A Truly Critical Victory for Privacy
CAPPS II - which would have run automatic comprehensive background checks on all airline passengers, is apparantly dead. But keep your eyes peeled...
posted by JAB at 12:19 PM
July 15, 2004
Contributors
Previous Posts
- DUDE, THAT'S ART
- QUESTION FOR TROUBLE MAN
- The World's Most Accomplished Porn
- It's the Little Things That Make You Want a Violen...
- The Begining of the End of Commerical Aviation?
- Lord, Deliver Us
- That Election Postponement Looking More Likely
- DEMENTED GENIUS
- ONE FOR THE "I'LL BE DARNED" DEPARTMENT
- THANK YOU FOR ADDING VALUE
7 Comments:
Not to be an alarmist, and I do beleive that we must counter security threats without compromising civil liberties, but I for one am feeling like I would undergo quite a comprehensive security check if it would prevent me from sharing this person's experience.
I have searched for corroboration and found none, but it is a fairly recent article.
http://tinyurl.com/6d7rb
(or)
http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landing.aspx?articleid=711&Titleid=1&titlename=&start=19365
That link is broken after the first page of the story. Please, sum up what the "experience" was.
A very brief summary is that she spent most of the flight progressing from mild unease to extreme fear, as she watched the "Middle Eastern men," ran through what she clearly believed was a choreographed process of building a weapon on board the plane. She is careful to describe what she alleges she saw in concrete terms, but makes her suspicions clear in a persuasive way.
The flight culminated in a very visible law enforcement action at LAX about which she was able to learn very little in the press, though she did turn up a few interesting citations and she claims to have spoken at length with the FBI about it.
Is it a planted or inflated story in support of CAPPS II or similar measures? I am really not sure. It shouldn't be hard to check out over the next few days. I suggest printing it out if you can and reading it. Or, as was suggested at the bottom of the article:
"To receive any follow-up articles about Annie's experience, go to www.WomensWallStreet.com and register to become a member. You will receive an e-mail notifying you of any subsequent articles on this subject."
It seems to bear watching, at least.
What security check exactly would have prevented that experience? The one where international terrorists use their regular names on their credit card?
I think she was just pissed that they are only using the Mind Probe on a random basis, instead of by racial profile.
The timing of this is so nearly coincident with the apparent demise of CAPPS II that my conspiracy sense is tingling.
Or...perhaps CAPPS II had to die to be replaced by CARPS. Watch this space.
I call Bullshit on this story, for several reasons. 1st, there is no mention of this on the news wires, in the Post, or even on a general google search. 2nd, this isn't a known tactic - there was nothing like 14 people per flight on the 9/11 flights. 14 is a lot of people to put on a single plane when you are making an attempt to be discreet. 3rd, she only links to Ann Coulter (and the TSA), who is maliciously dishonest, but doesn't link to the Post, or any other mainstream source, which suggests a directed purpose. (This has the stench of "I only learned this because I can only trust Ann Coulter") 4th, there is a highly politicized related source in the alleged incident of 14 syrians doing flight training in Texas, cited from October 2001 on a right-wing news site (http://www.newsmax.com/cgi-bin/showinside.pl?a=2001/10/18/182025)
which leads me to believe that this is an "illustration" of what might happen. (Also cited on this right-wing site, 14 Algerians http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25156)
Also, when have you known Local TV news not to report on even a whiff of terrorist security threats, particular in LA? A Ballard photographer was just caught here taking photographs of the Ballard locks (quel horror) and 8 armed cops showed up to question him- all over the news - I only mean to suggest that the lack of news coverage with this kind of subject matter is highly unlikely.
The story is too dramatic a narrative, written to convey a sense of Arabs who are ready to betray us, as well the inclusion as a whole set of unrelated political points on the horror of settling a discrmination case. and the real story is mysterious being hidden, while the primary site is right-wing sympathetic.
Of course you can't prove a negative, but if it really happened, there were a large number of other people on the plane who almost certainly would have said something. My point is not to minimize the danger, but to suggest that your own suspicions about this source are, I believe, well-founded.
Another problem - if this had really just happened, it's amazingly unlikely that DHS would have tanked CAPPS II a couple of weeks later, although again, if the men in question had simply obtained fradulent ID and credit cards, the program would have been worthless. If this is the BS I think it is, it is particularly despicable, and part of the reason that the defeat of CAPPS II was so urgent.
The skepticism over this is mounting faster than "mainstream" news reports, of which I can find...well, this one:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5465847/
Apparently something like what she described did happen, the passengers were interrogated, and nothing amiss, or at least actionable was turned up.
My favorite skeptics' site of the moment is:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000211.htm
Given the amount of time that has passed and the attention that investigators and reporters presumably have given this, the absence of evidence of malintent is probably significant.
Post a Comment
<< Home