Having no idea what an Air Marshal earns, I can only speculate about cost savings.  If we put these guys in a military type uniform, sit them up front and maybe have one undercover marshal fly with him as a partner I would be all for it.

As far as ‘re-purposing’ the troops.  This is already happening on the grandest scale.  I have friends that I trained with as Russian and Chinese linguists that are currently working as MP’s, mail clerks, admin, and escort detail.  Things they were never trained to do but have been called up from their civilian lives to backfill our strained regular army.

If things proceed along the lines that they have in the last 10 years we won’t need so much of a large fighting force, but rather a small attack force and a very large police force.

I think the idea of adding a visually-knowable TSA agent onto flights is an idea worth thinking about; However, it would have to be on all flights: “Gee, Honny, why doesn’t our flight to Bangalore have a TSA detail?” Or, for the frequent fliers:  “I travel on business to Munchen all the time. But, only 3 out of 10 flights have TSA agents.” If we have visible TSA agents (that accompany the silent runners), then we need them on all flights.  Money. And you sure can’t do that with tax cuts and two active war fronts.

In Israel, the epitome of security in American culture, there is a slang term to describe security personel: Guerilla(sp?).  Rummaging through the contents of sweaty male student back-packs, mother’s purses, and garment bags doesn’t attract the brighest, nor the most ambitous.  Understandably, it pays poorly in all cultures.

If we want better security, we’ll have to pay for it (in taxes or further budget cuts).  You can’t have security and not pay for it financially.

BZW, more than one source issues a “watch list.” And, each entity (e.g., air carrier) maintains their own “watch list.” So, to make changes not only take time to identify the source, but to propagate the corrections, additions, and deleitions.

If you want a more orderly, updateable, and maintainable “watch list”, then support a “license to travel” or some other national ID system.

If you do not support the concept of a “watch list”, then sit down and watch some footage of 9/11, then think of worse.

("why")

If you do not support the concept of a “watch list�, then sit down and watch some footage of 9/11, then think of worse.

Several of the terrorist hijackers appeared to be traveling with false passports, assuming the identities of other people. Saudis Saeed Alghamdi, Abdulaziz Alomari, and Waleed Alshehri, whose photographs have appeared on CNN and other media outlets, have spoken to Saudi newspapers since the attack.

Apparently a watch list was usless then and probably will be now. The national ID card is a great idea… if you subscribe to the idea that the average American citizen is a terrorist in need of scrutiny. It is unlikely that the actual terrorists are going to be so submissive as to file for their very own ID card.

SUpporting information

*doesn’t support nation ID’s or watch lists, sits down and thinks of worse things then 9/11*

It’s not too hard either, I can imagine solders marching through our streets daily to “keep us safe” from this or that threat. I can see people being removed from their homes for saying, “I don’t like the way things are going now.” I think Benjamin Franklin put it best when he said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

It’s not too hard either, I can imagine solders marching through our streets daily to “keep us safe” from this or that threat. I can see people being removed from their homes for saying, “I don’t like the way things are going now.”

So can I, and Ben Franklin didn’t have to imagine it - he’d seen it.  But the slippery-slope argument can also make it impossible for us to think about what’s necessary when there is a real threat.  Get ready to start a precarious balancing act.

We need to be thinking about how to ensure basic freedoms in the age of biometric-encoded smart cards and global databases - because that will soon be our reality.  Freedom of speech, in particular, will need bulletproof protection because no one should be persecuted for what they say or think.

Such persecutions (and prosecutions) are happening right now - mostly lawsuits for saying things that offend someone but the precedent puts all political speech at risk. 

Privacy?  Forget it - you don’t have any.  At least an accurate national ID system would prevent you from being confused with someone else.  And it would make identity theft nearly impossible.  But it would make correcting a successful identity theft far more difficult - again a legal aspect we’re overdue to start working on.

I cherish the thought of being able to “disappear” and travel anonymously, off everyone’s radar, but the damage a single traveller can do now makes that a wistful dream.  The constitution has no guarantee of anonymity and the “right to privacy” is an interpretation, not explicitly spelled out.  The next best thing would be super-strong protection for the explicit freedoms.

Whoops, I left a quote-mark out of that link! (hangs head in shame)

you don’t have any

Get ready to start a precarious balancing act.

We need to be thinking about how to ensure basic freedoms in the age of biometric-encoded smart cards and global databases - because that will soon be our reality.  Freedom of speech, in particular, will need bulletproof protection because no one should be persecuted for what they say or think.

Privacy? Forget it - you don’t have any.

Recently I saw two articles that bear on this. The first appeared in GOVEXEC.com, and it discusses an outfit called ChoicePoint (CP) that collects and markets data on individuals. About 40% of their revenue comes from business with the government.

For years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Defense Department, the Social Security Administration and about three dozen other federal agencies have called on ChoicePoint to identify tax evaders by uncovering hidden assets, root out medical benefits fraud and help track down criminal suspects. ChoicePoint won accolades in 2003 for leading federal and local officials to the Washington snipers, by mining name and license plate data the company owns to identify the suspects.

CP claims that they can reduce risk for their clients by separating dangerous people from trusted people.

Here are some problems.
- CP can and has made classification errors (as could anyone.) In one instance an individual had to sue to have her record(s) corrected.
- The government, with suitable controls, can query privately maintained databases. However, the article hints that the FBI may sometimes operate in the gray areas of their own rules.

After 9/11 CP, Verified Identity Card Inc., Transcore (an outfit that manufactures card readers) and a homeland security venture capital firm established a working relationship. They would like to market a voluntary, nationally accepted ID card. This fits in very nicely with the conservative’s notion that we should privatize everything.

The second on line article, Fear for Sale by Greg Palast, presents a more sinister view of CP’s relationship with the government. Palast author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy starts by recounting CP’s involvement in the 2000 election fraud in Florida.

For ChoicePoint, with its 15-billion-plus records on every living and dying being in the United States, Ground Zero would become a profit center lined with gold. Contracts would gush forth from War on Terror fever not hurt by the fact that ChoicePoint did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president.

Here’s how they did it. Before the 2000 election, Choice-Point unit Database Technologies, under a $4 million no-bid contract under the control of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was paid to identify felons who had illegally registered to vote. The ChoicePoint outfit altogether fingered 94,000 Florida residents. As it turned out, less than 3,000 had a verifiable criminal record; almost everyone on the list had the right to vote. The tens of thousands of “purged� citizens had something in common besides their innocence: The list was, in the majority, made up of African Americans and Hispanics, overwhelmingly Democratic voters. And that determined the race in which Harris named Bush the winner by 537 votes.

At the time we heard a great deal about the hanging chad, but mass purging didn’t receive much play in the US press. Palast, a US citizen, reported it in the British media. (For more information see chapter one of his book or go here.)

Here are a few topic sentences from the article.
- CP uses fear as a marketing tool.
- They would like to have DNA data for every American.
- The 9/11 attacks made CP’s data a weapon in the war on terror.
- We all became suspects when the Patriot act was passed.
- In a contract with the Justice Department, CP offered to provide profiles on citizens in Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina and Mexico--countries with major electoral contests of interest to the US.
- Palast unearthed a government memo recommending more work for CP “because the company ‘is very responsive to [U.S] Marshals Service and has made enhancements to their public information database...to meet our needs.’â€?
- “...with privatization of computerized surveillance the constitution can be secretly hacked.�

One of Palast’s main points is something that I alluded to earlier

Herein lies the danger of this brave new world of the privatization of spookery: We lose control. By “we,� I mean Americans and our elected representatives. Even in the worst days of the CIA, Senator Frank Church held hearings and exposed the dangerous rot in our intelligence services. A special prosecutor went after Ollie North’s Iran-Contra gang, which gave weapons to the Ayatollah. But how do we challenge the new privateers in espionage who can go for Mr. Ashcroft or Mr. Bush where prudence or the law tells them not to?

I lived in the DC area when the snipers were on the loose and, believe me, I am very grateful for whatever service CP rendered in identifying those two. I am only mildly troubled about FBI agents and the Marshals service (perhaps) pushing the envelope a bit. If these events were real, I suspect that they were just trying to do their jobs. However, the temptation for abuse is always there, and the Florida story indicates what can happen when someone wants to abuse the system. 

At this point I can go either way on some sort of National ID card. But I question whether possession of a card, in and of itself, would guarantee someone’s identity?

The first article claims that CP’s chief executive has repeatedly said, the Constitution guarantees some privacy, but not anonymity. Who is minding the store in our brave new world?

What’s wrong with treating criminals like criminals? Ted Kennedy shouldn’t be flying anyway. He should be in jail for what he did to Mary Joe Kopechni and obstruction of justice in the investigation thereof. And after all, if Ted Kennedy isn’t guilty who is??? By the way, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Kennedy and his clan, deliberatelty had Ted’s name place on the list just to create negative controversy on the subject. In my opinion, Kennedy and Kerry should be facing the charges of treason . . . not re-election!

Reid (the shoe bomber) killed less people than Teddy Kennedy.

They say Mary Jo lived for 2 hours after Teddy went back with buddies to decide what to do about her body.  She had an air bubble in the car underwater. .. . so she sat there while fatboy Teddy decided if he was going to tell the cops she was driving alone.  Go to Y T K.com its got the whole story.  Facinating and pathetic at the same time.

I wish the man would meet his maker one day, and make right the wrongs he has done.  But that will not happen.  Ted Kennedy is an evil man and will never reach the pearly gates of heaven.  He covered up the murder, and I’m sure he looks back on the situation, sipping his Chivas, and laughs.

I am ashamed to be from the Commonweatlh. . .born and raised.  This fat and stupid thing IS a terrorist.

A little perspective here TBONE.

For the record, I was more than a little upset about the MJK/Ted Kennedy business as the story unfolded, and Kennedy is not on my short list of favorite Senators.

The difference between the two situations you described is intent. DUI or just driving recklessly, I cannot believe that Kennedy deliberately drove off the road to kill Mary Jo. Richard Reid (probably one of Islam’s stupidest converts) boarded that plane with the intent of killing people.

Having said that, actions matter. In this life justice, whatever that is, will probably not be served in the MJK/TK matter. In the Reid case to a certain extent it will.

Will Kennedy and Reid answer to their respective makers? A lot of people here think that is a mute question.

As to the no fly list, the subject of the thread, why did Jim Moore, coauthor of Bush’s Brain, suddenly find himself said list?

he drove drunk, he made a mistake.

But he didn’t pay for it, justice was not served.  I have driven drunk before, I got caught. . . I didn’t kill anyone.  I took my punishment, I plead guilty too. 

But I’m not a Kennedy so I can’t get away with murder.  In the eyes of many, if you commit manslaughter, which he did, you take your punishment instead of letting her suffocate while figuring out how you’re going to get out of the situation.

Would you like to defend the Butcher of Boston some more or should I pick a murderer to defend? 

T

What did you not understand about my post?

he drove drunk, he made a mistake.

True.

But he didn’t pay for it, justice was not served.  I have driven drunk before, I got caught. . . I didn’t kill anyone.  I took my punishment, I plead guilty too.

But I’m not a Kennedy so I can’t get away with murder.  In the eyes of many, if you commit manslaughter, which he did, you take your punishment instead of letting her suffocate while figuring out how you’re going to get out of the situation.

In a situation not involving injury or death, you stood up and took responsibility for your actions--admirable. In a much more serious situation Kennedy didn’t stand up--not at all admirable.

There is a legal distinction between manslaughter and murder. I am not sure what the appropriate charge should have been but I don’t think it would have been murder. Also, I pretty clearly indicated that I did not think justice was served.

Would you like to defend the Butcher of Boston some more or should I pick a murderer to defend?

Major disconnect here--I didn’t defend Kennedy. To the “or” part of your question, no.