Posted on 01/04/2003 1:41:36 AM PST by kattracks
This directive is immaterial to the illegals who come in at the southern border. It is directed towards legals who enter, and US citizens who leave and reenter. If you will remember, the 19 Arabs of 9/11 were here LEGALLY. The Portland and Buffalo (Lackawana) cells were US citizens. Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh were US citizens. Richard Reid was a Brit on a valid UK passport.
The southern border needs better control, but that has nothing to do with this.
I'd choose freedom and accept the slightly greater risk. This is one of the few times I would be willing to pay for more resources to govenment to focus on the target and leave the rest of us alone. Afterall, the two most important functions of the government are defence of the citizen, and defence of the citizen's rights. Compromise one, and they have failed at both.
Why, we didn't know what the heck was going on, we're as shocked as the next person. Who would have thought.
In what fashion has the USG been tracking us?
Not too long ago I traveled through Europe, and came back to the USA with not a single visa stamp in my passport. And no one asked me where I had been.(Granted that my flight to and from Paris was part of the USG manifest).
I've also traveled through many countries in SE Asia, and the most I was ever asked on my return to the US was which country I had just come from.
Unless you're positing that foreign country passenger manifests for boat, train, bus, and air - in addition to foreign visas - have secretly been transmitted to the USG "for some time now", then you are wrong.
I find this new requirement to be an absolute and dangerous intrusion on privacy, and a violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me there is no fundamental difference between one's travels overseas and one's travels within the USA.
Pretty soon we'll be getting exit visa (a feature of countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and Saudi) and carrying national IDs for travel between American states.
I am not nuts about handing over information as I leave the country, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make until someone comes up with an idea on how to track citizens who are risks.
Providing this information might cause some of them to either stay home OR try to use forged identities, which would be a good reason to apprehend them.
This is a very slippery slope.
People who leave the the country for "nefarious purposes" are not going to self-report their movements. A committed terrorist is simply going to bribe their way around visa stamps, or tear out relevant pages, or simply "lose" their passport proir to return to the USA (just stopping at the local embassy to get a temporary replacement passport for $55). Then they'll lie about their travels.
So in practice this "rule" will not help law enforcement one iota.
For example, travel throughout the EU (where a huge number of terrorist cells are located) requires no visa whatsoever, and there is nothing placed in your passport to indicate your travels within EU countries.You can run from Spain to Sweden without a single stamp.
So again, terrorists and criminals will simply lie about their travels. Only the sheeple will be forced to self-report to the USG regarding their private and personal activities.
This is a huge warning sign that we are heading the way of Soviet-style travel restrictions.
As I said, I am not nuts about this, but I want someone to come up with an alternative proposal.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people who gripe about situations such as this, but at the same time, should a US citizen travel to a foreign country and bring back sarin or smallpox virus, the very same people would be griping that the terrorists weren't monitored.
I repeat: HOW are you going to attempt to track the movements of suspicious US citizens?
I concur.
In addition to violating the 4th and 5th Amendments, this "rule" indicates that the CIA (and its apparent foreign intelligence successor, the FBI) would prefer that American citizens engage in this Orwellian self-reporting.
It's just too d&&mned difficult to go out and track the foreign movements of known terrorist suspects, so make the entire American population suspect.
Yes, and (a) criminals and terrorists are incented to lie while (b) there are many ways to obscure one's movements in foreign countries. So the whole proposal is an absolute dud.
I repeat: HOW are you going to attempt to track the movements of suspicious US citizens?
You don't get it, do you?
You are the suspect.
You're being asked to disclose personal information without benefit of an attorney.
If they asked you to do this inside the USA, would you comply?
If not, why not?
How are you going to catch these people? Yes, they would probably lie, but the lie could perhaps be caught.
There is nothing here about monitoring internal travel. It would be impossible to do any way, unless you set up checkpoints on every interstate, and that wouldn't take into account thousands of miles of back roads.
You are not addressing the question: what do you do about these people who are citizens but have thrown their lot in with the terrorists?
Passport applications require a birth certificate, Social Security number, photo, etc.
Yes, there is some risk involved in this as without proper safeguards information could be used for other purposes. However, you still aren't answering my question.
Actually it's you who is not addressing the question, which is the balance between freedom and security.
You imply that you will trade the freedom of Americans to travel in privacy, for the assumed benefit of security.
Yet there is nothing in this "rule" that will further your security.
Terrorists and criminals will simply lie about their travels, and as I stated earlier, there is no possible way of detecting that lie if the "suspect" is merely perfunctory in masking his or her movements (e.g., use cash, travel overland, etc). You don't seem to realize that the EU doesn't check passports anymore, and in many third-world countries it is ridiculously easy to get around a visa stamp for $20 USD.
Under those conditions it is impossible to accurately detect the real movements of terrorists, unless they self-report (which seems ridiculous on its face).
You state that terrorists have been caught in their overseas travels. Interesting. Did you consider that they were caught without a massive intrusion into the privacy of all American citizens?
And I again assert that there is no fundamental legal difference between demanding that you report your travels within the USA, and those outside the USA. As an American citizen with Constitutional protections, both are violations of your privacy in exactly the same fashion. Whether the topic is Italy or Indiana is absolutely immaterial.
By the way, the answer to your core question is that the CIA had better start executing its foreign intelligence mission, which includes the tracking of terrorists.
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