fear terrorism in England?

I actually lived in London at the height of the IRA bombing campaign in the 1980's. Certain measures were introduced which I think were a bad over-reaction, but my point is, none of those measures extended to fingerprinting all foreign tourists from friendly allied countries, or reading their email, or collecting all their credit-card transaction histories.

And are you saying we in America SHOULD NOT fear terrorism simply because Bush says we SHOULD?

Do you think I am? Nope. I'm saying that the fear has been artifically heightened, and that certain measures are waaaaaaaaay overdone.

Also, Godmode declares on her thread that "I AM NOT A SECURITY RISK!" Does such a declaration exonerate her (or him)? Is such a declaration in your opinion as trustworthy as, say, finger-printing?

I'm kinda interested why you think fingerprinting an American who lives in Europe is a good idea (Godmode), or why fingerprinting Australian tourists and reading their emails is a good idea; last time I looked, Australia was a staunch ally of the USA, involved in Iraq2 too steadfastedly with troops and naval units, and as you no doubt would grant Australia is hardly a Moslem country full of nasty anti-American types.

Granted, you have Aussies like me who bite hard in debate and make crocodiles look like cute fluffy toys, but I doubt that that justifies the present raft of American govt actions which affect EU, Australian and NZ tourists to the USA. I doubt it very much.

 

[steverino]

I'm kinda interested why you think fingerprinting an American who lives in Europe is a good idea (Godmode), or why fingerprinting Australian tourists and reading their emails is a good idea; last time I looked, Australia was a staunch ally of the USA, involved in Iraq2 too steadfastedly with troops and naval units, and as you no doubt would grant Australia is hardly a Moslem country full of nasty anti-American types.

Granted, you have Aussies like me who bite hard in debate and make crocodiles look like cute fluffy toy.

You're an Aussie? Oh, that explains everything.

I don't say it is a great idea. I just want to give voice to the premise that we do not know if in fact Godmode is Godmode, and fingerprinting is one way to find out. I mean, Nixon declared "I am not a crook," and was not considered honest as a result of that 5-word gem.

I do not question Australia's loyalty to America. But I believe individual enemies of both America and Australia may possibly be hiding in our two great nations.

 

[Gurdur]

You're an Aussie?

Indeedy. I am an Aussie although I now live in Europe.

Oh, that explains everything.

Quite possibly. It does explain why I use the word "bloody" so much, too.

I don't say it is a great idea. I just want to give voice to the premise that we do not know if in fact Godmode is Godmode, and fingerprinting is one way to find out.

A genuine point, and a practical one, one which has not been raised so far. Yet I still say very strongly that the present govt actions are waaaaaaaaay overdone. Smuggling in sleepers posing as friendly tourists or whatnot is a possibility, yes; but I doubt the present actions will actually be effective against that, for various practical reasons, and they are badly counter-productive too. The economics of harrassing off friendly tourists?

And I don't believe if the 9/11 terrorists had been fingerprinted previously it would have led to them being stopped at all.

..... But I believe individual enemies of both America and Australia may possibly be hiding in our two great nations.

No doubt. But tell me, if Timothy McVeigh had been fingerprinted before his bombing, would it have stopped him? Nope. Would fingerprinting every USA citizen have stopped either McVeigh or Nixon? Nope. Would fingerprinting every USA citizen have stopped the White Power/Farrakhan/Kahane/KKK/whatever in any appreciable way, while not being badly counterproductive?
Same thing with this raft of present measures aimed at foreign visitors to the USA.

 

[steverino]

Would fingerprinting every USA citizen have stopped...Nixon?

No. But you must admit, that does make for a satisfying mental image, his holding up the two peace signs with ink-tipped fingers!

The McVeigh example is sort of cherry-picking as he was a lone wolf. The KKK and other white-power groups are under enormous serveillance. Finger-printing would be child's play in that arena.

 

[Darat]

You do not fear terrorism in England?

...snip...

I would say "it depends".

Remember we lived with constant terrorism for literally decades; in some years the bomb disposal units were defusing a 1000 devices and destroying a thousand more (this is not an exaggeration). In the seventies especially we had restaurants and other such businesses with sandbags outside their windows.

So the threat became part of our everyday experience - I doubt there is anyone over the age of 30 or so that doesn't remember the delays caused by "bomb scares" - they were literally a daily event if you traveled by train and plane or that from being children we were brought up to report and not disturb suspicious packages and the like, even the smaller things like all public rubbish bins being removed from city and town centres and all train stations.

All that in my opinion resulted in a society that whilst it recognized the threat gained a certain perspective of what the actual threat to individuals was so to trip our personal fear about terrorism takes a lot more then an alleged plot. And to whip up any discernible level of hysteria takes actual concrete threats.

 

[fishbob]

Frankly, I'm a lot more scared of what terrorists want to do to me than of what my government supposedly wants to do to me.

The odds of a terrorist doing anything to you personnally are small, while the odds that your government chipping away at our rights will affect you personally approaches 1. Yet you fear what they want to do to you.

Car wrecks and heart disease are far more likely. I hope you didn't decide to fear 'fear itself' just because Roosevelt was a democrat.

 

[Katana]

{snip}

I don't say it is a great idea. I just want to give voice to the premise that we do not know if in fact Godmode is Godmode, and fingerprinting is one way to find out.

A genuine point, and a practical one, one which has not been raised so far.

{snip}

Well, I kinda did, but I don't think that the program should be limited to visitors.

What purpose would it serve to have an "innocent" person's prints on file? Well, are there applications that could protect against identity theft? What if someone using your information was scanned and didn't match?

Having said that, what bothers me more about this is that it isn't being used on everyone flying. It could identify many people (in addition to potential terrorists) that would be better taken into custody and could potentially uncover cases of identify theft, especially if broadened to include Americans. Given our large illegal immigrant population and issues around identity theft, I would support this, again if it was sufficiently accurate. Of course, this would require that we all be the first ones to submit prints so that anyone else using our identity would be compared to ours. Hmm.

 

[Darat]

You do not fear terrorism in England?

...snip...

I would say "it depends".

...snip...

I should of course add what I posted applies to the other countries of the UK and of course especially NI where the results of having to live with daily acts of terrorism (murders, bombings and so on) for decades were even more extreme.

 

[The Painter]

Screening every person that comes to the US is pointless. It is not a prudent policy. Finger printing everyone is not only stupid, it smacks of an oppressive, totalitarian government. If you had to wait for the comparison of one set of prints to everyone in the US, how long would that take? Hours, days, weeks, months, years? All of this in the name of fighting terrorism. If a terrorist wants to get into the US all they have to do is walk across the Mexican border. We do very little there. It’s not politically correct. It’s also not politically correct to profile a particular group of people, like Muslim fundamentalist. That would be wrong, un-American. That would violate their civil rights. So in the name of equality and fairness everyone gets screened, even the 85 year old grandma flying to visit her grandchildren. These security measure are a joke, and do very little to stop the real bad guys. CBS News did a check to see how good airport check points are.

We placed lead-lined film bags in carry-on luggage to show how dangerous objects might be smuggled onto planes. The bags, routinely used by travelers to protect film, can block x-rays from security scanners, even the latest machines.

The film bags should be checked because the only way for screeners to know for sure there's not a weapon or bomb inside is to open them. Which is why our test results were so disturbing. About 70 percent of the time, no one checked our film bags.

We easily got through JFK, Atlanta and Washington-Reagan airports. We went through Baltimore three times, twice on the day after a Justice Department high security alert.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/02/25/eveningnews/main330492.shtml

Ridiculous. It’s all just for show, so you think something is being done. Smoke and mirrors. So many rights have been given up in the name of security. The American way of life has changed after 9-11, and not for the better. If the aim of the terroists was to change America, than the war on terrorism is over. They won.

 

[Ladewig]

. It’s also not politically correct to profile a particular group of people, like Muslim fundamentalist. That would be wrong, un-American. That would violate their civil rights. So in the name of equality and fairness everyone gets screened, even the 85 year old grandma flying to visit her grandchildren.

If we stopped screening 85-year-old grandmothers, then wouldn't the terrorists hide explosives in the luggage of unwitting 85-year-old grandmothers?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the bomb that destroyed PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was not carried on board by a Muslim fundamentalist.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Oh say, do you think that the brave aren't polite,
and that freedom is marked by an ill-natured manner?
Then, though bullies and thugs may agree that you're right,
that is not what it says in The Star-Spangled Banner.
To be boorish and rude, and obnoxious and crude,
marks out, not a brave, but an arrogant mood.
When you claim only jerks can be free and be brave
I bet Francis Scott Key must revolve in his grave.

There once was a Doctor of Adequate
Posting quips lacking subject and predicate
With a meter sans blemish
He questioned the premise
That politeness was sign of a 'fraidy cat

DR

 

[Doubt]

An interesting thread.

I have mixed feeling about airport security in the US. I travel a great deal for work. I carry a fair amount of tools and electronics to do my job. My checked bag has been searched all but once in the last year. I had a pair of pliers in my computer backpack that was confiscated by airport security. Not in the US on the way out, not in Japan while passing through, but in China on the way home.

The pliers were there to open the zip ties that I had been using in place of a lock on my checked bag. It was pointless to carry them since the security people always cut the zip tie to hand search my bag anyway. Once the (rule 8) (rule 8 again) cut right through the zipper on my bag when they cut the zip tie. So far nothing has been stolen even though there are often some expensive items among the electronics. I cannot always pack them with the laptop in my carry on.

Other than the pliers, I have only been singled out once for having my carry on bag searched and that was probably triggered by changing my reservation 3 times less than 24 hour before heading home. The people searching me were very polite and apologetic for searching my carry on.

I have no love for the TSA. A large percentage of them come across as not very smart. I am not at all intimidated by them. They have never acted rude in my presence but I can tell how badly they search things based on how my bag looks when I open it. I have little regard for the customs or immigration folks. Mostly they come across as being a bunch of very bored bureaucrats. That also appears to be an international standard based on my experience.

The hardest border check I ever went through was in Canada. This was after NAFTA and before 9/11. I was driving from Detroit to St. Catharine to train some factory maintenance personnel on our equipment. In spite of NAFTA, the jerk from immigration had to play silly games and ask such questions as “Why cannot a Canadian citizen do this job?” I did not give him the answer I would have liked, which would have been something along the lines of “None of your damned business, you non-treaty complying troglodyte.”

I just got a visa for Russia in November. They wanted to know quite a bit about me. My resume has much less information on it. They were curious about any weapons, explosive and chemical weapons training I might have had. (Gee, 8 year of military experience, I just might have handled a gun or two.) They also required me to get an AIDs test. Fingerprints are nothing. (The US Army and United Parcel Service already have mine.)

For those traveling to the US and are offended by our security I have this to say. Grow up. The world is not pretty and those planes we travel on are targets. Get used to it. And try traveling to some of the not so nice places I go and then tell me how onerous it is to have to be finger printed.

On the other hand, if you are concerned about some bureaucrat messing up and labeling you as something you are not, you have my sympathy. I am far more concerned about SNAFUS and mistakes than I am about intimidation. The more security measures that are taken the greater the opportunity for somebody to screw up. It is not as if the various governments of the world are geared towards customer service.

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

I'm American, and I'm certainly NOT an America basher (if that's what you're implying...if not, disregard). I've never felt any negativity towards me at airports in Europe, like I have in the US. Obviously there are a few good and bad everywhere, but intimidation is NOT POLICY in European airports, security or no. I love America, I am not pleased with the current policies in place. It's as simple as that. I very much hope then in a couple of years things will start to look better. I don't know if that will happen, but I certainly don't like the idea of never going to visit home again. On the other hand, I have no intention of volentarily handing over my civil rights to privacy either. Nor do I accept that I am guilty until proven innocent. Frankly, I resent the way many Americans are not complaining about what is happening. And by complaining, I mean openly, not behind closed doors.

You voluntarily handed over your privacy the moment you set foot in Britain. E-mail - IIRC - goes through government servers, by law. You are surveilled in any town you happen to enter. Your bank accounts, credit cards ticket purchases and passport information are, all of them, in the data banks. Britain has some of the most sophisticated people tracking and identifying software in the world - an unhappy outgrowth of decades of tracking down IRA bombers.


Now I ain't saying that I am happy or unhappy about all this stuff being stored and available - it just is. If the reason you are not travelling to the US is "privacy" then you have nothing at all left to lose.

AS for politeness and security. I am not sure what "impoliteness" you are referring to. I am a Brit living in the USA I have not been subject to any impoliteness, in fact the opposite.

However Security people in airports, especially when dealing with people boarding planes - should make you feel uncomfortable. It is part of the job. Why? Because uncomfortable people reveal things about themselves. That is very important. It is of no use whatsoever for Security people to make people feel at ease when they are being questioned. Unpleasant? Yeah probably.

Please don't think I'm saying Europe is perfect. It's not. In fact, scary things are happening all over the world. But then America is supposed to be the example for democracy...it's supposed to be the best country in the world. That's what I was raised to believe, and it's been a bitter pill to swallow to realize nothing could be the furthest from the truth.

I'm just frustrated and scared at things I see happening. I'm only human after all...

So America is the worst country in the world? A tad of an extreme position I would have thought.

I find it kind of amusing that you are living in a country where the Official Secrets Act is so draconian that a Traffic Warden is constrained about what they may say. You live in a country where the intelligence services not only infiltrated the terrorist organizations - they ran certain parts of them up to and including assassinations. And you express such extremist views of America?

I do agree with you in one respect, there are unpleasant things happening and, while I agree with the sometime need to have security intrude I would also like to see politicians of all stripes delineating at which point the intrusions can be stopped.

 

[boooeee]

This is an interesting thread. There seem to be two questions at play here:

1. What is the most effective way of catching terrorists and/or foiling terrorist plots?
2. Assuming a certain anti-terrorist tactic works, should it be implemented, or is the threat to privacy and civil liberties too great?

Question 1 shouldn't be political, but it is anyway. Question 2 is obviously political, and it's a question I go back and forth on a lot.

Godmode - While I think some of your concerns are valid, I think you're over-reacting by refusing to visit the US because of these new policies. Then again, that's probably because the guilt trip I would get from my Mom for not visiting would be far worse than anything the US government could dream up.

 

[rikzilla]

So you won't visit your mother because you are afraid that some pencilneck could (but almost certainly won't) look into your personal history?

Kinda sad.

Yeah really....

Also you may want to think about putting off that next visit to a new car dealership. They've usually run your entire credit history before you've even closed the door to start your test drive of that shiny new Vauxhall.

Get real my friend....credit checks are a fact of life and half the time you don't even know when they're happening.

-z

 

[Gurdur]

....For those traveling to the US and are offended by our security I have this to say. Grow up. The world is not pretty and those planes we travel on are targets. Get used to it. And try traveling to some of the not so nice places I go and then tell me how onerous it is to have to be finger printed.

This was sooooooo predictable.
And I would reply to you:
Grow up and grow a pair of testicles while you're at it. All your rampant, articificial hysteria is only that. If you feel like imitating tinpot Uzbekistan at its worst, that's your right, but don't expect anyone to respect you for it.

And, FYI, I have travelled to far nastier places, and been in wars and in places where there was very real present dangers of terrorism. So stop autoeroticising with your gutless, spineless paranoia.

 

[Katana]

This was sooooooo predictable.

Hate to say it, but "ditto" back to you.

If you feel like imitating tinpot Uzbekistan at its worst, that's your right, but don't expect anyone to respect you for it.

Great Scott! Imitating Uzbekistan! Is that what we're doing? I had no idea. Stop the presses!

 

[Gurdur]

Hate to say it, but "ditto" back to you.

You're neither being honest nor clever.
The alleged points raised by Doubt were actually raised far better by Steverino, and already replied to in depth previously in the thread. I note neither you nor he could actually answer in any substance to them.

So if you and Doubt want to cower in your gutless paranoia, expect to have it named for what it is.

Great Scott! Imitating Uzbekistan! Is that what we're doing? I had no idea. Stop the presses!

You're not being honest again, and very far from clever. Since a major part of Doubt's post was all about how some other places were worse, notably for him Russia, then I was pointing out to him that imitating the extremes of some nasty little authoritarian place is not a good idea nor a good excuse.

But I guess you don't like the idea of growing a pair of testicles to handle that.

 

[Doubt]

This was sooooooo predictable.
And I would reply to you:
Grow up and grow a pair of testicles while you're at it. All your rampant, articificial hysteria is only that. If you feel like imitating tinpot Uzbekistan at its worst, that's your right, but don't expect anyone to respect you for it.

Please quote anything I said that was hysteria. Or are you going to tell me there is no threat?

And, FYI, I have travelled to far nastier places, and been in wars and in places where there was very real present dangers of terrorism. So stop autoeroticising with your gutless, spineless paranoia.

On what grounds do you call me spineless? If, in your opinion, I had a spine, what should I do differently? Not get on the plane? Refuse to be searched? Would agreeing with you make me brave?

I love it when people sitting behind computers call others spineless for voicing an opinion.

Autoeroticising? Nice word. If somebody here is wanking off, I would think that would be those who choose to use multipal insults as a cheap substitute for an argument.