Sick of the Patriot Act: Profile Foreigners

[JUGGERNAUT]

I'm sick of Ridge, Ashcroft & all the other paranoid power seekers in both parties who desire nothing more than to take away our civil liberties. They say it's required to protect me but I think they're both incompetent & full of s***.

 

I do not want the Patriot Act renewed. I do not want the fed stepping on my civil liberties any more. I do not want the Miranda rights to be a blanket for law enforcement to use force & coercion in getting confessions.

 

What I want is a reasonable policy that accepts the premise that you can effectively

protect against terrorism by foreigners but it is next to impossible to protect against terrorism by citizens. There was nothing in McVeigh's record other than some missed tax filings that would have painted him as a terrorist before the bombing in OK. He had a service record, a college record, & family record of a solid American. It's pointless to enact legislation to stop the McVeigh's in the world.

 

All of the other terrorism attacts from Atlanta to 9/11 could have been prevented by profiling foreigners. What it means is establishing checkpoints, license requirements, & background checks for those entering the country on vias.

 

Transportation:

A valid id should be required to board, rent, school, or license any vehicle in America. Those who are not American citizens should be subject to background checks. Most terrorists arrested in America have been found to have violated the terms of their visas. Background checks would pick this up quickly.

 

A valid id should be required to rent, own, or train in any weapon in America. Those who are not American citizens should be subject to background checks. This applies to guns, tools, knives, or anything else deemed a weapon.

 

Non citizens should be subject to more stringest departure & arrival checks at all ports (air, bus & sea). Locator bracelets should be required for any non citizens or citizens with estranged reseidency from regions know to be support or harbor citizens. This includes Saudi Arabia. Technology exists to confine them to city regions & visas could be redefined to limit travel within the USA. It's not difficult to do really. CDMA technology can be used to both insure periodic updates, check visa boundary range, & track location of high risk persons. If the bracelet fails to transmit authorities will know & be able to track the last known location. This coupled with the other restrictions on travel would make it difficult for a terrorist to get away without help from citizens.

 

A valid id should be required to rent, purchase, or inquire on any communications related equipment. This includes cell phones, R/C, short wave, long wave, etc.

Again non citizens are subject to background checks & high risks subject to inquiry.

 

A valid id should be required to obtain any chemically related goods or services.

Again the same stipulations supply.

 

In other words, any good or service that could be deemed useful to terrorists should require a vaild id. Non citizens should be subject to background checks & high risk visas should be subjected to inquiry & locator devices. This is a lot better use of the ever growing budget for the Dept of homeland security.

 

It's pretty simple. They can't plant a bomb on a train track without first getting access to the bomb & the train track. Which makes more sense spending a billion dollars to check the tracks or put preventive measures in place to stop the terrorists from getting to the tracks?

 

We need to move in the direction of curtailing the civil liberties of non-citizens in order to insure such liberties for citizens. It's time.

[israel4ever]

Once again Juggernaut I cannot disagree with you more.

 

I work for Homeland Security...we always get these little "speeches" about how it's wrong to profile; it's not "politically correct". What it is, is bullcrap!

 

If you look at 95+% of the terrorist acts perpetrated in the last 10 years, they were done by 18-35 year old males of Arab (Muslim) descent. So, what do we, at DHS do?

 

Instead of barring these people from the US, we make them register; they give us fingerprints and photographs, and tell us (allegedly) where they are going to be in the US and for how long. Once they're in, they can go, do, say whatever the hell they want. It's a f***ed up system.

[Pale Hose Jon]

Umm how bout ok city, unibomber, Koresh

 

I think you figure is way too high

[Texsox]

Should we treat 100,000 law abiding Americans like criminals because of the way they look or their ethnic heritage, so we can maybe catch 1 criminal?

 

People in America are innocent until proven guilty.

[EvilMonkey]

By requiring an ID to purchase weapons, communications equipment, chemicals, etc. the government will have a means with which to track you, your movements and your purchasing habits. If you feel that your liberties are that stongly in jeapordy, your suggestions just gives them another menas to keep tabs on you, And me. I am not saying I am against them, just trying to point that out. I am all for much more stingent restrictions on visas and immigration, profiling-be-damned.

[israel4ever]

Umm how bout ok city, unibomber, Koresh

 

I think you figure is way too high

I'm talking worldwide...not just here in the US.

[israel4ever]

Should we treat 100,000 law abiding Americans like criminals because of the way they look or their ethnic heritage, so we can maybe catch 1 criminal?

 

People in America are innocent until proven guilty.

I don't understand why the "civil libertarians" are so up in arms against a NAtional ID card.

 

If an individual has nothing to hide, why worry about registering?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Should we treat 100,000 law abiding Americans like criminals because of the way they look or their ethnic heritage, so we can maybe catch 1 criminal?

 

People in America are innocent until proven guilty.

I am totally for profiling. Case in point.

 

Why is it that one time at the airport I get damn near strip searched at the airport when I'm on vacation, even after presenting a military ID, an old lady at the next gate is forced to dump out her stuff right there at the desk while the Arab dude ahead of me walks right on the plane without a word.

 

Profiling is the right answer because we waste a lot of time and resources checking out people, like the soldier and the grandma, who pose no threat.

[israel4ever]

I am totally for profiling.  Case in point.

 

Why is it that one time at the airport I get damn near strip searched at the airport when I'm on vacation, even after presenting a military ID, an old lady at the next gate is forced to dump out her stuff right there at the desk while the Arab dude ahead of me walks right on the plane without a word.

 

Profiling is the right answer because we waste a lot of time and resources checking out people, like the soldier and the grandma, who pose no threat.

I know that if I was travelling on a plane, I'd be a helluva lot more worried about the Arab-looking people on the plane than the little ol' grandma or the US military troop(s)!

[JUGGERNAUT]

By requiring an ID to purchase weapons, communications equipment, chemicals, etc. the government will have a means with which to track you, your movements and your purchasing habits.  If you feel that your liberties are that stongly in jeapordy, your suggestions just gives them another menas to keep tabs on you,  And me. I am not saying I am against them, just trying to point that out.  I am all for much more stingent restrictions on visas and immigration, profiling-be-damned.

Not necc. It's all about implementation.

Clearly a national ID system would be broken into classes: citizens & non-ciitzens.

Legislation enacting a national ID system can be restricted to insure that data surround citizens can only be accessed by a majority of a grand jury opinion of no less than 9.

 

As for non-citizens being able to track them is the whole idea.

 

Initially I too was against this because what was being discussed was not practical in terms of securing privacy rights. But now there are implementations that can safeguard that.

 

A national id card does not have to be associated with genetic information.

It can be implemented by simply a photo & a PIN similar to secure ids.

When seeking to use the card the encrypition key would be PIN+secure id

that would be generated from a government based network. This makes forging the id card extremely difficult since the card essentially becomes a terminal on this network. On top of this a password can be required that expires annually & can only be changed when filing taxes. All citizens whether they pay taxes or not would be required to file a form to change their passwords.

 

What essentially this system does is changes the idea of an ID being a static thing to something of a dynamic thing associated with a citizen's or non-citizen's life. This solves a lot of INS problems because non-citizens would have expirations tied to their visa's. Once the cards expired they would be very hard pressed to function in the US w/out being detected.

 

This removes all the horror stigma behind retina scans, fingerprints, or pin pricks for DNA matching. Sure it slows down processing some, but a minor slowdown would be beneficial to our lives.

 

Now for those who think it's giving away our privacy I disagree. I read an article recently & confirmed what I read with people living in London. You can't go anywhere in that city without being videotaped at least 100 times in the day. It's that intrusive. Like something out of Minority Report. I'd much rather prefer a national ID system to a National Eye system.