Danny Westneat | Watch out, youre being watched | Seattle Times Newspaper — If you read the whole story you find that the conclusion makes no sense.
The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot near the Bow-Edison exit, 18 miles south of Bellingham. The agent questioned the driver, then did a cursory search of the car, Giuliano said.
Did he find a nuke?
“Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier,” Giuliano said.
He added: “Thats the type of technology we have thats going on in the background. You dont see it. If I hadnt told you about it, youd never know it was there.”
About all I can say is: Wow. Wow that the government now has the ability to detect radiation in a cat inside a car going by at 70 miles per hour. And wow at this world we live in, where we feel compelled to sniff, at random, inside the traffic coming out of Bellingham.
What else is the government watching? Is it all too much?
Were watching lots, said Giuliano when I called him. Giuliano is No. 2 in the border patrols Blaine sector. He is refreshingly open about the surge of post-Sept. 11 surveillance, and its pros and cons.
From bomb sniffing to bank monitoring of the kind that brought down Eliot Spitzer to phone and Internet data crunching to citizenship checkpoints — all are becoming commonplaces of American life.
Giuliano says the point really is to catch terrorists. He says its true that the odds of catching one here may be “a billion to one. But despite that, we have caught two.” Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who tried to sneak in at Blaine in 1997 to blow up the New York subway; and Millennium Bomber Ahmed Ressam, nabbed at Port Angeles in 1999.
“Theres your one or two in a billion, looking right at you.”
Ok. Here is the problem. Those two cited examples are pre-9/11 when these onerous surveillance systems were NOT in place. They haven’t caught one guy since? And the country is supposedly crawling with terrorists trying to kill us all. What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone is an enemy of the state nowadays. It’s not about the terrorists. It’s about the public. Eliot Spitzer is the perfect example as to what they are really up to: finding political enemies and imprisoning or ruining them. Unless Spitzer was a terrorist. Was he? Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.
How else do you legalize a Watergate-type scenario?
Keep up John, you must have heard about the “Oops” at the State Department regarding the Passport Files last week.
If you got your Smell-O-Meter out, I’m sure it would rank at least an 8 or 9 on the BS chart.
That’s what this supposed surveilance is all about. Keeping those with the power, in power.
No John, only you…
…and the people who post comments on your site.
Oh Crap!
Bruce Schnier pointed out a rather simple mathematical proof that is ubiquitous surveillance not only useless, but very counterproductive.
Start out with the adult population of the U.S., say roughly 200,000,000.
Then let’s assume that mixed in to the general population are (let’s be wildly pessimistic here) 10,000 terrorists.
Now let’s imagine a very good surveillance program of some type. For the sake of argument, let’s make it 100 times more accurate than any real world program could actually be. Let’s say that it can identify 20% of the actual terrorists, and the rate of false positives is wonderful, say only .01% of the suspects turn out to be wrongfully accused honest citizens.
20% of 10,000 is 2,000 real live terrorists taken off the street.
.01% wrongful arrests out of 200,000,000 citizens is a mere 20,000 folks.
We’ve arrested 2,000 real terrorists and falsely accused 20,000. Bravo Zulu, we can justify more black helicopters now. Although, of course, the court system will have to deal with separating the 10 innocents from every real bad guy we arrested. No problem, huh?
Oh wait, when you’re accused of being a terrorist, you’re automatically guilty. Sorry about that.
#3 “Oh wait, when you’re accused of being a terrorist, you’re automatically guilty. Sorry about that.”
That leads to a solution. Arrest everyone, then were all safe.
May I suggest using Eliot Spitzer as the poster child against surveillance is like using Joe Camel as the poster child for Anti-Smoking.
Spitzer is as dirty as they come.
TrooperGate: http://tinyurl.com/2mkty5
“Millennium Bomber Ahmed Ressam, nabbed at Port Angeles in 1999.”
He was caught by pure luck. A cop in Port Angeles noticed him when he come over on the ferry from Victoria. Something about the guy triggered the cop’s BS detector. So he checked the guy’s trunk and found the explosives. There was no intelligence, high-tech detectors, dogs, or anything. Just an experienced cop who has a good grip on human nature. It is the same technique the Israelis use when screening passengers for El Air flights.
My theory is Spitzer talked with Obama about the V.P. spot that would have brought the jewish vote onboard.As it looks now the money and power that this group has is going to McCain.Then we Goose step into Iran.Remember Johnny singing,Bomb bomb bomb Iran.The gov. knew about Spitzers horndog problem 5 years ago and used it when they needed it.We are now the “evil empire”.
So John you would support a loser like Spitzer? Not to mention what a bunch of conspiracy theorists you guys are… Whatever brings a CAD like Spitzer down gets my support. He was so holy and righteous as a prosecutor and now we find out that all while he was breaking the same laws he was throwing others in prison for!! and you are just fine with a guy like that? Ironically, that is EXACTLY what they had in the USSR!! Spitzer is a criminal, a liar, and a fool and the more of him we get out of our goverment the better!!
QUOTE:They haven’t caught one guy since? And the country is supposedly crawling with terrorists trying to kill us all./quote
See, it’s working.
We have a lot of enemies. “The Art of War” says to act weak when you are strong and act strong when you are weak to confuse your enemies. We aren’t telling our enemies what venues we have stopped enemies in lest they try the ones we didn’t mention.
For that matter, we don’t know if they really did pull someone over with a radioactive cat.
When the Muslims and Communists are history, they will tell us what really happened.
Whoahwhoahwhoah, time out:
“They haven’t caught one guy since?”
1. Who says? Just because the source mentions two, it doesn’t mean those are the ONLY two.
2. I’m sure they’re not jumping out of their pants to reveal any post-9/11 “catches” that might advertise their “operation methods” to the world.
3. Just because “the Blaine sector” (whateverthehell that is) hasn’t caught anyone since 9/11, doesn’t mean other “sectors” haven’t.
Your jump from this straight to the “Soviet States of America” is a bit much, dude.
#3, your math is messed up. In order to be a false positive, it first has to be a positive. So you would only get .2 people arrested wrongly, unless your brilliant intelligence system is arresting everyone, in which case that means that 200 million people-20 thousand are terrorists.
I have a better theory on Spitzer, he prosecuted dozens of hookers as AG and some johns. He’s a hypocrite who gets a whole industry mad at him, which happens to be an illegal industry he uses. One anonymous tip to any up and coming D.A. looking to make a name for themselves can get a ball rolling fast in a cess pool like NY. Having lived there for years, including while spitzer was using state troopers to spy on political enemies, I say good riddence to human garbage, and may the rest of NYC politicos go down as well.
“Unless Spitzer was a terrorist”. Of course he was don’t you read the WSJ.
Hmm, I can just see the reaction from this blog if the Pres doesn’t utilize detection tech and a bomb goes off. ‘He let it go off to start a war’
#3, your math is messed up.
Nah, my explanation just wasn’t very good.
In my scenario, EVERYBODY is a suspect. (Just like the real world, ya know.) The conclusions, however, are correct. Look up Schnier’s original article.
Hmm, I can just see the reaction from this blog if the Pres doesn’t utilize detection tech and a bomb goes off.
Poor guy, can’t catch a break, huh? Those kind of people are called “losers”.