That's not 917K people that's 917K NAMES. It's important to remember that little kids are being detained because their names match names on this ridiculous list.
http://www.nbc5.com/unit5investi...037/
detail.html
Anyone who lives in 2008 knows that information in a bucket is useless, in fact harmful. They have taken something that could be an effective tool and turned it into a joke.
Who are these people and why are they on this list? If in fact, the United States of America has close to a million "enemies" within our borders we would be having daily acts of sabotage and terrorism. No amount of surveillance or police could keep that many people from committing mayhem. Yet we have not had one act of foreign terrorism since 9/11 within our borders.
The stupidity is monumental even for Republicans.
PS: Anybody want to guess what is going to happen to me the next time I fly?
"Omar"? Oh Noes - a terrorist! Phew - he's dead.
Actually, it's super-effective.
At least once you realize the point of the activity. The point was never stop the bad guys. The point is to have an excuse to detain anyone they feel like as a terrorist and to keep people too scared to complain about unneccessary and abusive "security" procedures. The normalization of extreme power dynamics is also a nice bonus.
What the whole security theatre is effective at is the entire problem. We have sold ourselves for a performance of safety.
I wouldn't doubt I am there. Been to too many marches and rallies. The government agents are easy to pick out even when they think they are being clever.
Thank you government for spying on your own people. We are so much safer now especially since we KNOW those 19 hijackers were in tons of peace groups, attending hundreds or rallies and so much against violence.
typical, stupid and going to be a pain in the ass to clean up this mess. What the hell- already.
Americans are just like those boiling frogs.
is it too late?
has anybody heard anything about the "Reynard Project"? this oughta be a larf...bet they double their list of "violent extremists" in 5 minutes...
Also from tassawwuf's link:
Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack
Ooooo -- I'll betcha this will make for lots of false warnings.
Which is, of course, a feature rather than a bug, in our glorious Security Theater State.
This is what happens when you allow your parasites to run amok.
Hmmmmmm, boiling frogs...
sounds wonderbar
But siriusly, does anyone think this had anything to do with actual security, more than trying to emulate the really bad writing on 24?
Gee, I always wondered why my name kept popping up ...
So much for small government - these asswipes created the second-largest agency in the US (second only to the Defense Department), and for what? To give us the illusion that we're safe.
Perception is reality for these folks; as long as they're perceived to be effective, it works. It's like the sketch from Monty Python where the Amazing Mystico (and Janet) create entire blocks of luxury flats by hypnosis. They stay up so long as people keep believeing in them.
jsut so you get an understanding of why DHS is so incompitant...back when this all started (nov 2001ish) I was an indipendent contractor lookign for a stable gig (at teh tiem I was working one to two week jobs at small companes hardenign servers and cleanign up after intrusions/malicious former employees...i was makign good money, but had a kid, wife jsut got laid off and i needed stability + insurance)
so DHS jsut got a ton of funding, and I think they need a guy with my experience (hardening widnows servers, computer forensics, IDS/IPS stuff) and go lookign for work...what they had for me (a guy with security experience), hardening airport servers adn workstations..sounds good right...pay rate, well that was an issue, sure i expected to take a rate cut due to insurance, them payign payroll taxes ect but this was insulting...~$10 an hr...more then 10 times less then what I made as an indipendent...i walked out of the interview without looking back.
$10 an hr, they would have been lucky to get kids in college for that rate...security anaylists would not be possible.
they tried to do every thign on the cheap..you get what you payfore.
oh and the frogs are an urband legand, they are smart enough top hop out.
The frog business is simply an old folktale/metaphor. The point is, by the time the frog (we) realizes that the water's boiling, it's too late: He's (we're) done.
Also, what several said above: This watch list business (and all the other attendant security theater nonsense) has had 2 purposes:
1) Give people the illusion of safety/the govt. is protecting us, and
2) Get US citizens accustomed to living in a fascist/police/surveillance state.
FWIW, my SO's colleagues from old Eastern Bloc countries have pointed out to the Americans they work with that we're essentially living in the old Soviet Union. Ironies abound, huh?
This useless and dangerous watch list embodies all the hallmarks of the Bush administration's "security" policy, foreign or domestic: laziness, corner-cutting, inefficiency, dependence on half-assed technology "solutions," and always with the ulterior motive of turning citizens into complaint serfs. Sometimes the permanent bureaucracy can curb an administration's bad practices, but...
"$10 an hr, they would have been lucky to get kids in college for that rate...security anaylists would not be possible."
The predessor agency that informs DHS practices most seems to be the old INS, hands-down the cheapest, most incompetent, pettiest, most Soviet-style bureaucracy in a Federal system known for those flaws.
as a note I still haven't steped on an airplane after rejectign THAT job...hell desk folks...the absolute bottem of the IT berrael make 12+ an hr.......
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