Scrutiny on Security

Support No Spin ^ | 6/3/02 | Raymond Green

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Scrutiny on Security By Raymond Green www.supportnospin.com

Keeping up with current events is a dangerous job. Your chances of high blood pressure and Idiotic Detection Stress Syndrome (IDSS) increase dramatically if you stay up to date on the happenings on our government. If you haven’t heard of IDSS, you will recognize it with the following symptoms: increased and intensified shouting at television news programs, extended periods of confusion attempting to understand other people’s thought process, and persistent daydreams about inventing a foghorn loud enough to reach every individuals common sense and do society a favor by altering it. We the people, are either oblivious or choose to ignore the most absurd and idiotic theories and actions when they significantly influence our lives, such as the following:

While deceased immigrant’s families file a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for not making crossing the border easy enough, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) refuses to be bothered on Memorial Day.

In May of 2001, 14 Mexicans died in the desert of Arizona attempting to sneak into the United States illegally. In May of 2002, the families of the deceased announced a 41 million-dollar lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for refusing to put water in the middle of the desert for such cases of stranded illegal immigrants. (Pause to allow blood pressure to decline back to a normal rate.)

One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, John Metcalf, appeared on The O’ Reilly Factor. On “The Factor”, he enlightened us with the basis for the suit, which originally stems from the INS actually doing their job (room for applause here ____ ). In fact, they were doing their job so well in urban areas that illegal immigrants attempting to sneak over our borders were forced to use the desert as point of entrance. When it was discovered that illegal immigrants were so greatly inconvenienced, a request was made to put more water (I say more because we already have water sources in the desert reserved for the pronghorn antelope) in the desert with a pole and a flag on top “so you could see it for miles and miles in the desert,” as Metcalf puts it. As if that weren’t bad enough, he states they also wanted the water “placed on known crossing areas”, but that, of course, does not mean they are encouraging illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, New York City received warning of a potential terrorist attack over the Memorial Day weekend. On Memorial Day, 6 Muslims were pulled over at one of the tunnels going into Manhattan, NYC. The Muslim men, most of which were from Pakistan, carried phony green cards, phony passports, and spouted contradicting stories as to what they were doing.

Although it turns out the apprehension was a coincidence in relation to the terrorist warning, the most frightening aspect is the reaction (or lack of) from the INS. When the call was made from the District Attorney’s office in NYC, they were surprised to find out the INS was not working on the weekend. Instead they got a message to dial the INS office in Rutland, Vermont. When the DA’s office was able to finally reach someone “on duty”, they were informed to let the suspects go. Later, the INS said, “Since Sept. 11, our primary focus has been on terrorist-related investigations. Contrary to belief, we're not in the business of detaining people without cause. These men posed no terrorist threat, and, for that matter, any threat to the community”. Apparently, a psychic has been employed at the INS because the police were informed to release the suspects prior to their information being properly researched by a qualified INS employee.

If the lawsuit regarding public water supplies for illegal immigrants is successful, we can forget any enforcement of our laws regarding the security of our borders in fear of violating civil rights (also see below for FBI’s issues regarding civil rights and performing duties). If our borders are insecure, we can be assured another terrorist attack is “inevitable”, as Vice President Dick Cheney said, especially with the INS casually releasing potential terrorists and illegal aliens without proper investigation. Contrary to idiotic thinking procedures, terrorists do have televisions and can plainly see we are lax regarding our border and ultimately our national security.

American Airlines (AA) is claiming that too much security is causing people not to fly.

The idea that people are not flying due to excess of security is absurd. Many people that aren’t flying are doing so because there is too little security. Our airlines, including AA, are still not safe. Because of the problems with the INS and potential for terrorists wandering freely in our country, most Americans do not believe they are protected by “rent-a-cop” security at the airport. The security at the airport is quite simply a joke in all aspects and we, as flyers know that (and most of us also assume the terrorists are in tune with the facts as well).

Some aspects have been improved such as presence of military armed guards, intensified identification detection processes, and the application of attention applied to faulty metal detectors. But we all know there is not enough security, and what security there is, quite frankly, is scary. We refuse to minimally profile terrorists by race, although there was only one light skinned Taliban named Johnny in Afghanistan. Instead, we harass everyone equally. A military war veteran was harassed for his Medal of Honor and members of Congress have been harassed even after providing proper identification. All the while, they are failing test after test and letting deadly weapons through the screening process.

The problem isn’t too much security; it’s stupid security. For the most part, it’s the same people performing a more intense job, one they were unable to perform in the first place. Until the airlines can prove the security substance is actually possesses better quality, not quantity, the sales will be low. I’m no Wall Street stock guru, but I suspect a second hijacking as a result of poor security will result in airline ticket sales dropping dramatically, and permanently. (It also doesn’t help that I find friendlier people working at the IRS than at many airlines.)

The FBI has been accused of violating civil rights with their latest reform; unfortunately no one can specify what rights are being violated.

Alas, liberal Democrats, extreme constitutionalists, and even some conservative Republicans are on the same side. All of the culprits that are adjoining forces imply they are protecting our civil liberties and the Constitution. The action that brought these rivals together: The reform of the FBI. According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, the current reformation process allows the FBI the ability to legally attend activities “open to the public…on the same terms and conditions as the public” for reasons limited to terrorism. “Public” activities include places such as the Internet, open door religious activities, and political lobbying groups.

The FBI is merely able to observe churches and mosques for potential terrorist relations, view Internet websites that are made available to the public, and monitor political activist groups that may be utilizing their influence with our policies or lobbying government with terrorist funds. The FBI is permitted to watch what goes on in public and utilize that information as intelligence to prevent future terrorist attacks.

The key word here is “public”. They are not violating any civil rights by watching what goes on in public any more than you or I are when we overhear a loud conversation between a couple at the beach. The FBI is finally allowed to their job without the handicap of the overly protective civil rights protection watchdogs. The duty of the FBI is to protect us while respecting our civil rights. Their job has just been made a bit easier with permission granted to actually acquire clues that are made available to me, you and the entire public, but not to them. Anyone in their right mind would wonder why they haven’t been looking in these places for clues pre-9/11.

How can you expect privacy when posting a message on the Internet for all to see? How can you expect to remain privatized as a political lobbyist when you are actually serving the public (yes, politics politicians are actually supposed to serve the public) for public policies to publicly elected officials? How can you expect religious establishments to subsist privately, although they possess an open door policy to the public?

The civil rights protection agencies are up in arms with accusations that the reform violates our Constitutional rights. (In fact, the watchdogs are concurrently balancing these violations of our civil rights with the rights of prisoners to read pornography while in prison.) The problem is, they can’t find or specify which rights are being violated (just as they can’t with the pornography rights as a prisoner). It certainly isn’t free speech, because the FBI isn’t stopping anyone from speaking, unless you are plotting a terrorist attack in public. It isn’t search and seizure because they aren’t searching or seizing anything with the exception of information about criminal and terrorist activity made available to the public.

"People who go to places of worship, people who go to libraries, people who are in chat rooms, are going to have 'Big Brother' listening in even though there's no evidence that they are involved in anything illegal whatsoever," said Laura Murphy, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union. What Murphy doesn’t tell us is how the FBI is supposed to gather any evidence without these measures. If they can’t gather it from the public establishments such as the public libraries we pay for, and the government operates, and they can’t gather information from public meetings, where is it supposed to come from, a lucky source? Are they supposed to utilize the same guidelines they used investigating Zacarias Moussaoui? The StarTribune.com reported on October 3, 2002, “The Justice Department's compliance with a federal civil liberties law may have thwarted the FBI's Minneapolis field office from uncovering key clues to the terrorist plot that led to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.” How many times do we need to read headlines like this before the selfish extremists will let the FBI do their job?

"I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively ... going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King," says Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner. He goes on to say, "Merely having the FBI go in and investigate political expression which might not be approved by a majority of the people, but which is protected by the First Amendment, comes awful close to the edge." So I ask you, what edge and the edge of what is Sensenbrenner talking about?

What Sensenbrenner states is atypical of his general stance and doesn’t fully explain what is at stake. He uses phrases like “go in” and “spying” with no explanation as a scare tactic. This reform will only grant the FBI the ability to “go in” to public meeting and “spy” on those who are dim-witted enough to publicize behavior that ought to remain in private. He uses broad generalizations with no specifics and also fails to acknowledge the potential for resentment in his claims being that the reform didn’t include him “in the loop”.

With the reformed guidelines, our FBI will finally be able to perform their obligation to protect us while not infringing upon our civil rights, unless of course your civil rights include publicly discussing and plotting terrorist activity. Of course this won’t stop terrorism, but it will definitely make planning attacks on our home soil more difficult. Otherwise, we could end up with a FBI that treats terrorism like the INS treats immigration. (Pause to cringe.)

So…

What do all these have in common? National security, both yours and mine! The instances mentioned above are indeed only a select few of the atrocities happening in our country right now. For a brief moment following 9/11, we woke up. We saw we are not invincible and we saw that free will of criminals is not the ultimate the most important aspect of the U.S. We saw that survival was. We saw that we can subsist respecting both civil rights, and national security. That moment has apparently passed us by.

We’ve gone on to blow off terrorist threats and throw political mud at the situation of our survival to see what sticks. We are once again protecting, even encouraging, illegal immigrants to make the 500 yard dash across our border, regardless of who the immigrants may be or what threat they may pose. We are slamming the FBI for reform and crippling their ability for our “right” to attend public meetings without the public protection agents being present. Yet we are also slamming the FBI for respecting the civil rights of Zacarias Moussaoui and not doing enough. We are making the first steps of egotistical ignorance toward reversing what little security we have in airports. It seems that for many, our country must actually become the next Israel and experience suicide bombings and terrorism on a weekly basis before we make permanent changes. It seems that to keep some people happy, we must work on a re-active basis rather than a pro-active basis. I just hope, as you should, that it isn’t my life that must be taken in a terrorist attack for some people to get serious about protecting our country. This is an insult to each and every one of the thousands of victims in the WTC, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania on 9/11.

Some Sources:
-CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/05/30/ashcroft.fbi/index.html(May 30, 2002 Posted: 4:44 PM EDT)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/01/fbi.guidelines/index.html (June 1, 2002 Posted: 8:20 PM EDT)
-Fox News Channel & transcripts of FoxNews.com:
The Big Story w/ John Gibson -
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,54145,00.html
The O’ Reilly Factor -
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52602,00.html
Hannity & Colmes (Monday, June 3, 2002)
-StarTribune.com:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/843/730512.html
-The Rush Limbaugh Show (May 31, 2002)