Reporter investigating the TSA gets her notes siezed
So, what happened to your First Amendment? Has America taken another step towards being a police state?
And what about your Fourth Amendment? You know, unreasonable search & siezure.
First: please note that this is the reporter’s claim. D’you think it’s possible a reporter (investigating Homeland Security) might find reason to distort (I refrain from saying “lie”) to attract attention? D’you think it’s possible that a “news story” might be, um, exaggerated? So, before leaping to gigantic conclusions about “no longer land of the free,” I suggest waiting to see what comes next.
Second: Certainly situations occur in which police and others exceed their authority. The question is not whether infractions occur, but what happens next. In the “land of the free,” there is recourse through the legal system when abuses happen. “Land of the free” does not mean that every single person in authority always acts totally within the law, in an honest and upright manner. It does mean that we have the freedom to seek redress when violations occur.
I’m frankly pretty fed up with how quickly people jump up and scream that freedom is gone over every little thing, from Medicare to the “press 2 if you want to renew your subscription.”
The Coast Guard has admitted their involvement:
Just asking for this warrant is suspicious enough, let alone that it was granted. Resisting arrest twenty-five years ago is not probable cause to believe someone possesses a gun today.
It never was, outside of its own mythology.
The Coast Guard Investigative Service does not give a crap if she wrote a story critical of the Federal Air Marshal Service. That service is not within the Coast Guard, which was the claim in the article, and there is no reason for members of the CGIS to care about what she wrote about air marshals, TSA (agency the air marshals actually work for), or DHS.
The story seems to be that law enforcement, including CGIS, went there to investigate her husband, an active duty member or employee of the Coast Guard, for a gun violation. They then found documents that were labelled as FOUO and LES (law enforcement sensitive), which they took. Then she claimed they took her notes and that was the whole point of the search. Maybe they took her notes, but it seems to me she is trying to make the story about her when it is not.
The very existence of the TSA is an argument against America’s being a land of the free, never mind this particular incident.
A more reasonable question is how much freedom you’re willing to give up for a smoothly functioning society. My answer, like most people who aren’t insane, is “some.”
Part of the problem is that in giving up freedom, you give up power, and the authority in which that power is invested is pretty reluctant to relinquish it. It seems to me that most of the agencies working for my “security” (TSA, NSA) are not, in fact, concerned with my security. The TSA is easier to assess, because it’s widely recognized that what they do is Security Theater and not actual security. I’m sure the NSA does have America’s interests at heart, but I suspect that is America’s economic interests abroad rather than Americans’ quality of life at home.
Another problem is that people are human, and human beings in a job that they are told is important, but is not important, will often find ways to make themselves important by going a bit too far, especially if they have the power to do so and no oversights. (Edit: this is the bit referring to the OP—my post isn’t a total tangent.)
So: yes, a tiny step towards a Police State, but even using that phrase is probably insulting to anyone who has actually lived in a Police State. I really do think that Americans are less free in 2013 than they were in 2000.
Agree with the first statement, but not the second. One needs to weigh freedoms gained vs freedoms lost. As an example: on the whole, gays are enormously more free today than they were in 2000 in some very important ways. If I had to choose between removing my shoes at the airport and allowing gays to serve in the military, I’d choose the latter. I think we’d be more free with both situations in place than with neither.
Another thread on the same topic. The mods might want to do a merge.
9/11 changed everything.
9/11 changed everything.
Agreed. Protecting our country from an enemy willing to sacrifice his life to kill our citizens is bound to cross a few lines. But all in all, I’m pretty happy that airplanes aren’t blowing up over my city because some asshole stuffed explosives in his underwear.
This doesn’t seem that serious to me, because from what I’ve heard it was an accident. Federal law enforcement served a warrant on the residence, agents thought they saw evidence of another crime (documents that looked as if they were classified/marked sensitive), and confiscated those also. When the Coast Guard learned they were legally obtained via FOIA, they gave them back. This isn’t harassing a journalist, this is an oopsie on the part of law enforcement. Nobody was hurt, and the accidental bad seizure was rectified.
The only criticism I can see arising here is that agencies should clearly alter the classification markings on documents released through FOIA.
The fact that it’s the Daily Caller, which is Fucker Carlson’s stupid website, should give you pause, no matter what your politics.
But this is all irrelevant to the subject of the thread since the TSA had nothing to do with it.
I’m not seeing the connection here with what allegedly occurred. Hudson wasn’t investigating terrorists and there’s no evidence that the documents that were taken had any information about terrorists. She was investigating the Department of Homeland Security and that was the subject of those documents.
If there are problems in the Department of Homeland Security than those problems are helping terrorists. A journalist exposing those problems might embarrass the Department of Homeland Security but that exposure and embarrassment would help eliminate those problems and would therefore work to prevent terrorist attacks.
It undoubtedly is one of the freest countries in the world and has been in many aspects (for example in establishing universal white male suffrage).
Except they didn’t just confiscate those documents. They confiscated the rest of her documents as well.
I agree. American ‘secret police’ have a long history of investigating and harassing groups and individuals who were exercising their legal rights. Blacks demanding civil rights, hippies, leftists, etc. have been subject to harassment and intimidation in the past. This is not new.
Compared with other developed countries America is the least free by far. No other country has the incarceration rates of America which has the highest rates by a wide margin. For a country who incarcerates people like that to boast about freedom is strange, to say the least.
In no other country are the police so violent or demand such unqualified submission and obedience. None. By far.
In no other country does the government spy on its citizens (and those of other countries too) like in America. No other country on earth dedicates the resources that America does.
In no other developed country does the government seize your property without due process of law like in America.
No other country has people incarcerated without due process of law like America does in Guantanamo and internment camps for foreigners.
No other country allows the use of torture, whether done in-house or subcontracted to other countries.
No other country obligates its citizens abroad to report their income like America does.
And this is referring only to “freedom from government oppression”. If we expand the concept of freedom to a wider concept of “freedom of choice” and “freedom from fear” then I would say America loses the comparison with the other countries which all have universal health care and better government social services.
Nationalism is amazing in how it makes people believe and proclaim things which are just patently false.
So, what freedoms do Americans have that citizens of other countries do not have?The first one mentioned is always the freedom to own and carry guns but Europeans seem to think this is a “freedom” which causes more problems than it is worth. By this definition of freedom Somalia is the freest country of all because there is no functioning government to impose on the individual who is “free” to do as he pleases just as others are “free” to do unto him as they please.
I just cannot see how America can be said to be freer than any other advanced country and yet I can see many ways in which it is less free.
American nationalists have to keep repeating the “Land of the Free” mantra just to drown out of their minds any critical thinking.
I can’t tell. Was this supposed to be ironic?
When was it ever the land of the free, instead of just a slogan to make people believe it was? Perhaps when the Native Americans first stepped onto it.