British get it right....why can't America?

Maybegels, the average american does not have to worry about people searching their homes, that's my point. If you are not doing anything illegal or suspisious then you have nothing to worry about. The authorites do not have the resources to just go an search houses for the heck of it and they have no intrest in doing it anyway. we NEED stepped up security measures for the NEW type of war we are fighting. Read my last 3 posts on the thread i link above and tell me they do not make sense to you.
also here is a new news link that just came out today which shows why we need these measures. Please read it all though before you comment.
news.yahoo.com...

Originally posted by skippytjc
'

And a little can of worms for your reading pleasure: I personally feel anybody who is unwilling to be searched may as well be a terrorist themselves. As people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

100 people dying in subways really isn't enough to warrant police sniffing my underwear because I want to get on a train. Not when 100,000 die from sugircal mistakes, 100,000 from bad medications, 17,000 from traffic accidents, 1,000 from lightning, +/- 50,000 from murder, in this country, each year.

Right to be left alone, aka privacy, is one of the things that make this country great.

Originally posted by GREGNOW
If you are not doing anything illegal or suspisious then you have nothing to worry about.

Tell that to Jean Charles de Menezes.
Authorities go after the wrong people all the time.

Tell all the people on the "no fly lists" because they have the wrong name, or were Minutemen or members of the Green Party, that they have nothing to worry about because they're innocent.

The fact is, even if you have done nothing wrong, the authorities can screw up your life or even kill you, simply because they make a mistake. And that doesn't even consider the fact of official corruption. I have heard more than one horror story about the misuse of asset forfeiture laws.

Originally posted by GREGNOW
Maybegels, the average american does not have to worry about people searching their homes, that's my point. If you are not doing anything illegal or suspisious then you have nothing to worry about.

There are a lot of good points in that article. It is a shame that we have to take such extreme measures to prevent something like 9/11 happening again.

As for the sleeper cells and American born terrorists, this started decades ago. I believe there are plenty out there, that we do have to be on the look out for. I can remember in the 70's, when many Arab students were coming over here to go to school. I live in a city that has a highly accredited University, that is very hard to get into, but had a very high ratio of Arab students. Matter of fact, one was arrested after 9/11 for having ties to Al Qaeda. His family owned a bunch convenient stores. They are still here.

Also back in the 70's these guys would pay thousands of dollars to marry an American woman, so they could become citizens.

It is a shame we have to give up our constitutional rights, because of this. And I do know that The Patriot Act has not caught as many terrorists, as it has harassed the average American.

We are even losing our Freedom of Press recently. Long time Reporters and Anchormen are walking on egg shells, wondering if the story they are reporting may get them in trouble.

You say they don't have the time or manpower, they don't need time or manpower, with today's technology. Most ISP are web based and all they need to check email is a system that searches for certain words and phrases, encrypted or not, they can find them. Any US based email server has to allow the government access.

How about he cameras everywhere? We have a new traffic law here, where they just mail you your speeding ticket. Course they had that out in Colorado 10 years ago, going through the Glenwood Canyon Tunnel.

I still think we are losing our God given rights that are written in our Constitution, and it is a shame.

I have no problem, going through a detector at the airport. This subway business is way out of control. We don’t have a subway in my city, but I have made many trips to Chicago before and it's already timely and enough hassle getting on and off of, and making your destination, without any added burdens.

What scares me the most is the nuclear power plants. My state has many. The lakes around them, where a lot of people fish, were closed off for about 6 months after 9/11, but are now opened back up without any type of security at all.(except for an occasional game warden) Now I wouldn't mind at all being searched and checked out if I were going boating and fishing at one of these lakes. I'd probably welcome it and feel safer. Then of course what kind of destrution could one do just boating in a nuclear plant cooling lake? I wonder what sort of protection they have implemented in case of an air attack in this case?

I think our government has just gone too far in many areas and is over looking some of the obvious threats. It's almost like they want something to happen, to scare us even more...."Control through fear" ~ Wernher von Braun. Of course 9/11 did just that, instill fear in the American people.

And of course we want to be protected, but we don't want to lose our rights in the process. Just how can we have the best of both worlds?

Editing to add this: New Technology Allows Counter-Terror Professionals to Search for Concealed Weapons..........just ran across this. Now IMO this has gone way too far. Kinda goes to show how sci-fi becomes reality, heh?

abcnews.go.com...



[edit on 2-8-2005 by maybeangels]

Originally posted by skippytjc
It means the Britts are just doing it, and its working. The USA is so bogged down by liberals who dont want people to be searched and litigation they can hardly operate. They cannot be aggressive, and this type of law enforcemnt needs aggression. Thats what it means.

It I dont dissagree with you, the USA has been effective, but not like the Britts have been. Does the USA have nearly 100% of the surviving 9/11 attackers and planners in custody? Did they have them less than a month after the attacks? Nope.
'

And a little can of worms for your reading pleasure: I personally feel anybody who is unwilling to be searched may as well be a terrorist themselves. As people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

Perhaps because these 'liberals' believe that once they give up their freedoms and rights, they wont be given back.

Perhaps they believe that racial profiling is racist and prejeduce and does NOT HELP at all, infact is only agrivates the problem.

Racial profiling will create further racist stereotypes of people of middle eastern decent, while the 'terrorists' will simply use people who don't appear to be of middle eastern decent, it wont stop anything!

But of course you don't search a little old lady..

Originally posted by GREGNOW
Maybegels, the average american does not have to worry about people searching their homes, that's my point. If you are not doing anything illegal or suspisious then you have nothing to worry about. The authorites do not have the resources to just go an search houses for the heck of it and they have no intrest in doing it anyway. we NEED stepped up security measures for the NEW type of war we are fighting. Read my last 3 posts on the thread i link above and tell me they do not make sense to you.
also here is a new news link that just came out today which shows why we need these measures. Please read it all though before you comment.
news.yahoo.com...

Unfortunately the average american does, or at least the average australian does.

I suppose none of you have heared about David Hicks.

Well he's an Australian and the media here decided to put a picture of him holding a torpedo launcher or whatever and labeled him a "TERRORIST" on the front page of just about every paper. Now heres the thing, the picture dosent prove ANYTHING, infact it was taken completely out of context as it is a picture of him as a private contractor being PAID to do a job, not in the middle east, but some country in Africa (I dont remember exactly which one, but its probably pretty easy to read all about his story if you do a google on David Hicks).

Now he's in Guantamo Bay, he wont get a fair trial, and whats more.. he is most likely innocent.

Has anyone heard what has happened to that guy who was arrested and detained for star gazing with his 8 year old daughter, using a laser telescope, and he accidentally came in contact with airplane? Wonder if they are still holding him?

Yep the British sure are doing a great job using profiling to capture terrorists I mean lets look at the successes this new "realistic" policy has attained virtually over night!
Lets see...

Hmm...

Well they shot that suspected suicide bomber in the subway because he fit the profile!
Of course it turned out the man was innocent was from Brazil and wasn't even Muslim let alone an extremist .
I guess we can't really consider that a success.

Well...

They captured some of the accomplices of the London bombers!
Of course they used old fashioned police work to capture them and didnt just round up every muslim they could find. So I guess we can't really consider that a success for Profiling either....

HMM
But surely anything that appeals to my quick fix seeking, xenophobic racist streak must be effective...

Can anyone point out any successful instances of profiling instituted in the War on Terror by the U.K. because I'm drawing a blank?



[edit on 3-8-2005 by boogyman]

Originally posted by boogyman


Can anyone point out any successful instances of profiling instituted in the War on Terror by the U.K. because I'm drawing a blank?



[edit on 3-8-2005 by boogyman]

You mean racial profiling that the American government have done at the likes of Guantanamo etc??????

Spacemunkey

[edit on 3-8-2005 by spacemunkey]

"Well they shot that suspected suicide bomber in the subway because he fit the profile! "

While the complete story has yet to come out what you are inferring is unlikely to be the case. It seems the plain clothes police who were shadowing the guy were acting on the basis of flawed intelligence. After that Murphy's law saw to it that he kept on ticking their boxes. The cops were pre-disposed to percieve his actions in a certain way on the basis of intelligence, not on the colour of his skin. The guy didn't look especially Asian or otherwise to me, in fact my brother looks more likely to fit the profile than that guy and we're Anglo-Irish.

Here's the thing on racial profiling, we are not talking about the kind of racial profiling that says a black man should be pulled over in his car just because he is black.
What we are talking about is the fact that there is an enemy that wants to kill citizens of america and england. Now when you look at ANY pictures of KNOWN terrorist's they have one obvious thing in common, they ALL look middle eastern. so of course there is going to be a type of racial profiling. The COMMON race "look" of the majority of terrorist's out there is middle eastern.

also as far as average american's being harrassed by authorities please show me where this is happening. I doubt you are going to find much, except what is just in a lot of your heads. also i am not talking about a few cases here and there. Injustices have gone on in America by mistake and sometimes by corrupt authories since LONG before the patriot act. Show me though where large amounts of averge americans (who are doing nothing illegal) are being harrassed by authorites because of the patriot act. you won't find much if anything.
also the guy who wqas brought into questioning for shining a lazer into the cockpit of plane should be brought in for questioning. About 2 months ago it was all over the news that people were shining lazers into the cockpits of planes over New Jersey. so how are the authorites suppossed to know what's up if they do not bring people in for questioning if they are known to be doing that?
I seriouly doubt they are still holding the guy if all he was doing was by mistake with a telescope.