So, everyone with dark skin or a Middle Eastern accent gets interrogated for 45 minutes, while everyone who looks pasty-white and speaks fluent Yiddish gets waved through without a by-your-leave?
Countdown to civil rights lawsuit begins. 10… 9… 8…
I have friends who work in the commercial airline industry. All of them, and I do mean all of them, tell me the security measures directed at passengers are a joke.
It is so easy to smuggle aboard contraband via ground crews and baggage handlers. A potential hijacker/terrorist merely boards as a passenger and picks up their “tools of the trade” placed their by accomplices preparing the aircraft.
Isn’t there a wire story today (now where is that link?) about a UK reporter who got hired as ground crew and was able to do just that?
Then there’s that other story from JFK about those kids who were boating in Jamacia Bay, got blown by the wind, docked near a runway later to walk all over the tarmac, and only got caught after they stopped at port authority police asking for help.
Concentrating security measures solely on passengers while leaving so many other back doors open just makes it too easy.
Have you ever flown El-Al?
I have.
Don’t have a drop of Jewish blood in me and every person that was getting on that plane got the same treatment when I flew. Regardless if they were Israeli, English, French or Arab…
I got pulled aside in the Memphis airport on my last trip to NYC for a random bag check. I had my dog in a carry on pet bag, another tote and a purse. They went through everything I had including feeling up the dog. I was the last one on the plane ….
I am a 100 pound white girl with green eyes and blond hair. Now do I look like someone who would blow up a plane? Well no, but they were doing their job and I did not complain because it is post 9/11 and everyone could be the one.
Sick to death of this civil rights liberal card being pulled. Tuff shit. If your that easily offended then maybe you should keep your ass at home.
This is a different time and place and when you get down to the nitty gritty it has nothing to do with civil right and everything to do with security. Getting up on that cross is not only going to do damage to those that really are having their civil rights violated but it is going to piss the hell out of the general population that security is there to protect.
Your not a terrorist, then you should not have any problem being searched. I didn’t.
Brilliant! The terrorists won’t threaten our freedom and civil rights if there are none left to threaten. Now excuse me while I fight burglary by taking all my valuables to the dump.
Like I said if you think being inconvenienced or asked to step aside to go through extra security measures is offensive, keep your ass at home.
If you have nothing to be guilty about or you are not associating with someone who is involved in questionable activity then you should not really be concerned about your constitutional rights being shit all over.
If you are a guest in our country you either follow the rules or you should be SOL. This country cannot afford to have a breach like we did two years ago. If you find our security offensive as a guest in this country then keep your ass out or do your business by video conferencing or telephone.
Personally I don’t care if it takes me 3 hours of bag searching, question asking, passport number running, 6 picture I.D’s needed or for that matter a damn DNA sample. As long as it helps to guarantee I get from point A to point B safe and sound along with my fellow travelers and it should not bother anyone else.
Or have you forgotten that pretty picture of those planes parking upstairs at WT……
Oh my, tilly.
Suffice it to say that I strongly disagree with you.
I resent being treated as a potential criminal, when I have done nothing wrong, and when the intrusive actions bear minimal if any relation to protecting against a reasonably foreseeable threat. Even if it comes to as minor a thing as being asked to take off my shoes.
And the highly public security measures strike me as inherently dishonest - an expensive dog and pony show. For some irrational reason I desire that my stae aspire to better things.
Personally, I would gladly trade significant amounts of “safety” for freedom from intrusion. Unfortunately, in the current environment I am not being given that choice.
I also regret a society in which public security measures instill a general atmosphere of undirected fear, in the face of no specifically identified threat, and belligerent isolation from others in our world community.
I would imagine we have somewhat different images of the America we desire.
And your trotting out the image of the WTC is just plain silly.
If terrorists do not have access to the cockpit, they will be unable to fly the planes into any buildings. So that fear can be taken care of quite simply, inexpensively, and non-intrusively.
Name your next reasonable fear, and we can discuss narrowly tailored means to address that. Just don’t start off with a highly public, expensive, all-inclusive plan, which does not seem designed to address any realistic threat.
Oh my stars and garters?!?!?!
I boggle at the logic behind this statement. The Constitution, and more specifically The Bill of Rights, is a document built for one purpose, to tell the government what it can and can’t do. The document does not say, ‘you can shit all over these rights whenever there MAY be a crime commiting’ it says, ‘These rights SHALL NOT be infringed!’.
You say you don’t mind sacrificing all your rights up for ‘safety’, well I call shenanigans.
And what you don’t seem to realize is that 3 hours of bag searching, passport checking, detaining, questioning, and scanning don’t mean shit. They don’t make you any ‘safer’, they just make the process more annoying, and make me and the rest of the frequent flyers start foaming at the mouth.
Like someone has mentioned above, it isn’t difficult to get anything smuggled onto a plane. And no amount of Facist pandering in the name of security, is going to stop that from happening.
It was in the news last night that a security screener actually made a man take off his pants and stand in his boxers in front of everyone while they put his pants through the x-ray machine.
Turns out they found he had 2 quarters in the pants and that is why the machine was beeping.
The passenger demanded to see someone of authority and complained he had to take his pants off. The security person just said it was warranted and that the screener was in the right to take his pants off.
I think this is going a little too far.
Well, now Isabelle. If they happened to apply that standard to some of the more attractive female passengers, I might have to rethink my position on this security thing.
I don’t disagree that what is implemented could be executed much better and it could be executed in a more professional manner. After experiencing travel with El-Al pre-9/11, I got on that plane knowing that the best possible security had been provided to its customers.
" you trotting out the image of the WTC is just plain silly."
Really,
Well not to get up on the cross myself but I happened to have the distinct pleasure of a front row seat on the 59th floor of WT2 when terrorist parked the first plane next door. I was dead center in the lobby when the next plane parked upstairs… Yea I hauled ass and did 59 flights in 17 minuets.
There were 9 people in the lobby beside myself that day when the plane hit WT2. As I know it only two others and myself were not killed by the implosion that blew through the lobby at the time of impact…
Crawling out of the shit while dogging people jumping from above, not to mention the actual imploding buildings racing toward us was all the reality check I needed. I would never complain again about the measures that need to be taken to ensure the safety of those in this country…
I am going to be really nice when I say that people like yourself sporting your attitude, I have no use for.
I hate it that your “life” is being encroached on because you don’t have access to the FBI/CIA data base to be given a painted portrait of what is on the big board as a credible threat.
Not to mention the fact that you might have to remove your shoes…
For anyone to have the audacity to complain about safety measures that are being implemented to ensure our air travel is safe and planes are never hijacked for any reason or use, much less what they were used for on 9/11 is just much less haul out the sad ones you have is just……
Pathetic…
You should be on the Democratic Underground or is it that I am on the DU board by mistake….
:smack: :dubious:
I flew a couple of weeks ago, and other than showing my driver’s liscence a couple more times, I don’t recall having to do anything above and beyond what was done pre-911. You may be right that security measures today aren’t really protecting us, but I fail to see how they are “excessive.”
tilly - sorry you had to live through such a horrendous event.
Of course, you fail to address the portion of my post where I ask that you
Name your next reasonable fear, and we can discuss narrowly tailored means to address that.
Unless you are deported to Syria for no apparent reason, held without charge, and tortured. Bad, bad things happen to innocent people, and post-9/11 security measures have probably made these much more common, but post-9/11 security measures have made it much more difficult for us to tell.
Of course, if it happens to someone else then I guess it’s not a problem.
Look,
In this day and age it is a no brainer that security in our transportation venues has to be tightened so that it is not an inviting vehicle for a terrorist acts such the unbelievable one that was executed flawlessly two years ago.
You have to put forth the same stringent policies for our agencies covering boarders and immigration so that all systems are overhauled to perfection.
Boarder security and transportation go hand in hand. It is a domino effect that is forever married if one of the vehicles is breeched. Can we all say 9/11?
I fully believed if we maintain a no nonsense operation and for that matter the government of our allies (as today’s news shows) are helping one another in the efficient manner we will all be better off.
There are far better ways to execute a devastating terrorist attack that would less costly, easier to pull of and for that matter far more detrimental than going for commercial airplanes.
The airlines exploitation been done and it is not likely terrorist will want to use that vehicle again because of our new awareness.
With that being said it does not mean you can dismiss it because of logic (that we might use) or statistics.
Again I think the present system needs to be overhauled. I think that Israel’s system should be looked at and used, implemented by our military.
We have had the military running our airport security where I am and it has been down right pleasant leaving from there.
The military does their job very well. They are disciplined, professional, thorough and no nonsense. They have a comforting show of security that makes me as relaxed as sitting on my porch with a pitcher of daiquiris on a warm summer night…
New York on the other hand is now a cluster fuck. Everyone is stressed. There are not enough employees in security to cover the traffic. There is nothing about it that is professional and most of the morons that are actually doing the job cannot even speak English much less know what the hell they are doing or what they are looking at on an x-ray screen.
The airlines also have to be brought to the table on this. After all at the end of the day the paying public is buying their product. You would think they would be bending over backwards to make sure the customer is not only given the best security and service possible while they take every measure available to protect their investment.
You ask me what is it that I think might happen or what present danger that I feel warrants such drastic measures. History! That is all I need to tell me that if we don’t learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it.
For the most part, most of us have never know true operation, a violation of civil rights or anything close to having a constitutional right being broken….
But to sit around and to make it sound like you might as well have been thrown in a Mexican prison without so much as a glass of water because it took you 2 hours to get through airport security or because you are from Indian decent (India the country not a Native American) and you got pulled aside after fitting a profile being looked for is just ridicules.
If something far worse than 9/11 occurs like, lets say an illegal immigrant gets in though an INS glitch or because security at an airport or port of call is less than stellar and is able to set off a dirty bomb killing not just a couple of thousand but killing hundred of thousands.
You wont have worry about the constitution or civil rights because it will be lock down city and those documents will be just another historical document on the wall of a museum and you wont get to savor those right for a very long time. That will go for all of us because we will be under martial law……
Then you will have something to bitch about…
Inconvenience does not = constitutional rights violations …
Those of you that are upset about deportations and denied visa have to understand that we have to implement certain rules in this country. We have to keep a handle on who goes in and out of here. We have to reserve the right to deny anyone who is not a citizen the right to visit.
If you are an illegal alien in this country and are deported, I am sorry but am I the only one that sees the word “illegal”.
Tilly I understand that you feel passionately about the WTC and that you are committed to preventing another such incident from happening, and I completely respect it. I don’t think anyone is advocating that we should relax security to make sure no one is deported, and potential terrorist attacks be damned.
But you are inaccurate in your last statement:
First of all, I believe all of the 9/11 hijackers were in the country legally, so I don’t see how rounding up all the “illegals” relates to that.
Second, none of the people I listed above were “illegal” in any sense. Two were Canadian citizens, travelling through your country, legally, for legal purposes. And their rights were violated.
The anecdotes I listed were about people who were prevented from entering the country, legally, for no reason except their birthplace. I know that entering your country is a privilege and not a right but denying someone mobility based on nothing but their birthplace is what I would call “unnecessary and undesirable” (at the very least), which is what this thread is about.
Last year there were many threads about the situation of many people who were in the country legally and were screwed anyway. For instance, if you send your papers off to be renewed, and the INS doesn’t look at them until well after the deadline date, you will be in the country “illegally” despite your very best efforts and intentions.
And many of the people who “disappeared” were not in the country “illegally” either.
I am not saying that security should not be tight. Just that extreme care must be taken when security policies threaten to curtail civil rights, and that this care has not been taken.
I’m curious why you think the US military should expand its role in the policing business.
I fail to see why the military has special ability to police a civilian population.
Actually several of the hijackers were here on the misconception of a student visa. I can assure you that in our INS system the “student visa program” was one of the biggest holes that needed to be plugged on the war against terrorism.
Until foreign students can be properly tracked and accounted for at all times the student visa’s are being limited. I hate that it might prevent someone from going to school in this country but that is how the cookie crumbles. Thank the terrorist…
As far as someone being denied a visa into the United States because they come from a country that is on our red flag list, it should tell you that it is being done for security reasons.
The government does not have time to interview and background check every person who wants in from a country that has some serious issues on the table with the Untied States. You have to draw the line and people are just going to have to realize that as unfortunate as it is, justice and liberty for all does not mean everyone outside our boarders…
I realize that implementing the policy that way prevents good honest people from coming here to visit or qualifying for immigration but unfortunately life is not always fair and we are dealing with certain people who’s actions have made it even less so….
As far as paperwork being screwed up and people being deported, well hell that happened everyday long before 9/11. Not to burst your bubble but that is typical bureaucracy at its best. Something I am sure no other country has, much less a former eastern block country…. (Your suppose to laugh at that one)
I had a trader one time that was from England on a work visa. I worked for a Swiss bank at the time. Well his visa issued in London by the American Embassy was screwed up and when he got to the states to work it was only issues for 3 months instead of 3 years.
We thought, no big deal, this bank is a big fish in a little pond of foreign banks. We will have this sorted out before the time is up and not miss a beat. Wrong!
The poor bastard not only had to go back but it took us another 6 months of not only paying his rent in NY but paying for a place in London while they ironed it out and re-issues it. Shit happens to even the big players.
The INS and the IRS in the country can be the most bureaucratic and ruthless in the world. If bureaucracy were an Olympic sport the US might fight it out for the gold with Russia better than hockey… It would be toss up…
As far as those that just disappeared… I might be concerned if a guest in this country disappeared it was not because they were rotting away in some double-top secret federal jail being interrogated. They might be missing for far more sinister reasons.
I would whole rather know the feds had them than no one could find them….
My question is, if they disappeared then how do we know about it to begin with much less if they were legal? Just a thought…
The bottom line is, if you are here on a visa, if you are here as a guest, I don’t mean to be persnickety but you are only “legal” or a “guest” as long as the INS and the US Government says you are. They reserve that right to revoke your privileges as a visitor at any time…
Everyone has been able to come and go into this country with little problem (even those that were here illegally). We are genuinely trusting people who want to believe that everyone is good, everyone will be the kind of friend we hope that we have been.
Now that we have to follow the rules that were in place but not really enforced it is offending a lot of people. Many had a false sense of entitlement that really was only there as long as the security was not an issue.
It is a problem now… Sorry
Offensive? No. A waste of the time and money of every paying customer? Heavens, yes. [/rummyspeak]
As other posters have pointed out, a good solid cockpit door and a pilot who refused to open it would have prevented 9/11. The added security measures are nothing but feel-good bullshit.
Brilliant again. While you’re at it, why not get rid of the Fourth Amendment? If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason to be afraid of a random search, right?
You might have a point if you can demonstrate that 3 hours of bag searching and 6 picture IDs will have any impact at all on your safety. Let’s hear it.
Naturally, there is a website devoted entirely to this subject.
Here.
If today’s security at our airports prevents even one hi-jacking it is not a waist of time or money, at least not in my book.
You may be up for that little asinine adventure and don’t care about your life but I think there are quite a few of us that would disagree…
You want them to have good cockpit door? Uh sorry but I don’t even want them on the fucking plane to begin with but hey call me crazy…
Again El-Al’s security is a great system that needs to be mapped out for our airports. It is implemented at every gate an El-Al flight leaves from regardless of the country of departure and has worked brilliantly.
As far as feel good security, yes I don’t think that a person in this thread that does not think the present system in place has a great deal to be desired…
If you are getting on a plane that is a voluntary choice. The 4th amendment does not apply nor should measures being taken to insure your security be a problem.
If the rules and regulations of the FAA are that offensive to you then don’t fly. No one is coming to your house and asking to go through you underwear drawer before you board that North West flight.
You do know there are other forms of transportation? A car will allow you to make your own schedule for the most part. I doubt that Dudley Do Right will be trying to test your 4th amendment rights unless you are breaking some major traffic laws…
As far as my list of security examples go, I was trying to point out to you that if it saves your life from some nut case it should not be a problem for you to comply but I see that leaving the house and going about your daily schedule everyday must challenge some constitutional right in your mind ….
I suggest you get of the cross because we need the wood…