LuvAirFrance

Watching a frontline program on DHS, learned something funny in a scary sort of way. Amtrak decided to hold a contest for best train-related photo. Train fan decides that he likes to take train pictures and the contest is perfect for him. Takes picture of Amtrak train. Amtrak police decide this is a "terrorism-related" activity and arrests him. DHS has recruited all law enforcement to pour data into its national database for analysis. Apparently the guy who highjacked flight 93 had been stopped by a Maryland state trooper before the highjacking. So now there is this huge effort to slam the barn door shut, even as the horse is long gone.

But having an organization starting a photo contest, and then having Amtrak police arrest someone trying to participate, that is really Keystone Kopz to the max.

rgfloor

Ten years gone.....I guess that is looooooooooong goooooooooone!!

halls120

I disagree - it is more appropriately termed creeping fascism, brought to you courtesy of the DHS State Security Apparatus.

SFOSpiff

Didn't this happen years ago? Or is this a new (repeat) incident?

I remember the follow-up on that: a news crew was at DC Union Station interviewing someone from Amtrak. Right about the time the Amtrak guy was saying that people absolutely have a right to use cameras in stations, a security guard came over (on film) and said they had to stop taping.

janetdoe

I often get sucked into a Frontline documentary, only to eventually notice an "originally aired on DD-MM-YYYY" at the beginning of a segment.

cordelli

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/pract...ak-police.html

LuvAirFrance

Believe it or not, I did do a search on key terms to prevent doubling up on the thread. And thought as I clicked new topic, "I sure hope the search feature on Flyer Talk works". Which now tells me that it is pointless to hope for an efficient way to prevent restarting an old topic. Still, 2009 is not eons ago. Frankly, the Frontline program didn't have to be that old.

nachtnebel

You see this, We see this, but does anyone in the DHS on down see it? Their budget is around $70 billion a year. With that kind of money at stake, I'm not sure anyone over there is capable of seeing it.

Take a look at the DHS 2012 Budget. They have a celebration of fascism on a photo page just before the table of contents, in a collage of photos of various agents spread-eagling, accosting, and processing US citizens. It's all there but the riding crops and polished black boots.

FliesWay2Much

Craig Fugate (guy with beard in upper left photo) looks so out of place since his organization actually adds value to society. I looked at the upper right photo fondly remembering that the Coast Guard used to rescue people.

Wally Bird

Bigger question is would they care ?

alanR

And if this huge effort was around in 2001 would it stopped 9/11? Or was he stopped for some minor offence?

cordelli

Sure there is, don't use the flyertalk search. It's pretty much useless unless you happen to know exactly what the words in the post are (in which case you would not need to search)

Use google instead. While it's not perfect, it is faster and usually brings back more results. For example in this case, if you search for

amtrak photography contest site:flyertalk.com

(the site:flyertalk.com at the end tells google to search only flyertalk pages) you will find the thread, it is number one in the results.

It's a much easier way to find stuff in here, by looking out there.

BearX220

It's brain damage and knuckle-dragging stupidity with all the attributes of fascism.

clrankin

I wonder how many of the 9/11 hijackers had photos of trains with them...

LuvAirFrance

Hmmm. I'll try that NEXT time.