Prussian_Roulette: You've just been going on about how your convenience was more important than the lives of what you think are apparently a statistically insignificant number of Americans. Apparently you feel entitled to that convenience at the expense of those lives.

---

What lives? Who are these people you're talking about? Can you name them?

You're talking as though if I were to blow off a security checkpoint and somehow go unnoticed, that would up the chance of terrorism even if I weren't a terrorist. That's not how it works. Terrorism is an uncertainty, measures against which yield diminishing returns. It isn't like shoplifting where each incident of theft is guaranteed to raise prices a little bit for everyone else. It's a risk you either have to accept for the most part, or try to reduce from the demand side. And speaking of inducing terrorism and treating 9/11 like an isolated incident, where do you think terrorism comes from? Try to play out the events of the 20th century on a Risk board. Whose little plastic figures are where? Are any Arab/Muslim armies on US soil? Or is it basically the other way around, in BIG numbers, over LONG periods of time? Can you really say that we didn't "start it"?

Terrorism is like drugs. Reduce the demand, and availability will become irrelevant. If there's enough demand, there will always be a way to create availability. Given that we've put ourselves in the shiatter, we probably need to implement at least SOME anti-terrorism measures, but what's way more important than stuff like the Patriot Act is tweaking our foreign policy to ease hostilities in the long run.

The kewl stuff you get to see on fark :) And it's cheaper than going to a comedy movie!!!

Are you retarded? You said the exact same thing I said, but then called me wrong?

I got a mosque right here in my pants, and you're all invited to come pray, three times a day. Right here Baby!

Wow this is stupid, as if Muslims are any more likely to blow up the world than Christians or any other radical group.

Terrorism is so unimportant I can't believe people waste time to even discuss it.

Given the choice of using $1 to fight terrorism or $1 to fight cancer and Heart disease, which would you choose? Cancer & Heart Disease kills about 600,000 Americans EVERY year, but terrorism ONLY killed 3,000 people in 2001. We've lost several MILLION innocent American lives due to Cancer and Heart disease since the war on terror started.

We spend $500 BILLION dollars a year to fight terrorism. That's $500 BILLION dollars we COULD have used to fight cancer and heart disease instead, say, by enabling zero-pollution public transportation systems, a socialist health care system that proactively fights diseases, or even for promoting general health.

God this program, along with EVERY terrorism program, is such a waste.

It's definitely an inner fear of dark people that drives people apeshiat. How else can you explain this irrationality?

Everyone should just STFU because it's obvious that if anything ever happened that its totallly our fault.

Immaculate_Misconception is my new favorite pinkocommiefagnazijew. :)

To reiterate your point in a slightly different light, I don't think that anyone's disagreeing that a bright line exists - some individuals have clear red flags, and when people in the intelligence community do their damn jobs the red flags are caught. I could not in good conscience say that these people shouldn't be interrogated, detained, whatever - any means under constitutional law and international precedent to protect the common good. THAT is the real utilitarian argument - what is best for the common good is if all arbitrary groups of people (since "race," "religion," etc. are all very broad names for very very different masses of people as it is) are ensured their privacy. A double standard of privacy only for those perceived "safe" demeans privacy and safety for everyone.

For someone to be tracked/surveilled, a warrant ought to be issued. And this, I think, is the bright line indicator - unique, individual, and specific suspicious behaviors or activities. It's still open for debate ("suspicious" etc.), but it's narrow and specific. Lest we forget, what these radiological surveys are looking for are ACTIONS that indicate proclivity or intent to commit terrorist acts. Our intelligence folk are doing a bad enough job following up on actions we've tracked as it is. Somehow, I think following up on actions is better than a rabid sociological goose chase.

Religion, race, sexual orientation, etc. are not valid criteria - they're incidental to a person, and they imply no inherent moral or ethical tendencies or intentions to action (aside from the inherent actions implied within the activities themselves). To clarify that muddled statement - just because you are a chocoholic doesn't mean you also shoot kids at playgrounds.

Donating to a suspicious charity has a verifiable, empirical paper trail. There is no paper trail for personal belief or skin color, nor should there ever be. This whole situation just reeks of thought control in the worst way.

And the overarching issue, for me, is the line separating a crime that could be committed from a crime that has been committed. I think the difference is that even parsing away intent or motive, there exists a clear line - "Person A did bad thing X" when someone commits a crime. In the "intelligence" game, no crime has been committed. Yet, the treatment of the targets of this monitoring - regardless of motives of investigators - is unconstitutional, because it presumes a likelihood of guilt among one group of people despite any evidence either for or against such a scenario. The criteria being used to justify the monitoring do not lend themselves in any way to narrowing down who should be monitored, or in what area, or for what duration and when. Whether the net is wide or narrow (and as I said earlier, I don't think it has to be wide to be effective), the net simply ought not be arbitrary.

Finally, it's insulting that some of you accuse people on the other side of wanting terrorists to blow thousands of people to bits. It really does degrade the discourse (discourse being what it can be on Fark and all). What really "hurts our troops" is when we at home don't have the decency to encourage cogent, logical debate about the reasons our troops are there in the first place.

So, is each and every Republican and Democratic politician a shyster or an utter moron? I don't know which is more unsettling at this point.

natetimm... what I think is important about arguing about this is preventing a scenario in which what happens is indeed directly our fault.

And boos to all the people who say the only alternative to racial profiling is doing "nothing." I'll be the first to say that our "defense" budget is ridiculously overblown proportional to the threats facing us (to the point of paranoia), but I'd also say - the alternative to x is not necessarily 0.

I gave a bright line in my last post - unique, individual, and specific suspicious behaviors or activities - as a guideline for actionable, warranted surveillance. That's just one idea of surely millions. It's not a matter of not doing anything at all. It's a matter of making sure that we are intelligence-gathering based on pertinent criteria. Religion does not pertain to one's actions or motives as a human being at all, any more than does a predilection toward eating chocolate.

What I'm hinting at is that there are surely more specific, more stringent, more constitutional, and just plain better criteria to sniff these people out. And I think with enough thinking about this, we will come to a reasoned, logical conclusion that protects rights. We certainly haven't done so yet.

As long as they're not breaking any laws in doing this, I have no problem.

Prussian Roulette

you can increase the odds of success by not wasting time on low probability threats.

If we go by probability of the threat, then I'm afraid YOU (as the white male that I'm sure you are) are a FAR higher risk than any Muslim. Even per capita, I'd be willing to bet.

Thanks for playing, now STFU.

keck314: If we go by probability of the threat, then I'm afraid YOU (as the white male that I'm sure you are) are a FAR higher risk than any Muslim. Even per capita, I'd be willing to bet.

Interesting observation... what type of risk are you refering to? Terrorist? Kidnapper? umm... International? Domestic?

And please cite your referencing in the future...

I can't read the """facts""" you pull out of your ass.

Yet again, 3000 people dying in New York becomes the excuse for destroying the liberty of 300,000,000 people across the country.

Gosh, what a waste of money. I wish I could have government give me money to monitor bacteria and virus count on Muslim sites for biological weapons.

To all the dirty bomb fearmongers, most of the big nuclear powers have tested various types of dirty bombs, and found them to be virtually useless.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said "In most instances, the conventional explosive itself would have more immediate lethality than the radioactive material.At the levels created by most probable sources, not enough radiation would be present in a dirty bomb to kill people or cause severe illness."

The American Institute of Physics said dirty bombs are "More Likely to Create Fear than Cause Cancer"

This policy infringes on my constitutional right to possess nuclear weapons and kill millions of people.

Note to liberals: Everyone is against you on this topic. Try again.

Let's ask ourselves this question. How many terrorist attacks on US Soil since 9/11? Could it because of secret programs such as this?

As for our government not giving enough attention to right wing terrorist groups (i.e. White Supremists), how'd they catch those guys before they launched their attack?

And give it up with the "brown people" comments. That is stoopid. Did a bunch of white guys fly those planes into the twin towers? No, it was Islamic Extremists. Not Irish Sots.

Overfiend, let me ask you this question. How many people have been targeted because some jackass who looks like them decided to go and do something stupid? You wouldn't be preaching your "My god, Islamic terrorists want to kill us! We must search them all" attitude if say, there were a bunch of white guys on the plane who helped. If YOU were in the group being targeted, would you feel the same way?

I also seem to recall a large population of Black Muslims in our country, do you want to start putting them under surveillance? You know what, if a few of these people pose a threat, it's not big deal...lets just box them up and ship them out to camps like we did with the Japanese during WWII, that sounds like a great farking solution to the problem eh? No more terrorism if they're all locked up, right?


You make me farking sick.

Monitoring radiation from public places != illegal

/no, not even when satellite h4x0rs do it...

mackeyjd
Note to liberals: Everyone is against you on this topic. Try again.

Liberals aren't making a big deal out of this, this was leaked by the White House to detract from the rather more *real* infringement of civil liberties that is the President's domestic spying campaign, which is being reported to be far larger than originally thought. They weren't just targetting specific Americans, they were literally gathering *all* our communications and then doing statistical analysis (and who knows what else) on them.

A great program. You know who else might want to set off a dirty bomb? Right-wing Christian types. They're always getting their panties in a bunch over the Ten Commandments or Intelligent Design or abortion or something. David Koresh's folks sure had a stockpile of nasty weapons, and don't forget those Oklahoma goofballs, and all those dinguses who like to shoot abortion doctors. So I know all you good red-blooded republicans, who love mom and jebus and apple pie and the flag and masturbating to pictures of aborted fetuses won't mind if we start surveilling your homes. I mean if you're not guilty of any wrong doing you shouldn't care, right? Right?

Farking retards.

Why, why, why do you want to throw away your rights so bad? I don't get it. Are you all really that scared of the bad men in their turbans that you're willing to give up your right to privacy? Your right to be secure in your possessions?

It's hilarious watching the sheeple bow down toward the Faux News Network and eat up whatever slop the neocons are slinging out that day. It's going to be funnier still when they all of a sudden wake up some day in a country they no longer recognize, and realize they have no one to blame but themselves. Farkers.

all this wouldnt be bad if they would just tell people wtf is going on...this has been the problem from the start. I dont mean tell all of the world but some judges and senators would be a start.

While we're racially profilling to prevent crimes, you know who has a preponderance to attempt to assassinate US Presidents, far above their societal representation? White men. The logical step would be to keep them away from the President.

Racial profiling combined with invasion of privacy with possibly a side dish of unreasonable search and seizure.

Merry Christmas America.

You know all of you who use the "brown people" phrase think its cute but it's nothing more than closet bigotry. Stop using offensive language to make your point.

Republicans, why do you hate dark people so much? Do they desecrate your sanctity? Why do you need to move out if a black person moved into your neighborhood?

Hilarious!

Getting lecture from CAIR about the poor state of democracy is like getting a lecture from the KKK about the poor state of race-relations.

mackeyjd: This policy infringes on my constitutional right to possess nuclear weapons and kill millions of people.

Shiat, that almost sounds like one of you NRA nuts.

Note to liberals: Everyone is against you on this topic. Try again.

Everyone except for those that support the Constitution. I don't have to try anymore, my position is the correct position.

Overfiend: Let's ask ourselves this question. How many terrorist attacks on US Soil since 9/11? Could it because of secret programs such as this?

Not really, because if this program or a similar one had actually stopped any viables threats Bush would have been screaming about it at the top of his lungs. He's not one to let the national interest ahead of positive publicity. See also: "Mission Accomplished"

As for our government not giving enough attention to right wing terrorist groups (i.e. White Supremists), how'd they catch those guys before they launched their attack?

Which guys? Ted Kaczynski, Tim McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Eric Rudolph (Christian Identity), Buford O. Furrow, Jr.(Aryan Nations), I wasn't aware that any of these men were stopped prior to their acts of terrorism, care to enlighten us?

And give it up with the "brown people" comments. That is stoopid. Did a bunch of white guys fly those planes into the twin towers? No, it was Islamic Extremists. Not Irish Sots.

So, what's your point, was this in contention?

We all know who committed the act, and why. But targeting ALL MUSLIMS because of it is no more correct than targeting ALL CHRISTIANS because of the OKC bombing.

I don't see how Muslims rights have been infringed. To be honest, I am a white male of Irish decent. If a small percentage of those of my ethnicity made statements(or actions) that they wanted the US (or any other country for that matter) destroyed, I would care less if they checked outside my home or church for radiation.

I am not advocating breaking into their homes and planting bugs or other things. Without some probable cause (other then skin color or religion) and a warrant, that would be wrong.

As a matter of fact, I am against wire taps without court order. It's just this particular item that isn't that big a deal to me.

Venge - I am sorry that my opinion makes you sick. You must really hurl when you listen to GW.

Merry Christmas to all.

Targeting Mosques and Private Muslim homes.. Check and Check. Alright guys, They're on to us, lets move the radioactive material somewhere else. somewhere not associated with Muslims...

man you guys give Muslims way to much credit, we can barely afford donations for a new basketball goal the damn teenagers keep ripping down, let alone afford nuclear material.

KEEP TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS! and all those "Undecided Muslims", will start to believe the oppression and persectution of Muslims that Osama Bin Laden Speaks of in his Call for Jihad....

#1 reason why racially profiling Muslims is The Absolute most Ridiculous Thing...

1.2 Billion muslims in the World of Different Races, Ethnicities, Colors ,Shapes and Sizes, Blonde Haired Blue Eyed, Red Haired Fair Skinned, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Alaskan, Hawaiian, European, and Red Blooded WHITE Take you home to MAMA American as Apple Pie Men and Women... ALL Muslims.

p.s. They know you're on to them! Theyll utilize any weakness in any security system. Racially Profiling Brown people, the ultimate weakness in security: Send it the Blond Haired Blue Eyed terrorists dressed like an American. so quit racially profiling the Old brown man with the Beards and a qur'an in their hand... thats my Dad.

Oh my god, are you people really this pathetic? It's not a violation of civil liberties. They are checking for RADIATION. It's not even like they're searching your house, or listening to your phone calls. I'm not too worried about my radioactive privacy being violated...

Without some probable cause (other then skin color or religion) and a warrant, that would be wrong.

"Other than skin color or religion?" AS IF THOSE ARE PROBABLE CAUSES? The cognitive dissonance here is astounding! Overfiend, it's good that you're against wiretapping without a court order. Monitoring a private home for any reason at all without warrant is precisely the same situation. It's private property. Mosques are houses of worship. To violate the sanctity of that place for the purpose of assuming the possibility of guilt in a crime that hasn't been committed is just plain wrong to me.

MuslimFarker
I have the precise same fear as you. The real promulgation of terror comes from the people whose notions are galvanized by what they (justifiably) see as an attack on their religion and their culture. There's a huge sense of propriety people feel for their cultures and religions, and again, this is rightfully so. Just as people feel ownership of their right to privacy. To be made to feel as though that's constantly in jeopardy, and that one is always a suspect even when there is no crime, is just wrong.

Why is this post marked as "strange"? I think it is obviously a good idea, considering many, MANY Muslims in the world, and as demonstrated on 9/11, even here at home in the USA, want to nuke us without mercy at the first opportunity, and proclaim so openly and proudly, shooting machineguns into the air over their city streets. Duh!

Wouldn't the press reporting CIA intelligence strategies be rather like the press reporting on the mating habits of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and the abominable snowman?

Actually, I believe the second amendment DOES allow a US citizen the right to own a nuclear weapon. Nowhere in the second amendment does it limit the strenght of the firearms that militias are allowed to have.

Meanwhile, the 2nd amendment affords citizens the right to form private militias. Private militias exist to keep government in check, so that they don't abuse their power. Now, given that government owns tens of thousands of nuclear weapons these days, then it makes perfect sense for private militias to own nuclear weapons just as well. And, as long as these nuclear weapons are well regulated (stored safely, does not leak excessive radiation to accidentally affect others), then what's the problem? Are you saying US citizens AREN'T allowed to own nuclear weapons capable of decimated large US military bases in one shot? And, since when is keeping arms, which can be used to kill US military personell, illegal?

What sucks for you republicans is that this means: A private groups of muslims is legally allowed to own nuclear weapons in America.

Also, do NOT assume that private militias are allied with the United States Federal Government. They can just as well be enemies of the Federal Government if they chose to be. The rule is Arms above Law.

Government is NOT above the people.

If a group of US Muslims decide to form a small military with nuclear weapons, then too bad, you're gonna have to suck it.

That, or change the constitution.

"Republicans, why do you hate dark people so much? Do they desecrate your sanctity? Why do you need to move out if a black person moved into your neighborhood? "

vfunct, I don't know. Why don't you ask John Kerry or that lush Ted Kennedy. I bet you it would be safe to assume that a single black doesn't live anywhere near their neighborhood. And these guys are all about looking out for the black man. How ironic.

The nature of a radiation detector is inherently non-intrusive because of the way radiation works. The radiation that is being detected is already on the outside and is therefore not within the building itself. This however, is still prejudice. Seems like most of the people running these agencies have all the blood out of their head and in their raging "Stop the Terrorists" hard-ons. Why would a bomb be in a Mosque and not somewhere less conspicuous? Seriously, who hired these guys? Oh wait, that's right, cronyism at its best...


"The FBI does not pick its surveillance based on political or racial criteria"

"The FBI does NOT deny anything, ever."

"Nothing to see here, move along."

s00p3rm4n:

I didn't mean that they were probable cause, I was trying to be sarcastic. Certainly they are not...

/just wanted to get that out there, even though this thread is dead!