Originally Posted by
Cofyknsult
There is no doubt that our counterterrorism approach is flawed by the degree of individual freedom we take for granted, but these liberties can and must lapse when your own interest and safety are at stake. Israel, where maintaining security is a paramount science which has precedence above all liberties without any signficant challenge from those at risk, has behavioral evaluators everywhere and their results are good. My only concern is that efforts in that direction in the US will be fought on and on by pea brains who do not realize that freedom is useless when you are dead.
The above is a really frightening statement.
First, here's the thing about our "safety" being at stake. Chemical and explosives experts have all stated the liquid threat was totally bogus. For that matter, many other things we're doing at checkpoints--like the shoe carnival--are really not going to do much to improve safety. So I really question just how much our safety is at stake, and how much the measures being taken are actually doing anything to make us safer,
verses simply giving the appearance of making us safer.
And things like warrantless, illegal wiretaps, and blatant ignorance of things like the Geneva conventions and the US Constitution, which the Bush administration has pushed as necessary for "our safety" are not acceptable no matter what the threat to our safety and security.
Second, sure, a totalitarian police state society might be "safer," but it is somewhere I'd rather be dead than live in. I'm sure I'm far from the only one who feels the "you can't be safe if you're dead" line is total BS, and a complete cop-out.
Originally Posted by
Cofyknsult
Take the example of those who discuss at length in one of the forums how to smuggle liquids on board. They completely ignore the fact that two "perfect strangers" could walk aboard a plane with medium quantities of 2 completely innocuous liquids bought at your local supermarket, mix them in flight and spell disaster. No recipe given here, but it does exist. I'd turn all the writers on that thread over to the FBI, but I am confident that they do not need me for that.
Turn people over to the FBI? For what offense? If people on a message forum know how easy it is to smuggle liquids aboard and how easily one could mix, say, bleach and ammonia, to create a dangerous brew which could spell disaster, then I am sure the professionals out there in al-Qaeda and the various other terrorist groups looking to do mischief and evil don't need our help explaining it to them.
To think otherwise is a case of the emperor and his new clothes...