Matthew Ernest: Keeping America Safe

Keeping America Safe from puppeteers

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:10:44 GMT

Okay, this one I understand. Bunch of puppet freaks.

I feel safer: Homeland Security vs. San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild. Mark Frauenfelder: Brian Stokes says: "I kid you not. My beloved San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild is under investigation by Homeland Security. According to their latest newsletter, its assets have been frozen ever since my friend and Treasurer Pam Brown resigned after 20 years and passed the miniscule nestegg to a new bank account a few months ago. The bank apologizes but legally can't do anything until Homeland Security determines this group of puppet fans and professionals is not planning to attack our country.
"This is the Guild where Jim Henson met a young Frank Oz and Jerry Juhl back in the 1960s. Not long ago, I was President, and before that, Secretary.

"But now our government thinks it's harboring terrorists." Link [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from 1-year-old children

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:09:23 GMT

Baby: the other white terrorist!

Babies on the no-fly list. Cory Doctorow: The government's no-fly list of suspected terrorists contains many common names held by non-terrorists from all walks of life, including many babies. Babies who have names similar to known terrorist aliases are being held up boarding airplanes until their parents can prove that the infants aren't terrorists.
Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience last month while departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington. An airline ticket agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the government list....
Well-known people like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and David Nelson, who starred in the sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," also have been stopped at airports because their names match those on the lists...
The TSA has a "passenger ombudsman" who will investigate individual claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.
Link (Thanks, Owlswan!) [Boing Boing]

Note that children under 2 do not need a ticket to fly if they sit on an adult's lap. An unticketted child would never be flagged by the "don't fly list". In addition, once the question was raised the TSA claimed that their instructions are that no child under 12 should ever be checked. Somehow their own employees don't know this.

Keeping America Safe from John Kerry quotes

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 22:45:21 GMT

Rather than force people to read actual quotes fron John Kerry, reporter Carl Cameron makes some better ones up and they just happen to wind up on the Fox News site.

They invent, you decide.

Fox News publishes made-up Kerry quotes, then pulls story without comment. Mark Frauenfelder: According to Talking Points Memo, Fox News ran a story with made-up quotes from Kerry, then yanked them without explanation. Some of the quotes:
"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.
Women should like me! I do manicures"
About himself and the president: "I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy."
Talking Points Memo has contacted Fox News for a comment. He's waiting to hear back from them. Link
UPDATE: Michael McDaniel sez: "Looks like FOX News has retracted their story, now that they've done as much damage as possible with it." [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from Bea Arthur

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 02:51:22 GMT

Do not taunt Happy Fun TSA!

Bea Arthur's fight against the Transport Security Agency. Cory Doctorow: Bea Arthur forgot to take her pocketknife out of her purse last week at Logan airport and when the TSA found it, she ran around screaming, "The terrorists! The terrorists put a knife in my purse! We're all doomed!" She was being funny -- it's what she does. She's the funniest of all the Golden Girls, that's for sure.
The TSA didn't take it well.

Kur5hin has an appreciation of Ms Arthur and her sense of humor today:

It should be obvious to us that an 81-year old woman committed a crime by making a snide remark when hassled for carrying a pocket knife? I'm just glad that she had the guts to call the security guards out for their ridiculous behavior, even if most Americans think she's crazy for making a joke.
As such, I present a simple proposition: Bea Arthur for President!
Link [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from The Supreme Court

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 02:50:16 GMT

If the citizenry really knew what went on in the Supreme Counrt, they'd all be in trouble.

Justice Dept censors Supreme Court ruling. Cory Doctorow: Becky sez, "The Justice Dept. blacked out (censored) the part of a Supreme Court decision that calls into question the willy-nilly use of the vague notion of 'domestic security' to suppress dissent. Oy."
Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."
The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).
Link (Thanks, Becky!) [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from wireless internet

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 04:50:54 GMT

The Reverend AKMA gets hassled by the man:

So Weirdly Wrong: And I walked back to the studio, dumbfounded that someone just rousted me for picking an open wireless signal in public — indeed (as it turns out) for using a laptop within a wireless signal’s range of the library. Weird.

We should all be glad that the local contstabulary are able to invent federal laws at a moments notice to save us from the scourge of freely available internet access. However, those godless commie librarians seem to have gotten off scott free.

Keeping America Safe from Ted Kennedy

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:44:18 GMT

Ted Kennedy's name is similar to an alias of some "evil doer". Proof that this list only catches the innocent is left as an exercise for the reader.

If Senators are allowed to roam freely about the country, then the terrorists have already won!

Reuters. Kennedy -- one of the most recognizable figures in American politics -- told a Senate committee hearing on Thursday he had been blocked several times from boarding commercial airline flights because his name was on a "no-fly" list intended to exclude potential terrorists. [John Robb's Weblog]

Keeping America Safe from role-playing game manuals.

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:36:18 GMT

Granted that the D&D crowd is pretty freakish and scary, but in this case "RPG" does NOT stand for rocket propelled grenade.

I don't know if it's good or bad that this instance of security theater may turn out to be an improv act.

D&D book reader on ferry hassled by security morons. A BB reader sez: "Thanks to the RNC, there are manditory bag searches happening on the NJ-NY Ferry. This fellow first got hassled with a re-search for carrying The Player's Guide to Faerun a D&D book, and then the next day, security tried to confiscate his copy of Exalted: The Abyssals as 'inappropriate.'"
This morning, they're doing bag searches again to get on the ferry. And the guy doing the searches pulls me aside and says, "Sir, I feel that I need to confiscate this book."
I pause and say, in that tone of voice that most people would recognize as meaning, "have you lost your grip completely, chuckles?": "You need to confiscate... a book."
"Yes. I feel it's inappropriate for the other people on the ferry to be exposed to it."
...
He gets all pissy at me and says, "Don't you understand this is for your safety?"
"Confiscating someone's gun or bomb is for my safety. PErhaps confiscating someone's pocketknife or nailfile may be for my safety. What's so damn dangerous about my book?"
"It's INAPPROPRIATE!"
Link
UPDATE Game designer Greg Costikyan took the time to send email to the NY Waterway to protest the rogue imbecile security guard who tried to confiscate the game manual (How much do you want to bet that the rogue imbecile security guard wanted to confiscate it so it could take it back to his home and use it as a masturbatory aid?).

Greg Costikyan: Just spoke with people from New York Waterway, who say:
1. They're trying to track down mephron (the original poster) to get more detailed information from him--e.g., time and ferry route.
2. If the story is true, it is not only a violation of company policy, but also of martime regulations, and if it is true, they wish to correct the situation as quickly as possible.
3. Anyone with further information about it are invited to contact them directly.
Sounds sensible to me...
[Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from elections

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 18:39:58 GMT

Newsweek: "American counter-terrorism officials, citing what they call 'alarming' intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the US this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack." [Scripting News]

Keep in mind that there's a difference between plan making and policy making. It is the job of the planners to prepare a course of action for any scenario, plausible or implausible. The existence of a plan does not on its own imply a non-zero chance of its adoption as policy. As with all breathless news that "X has a SECRET plan to do Y", I would actually be more suprised if they did NOT have such a plan available.

That said, I wish I had faith that the current policy makers were not peeking over that wall.

In other news, "Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert" is ranked third at octobersurprise.com.

Keeping America Safe from data

Sat, 03 Jul 2004 16:52:48 GMT

DOJ denies FOIA request due to claims that the query would damage the database. A write-only database: what an marvelous idea!

Your query will destroy our database - DoJ. Open government closed for business By Andrew Orlowski . [The Register]

Keeping Fresno safe from peace activists

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 15:47:39 GMT

Think globally; spy locally. You know how dangerous peace activists are!

Fresno cops spying on peace groups. After a Fresno peace activist died in a donorcycle accident last year, his obit revealed that he was not, in fact, a peace activist -- he was a Sheriff's Deputy. So this weird accident revealed that the Fresno fuzz was paying its coppers to inflitrate local peace groups, a chilling bit of McCarthy-era totalitarianism.
Now the Fresno peace group and the ACLU have successfully pressured the state Attorney General to look into this.

Fresno County Sheriff Richard Pierce won't confirm or deny that Kilner was spying on Peace Fresno. But he said in a prepared statement that his department reserved the right to conduct surveillance as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.
Russell and other members say their group has nothing to do with terrorism and spends most of its time organizing a monthly antiwar protest at Shaw and Blackstone avenues, one of Fresno's busiest intersections.
Bullshit-registration-required Link (Thanks, David!) [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from Pentecostals

Fri, 28 May 2004 05:41:06 GMT

The not-so-freindly skies.

Airplane grounded by praying pentecostals. A pair of Pentecostal preachers grounded a plane when they panicked passengers and pilots, saying 9/11 was "a good reason to pray."
One preacher told fellow passengers as the Continental Airlines plane taxied down the runway, "Your last breath on earth is the first one in heaven as long as you are born again and have Jesus in your heart," according to FBI spokesman Paul Moskal. Passengers on the Wednesday flight to Newark, New Jersey told a flight attendant, who alerted the plane's captain, officials said. The captain turned the plane around. "They were sincere in their beliefs and were not malicious," Moskal said by telephone from Buffalo. "In the context of 9/11 it may not have been the best way to promote their religion."
Link (Thanks, Mike) [Boing Boing]

Keeping Spain safe from the FBI

Fri, 28 May 2004 01:44:47 GMT

Becasue of course the FBI won't take any guff from a third-world Keystone Kops operation like, um,... yeah.

FBI apology for Madrid bomb fingerprint fiasco. 'Substandard' digital prints led to Oregon lawyer By John Leyden . [The Register]

Keeping France Safe from bloggers

Sun, 16 May 2004 20:35:55 GMT

You can never be too safe when it comes to bloggers. Just look what they've done to Google!

Mayor dispatches cops to bust blogger-critic. Loic sez,
Christophe does not like the way the city mayor manages the city, spends the public money and says it on his blog, every day. He has been very successful doing that, with hundreds of inhabitants of Puteaux reading and commenting his blog everyday and many national newspapers that talked about his blog.
Christophe criticizes the city management so much that they have tried to stop him for months, the city mayor has even sent him threats over the phone that he recorded and blogged, of course.
Today, he has been stopped in the street by the Police Municipale (the local French Police) who tried to arrest him for his blogging. Fortunately for Christophe, the National Police arrived immediately as they found what was happening weird, and let him go.
Link (Thanks, Loic!) [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from creative teenagers

Sat, 01 May 2004 18:02:08 GMT

The last thing we should tollerate in teenagers is creativity.

Secret Service interrogate 15-year-old for making forbidden art. A teenager drew some anti-war posters that were critical of Bush's policies, and his art teacher alerted school administrators, who in turn called the police. The cops went to the feds, and the Secret Service questioned the boy about his art.
The drawing that drew the most attention showed a man in what appeared to be Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle. He also was holding a stick with the oversize head of President Bush on it. The student said the head was enlarged because it was intended to be an effigy, Cravens said. The caption called for an end to the war in Iraq.
Link (Via IP) [Boing Boing]

Keeping America Safe from keeping America safe

Sat, 01 May 2004 18:00:06 GMT

Patriot Act designed to protect Patriot Act by preventing challenges to it to be made public. Great headline from the Washington Post: "Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act." It has to do with the ACLU filing a lawsuit challenging something in the Patriot Act, but a different provision in the Patriot Act made it illegal for the ACLU to reveal the lawsuit. Neat! Link [Boing Boing]

Keeping America safe from former Republican staffers

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 19:20:21 GMT

Senator Daschle notes that the current targets of the Bush Administration are former staffers of the Bush Administration.

Senator Daschle's statement on the abuse of government power. On Bruce Sterling's blog - the text of Senator Tom Daschle's March 30 Floor Statement on the Abuse of Government Power.
In recent days leading congressional Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Mr. Clarke. As I mentioned earlier, Secretary O'Neill was also subjected to an investigation. Clarke and O'Neill sought legal and classification review of any information in their books before they were published.
Nonetheless, our colleagues tell us these two should be investigated, at the same time there has been no Senate investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a deep cover CIA agent; no thorough investigation into whether leading Administration officials misrepresented the intelligence regarding threats posed by Iraq; no Senate hearings into the threat the chief Medicare Actuary faced for trying to do his job; and no Senate investigation into the reports of continued overcharging by Halliburton for its work in Iraq.
Link [Boing Boing]

Keeping America safe from grad school homework.

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 05:43:38 GMT

Home alone. David considered taking his Persian homework with him to do on the plane, but in his words, “They’re going to freak at what looks like Arabic writing.” Good judgment on his part, I think.[Caveat Lector]

Well no, the TSA didn't actually bust someone for bringing their Persian homework through the security checkpoint, but that's because David Salo didn't actually bring it. However, they've got us thinking it's a plausible scenario, which is the real problem.

Keeping America safe from teachers

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 03:00:02 GMT

Education czar calls teachers' union a "terrorist organization". The US Secretary of Education called the NEA, the national teachers' union, a terrorist organization. Then, he spun a mealymouthed apology that wasn't:

It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.

Link

(via Making Light) [Boing Boing Blog]

Keeping America safe from the TSA

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 04:49:16 GMT

Just in case there was anyone who still thought the TSA helps:

TSA mistakenly nabs one of its own. Henry sez: "Another Brazil-style 'Tuttle-Buttle' situation:"

Michael Bills thought he had a pretty good gig with the federal Transportation Security Administration. His job as a screener at Love Field was government work--good bennies, nice retirement package. An ex-Marine and former quality inspector for a company in Garland before he was laid off, Bills says he even turned down other potential employers to stick with the TSA, where he worked for about 12 months.

Then the TSA fired him last October; said he failed to pass his background security check. Even worse, the TSA called him a sex offender--and worse than that, a child molester.

Except he isn't. The TSA--remember, these are the people who are supposed to weed out the terrorists from the regular airline passengers--got the wrong man.

"What hurt me the most is they accused me of being a sex offender," Bills says. "To me, that's the worst thing you can do."

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

Keeping America Safe from Grammy nominees

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 04:30:36 GMT

Pecksniff: The word of the day. From this Electrolite post, my vocabulary word for the day: Pecksniff. Damned if I know what it means (no, don't tell me, I prefer to guess), but I sure like the sound of it.

Denied a visa to attend the Grammy Awards, in which he's a nominee: Buena Vista Social Club musician Ibrahim Ferrer. And five colleagues...
Tell me again how John Kerry, with all his drawbacks, would be "barely any improvement" on this crowd of censorious, vengeful, authoritarian pecksniffs.

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

Don't step in the irony

Mon, 02 Feb 2004 01:21:06 GMT

Telegraph: Blair and Bush nominated for peace prize. [Scripting News]

Keeping America safe from six-year-old girls

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:53:10 GMT

Is there anyone left that still thinks that the Department of Homeland Security is increasing our security rather than decreasing it?

Why can't Homeland Security tell the difference between Al Quaeda and my six-year-old daughter?. My six-year-old daughter is on the CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening) list as a security risk.

Here's what happened. We went to visit my parents in Colorado for the holidays. When we got to the Burbank Airport, the skycap asked for our IDs. He noticed that my wife driver's license had expired. He excused himself and came back about five minutes later, and said we could fly, but that Carla would have to undergo "secondary screening," which meant she had to take her shoes off and have all her carry-on luggage searched. It was a hassle, especially since we had a lot of carry-on stuff for our six-year-old and infant daughter, but at least they let us fly to Denver.

A week later, we got to the Denver Airport to go home. Carla showed the agent her ID, and the woman didn't say anything about it being expired. I thought we had gotten lucky. But when we got to the security screening area, the woman working there looked at our tickets and said "Who is Sarina?" I pointed to my six-year-old. "She's been marked for secondary screening," she said. "She has to go over there. One of you can go with her." Carla went with Sarina and I went through the normal line with Jane. While Carla was escorting Sarina through the extra security check, she asked for an explanation. A man working there told her Sarina was on a list that required the extra search, and that he couldn't tell her anything more about it.

My daughter was scared and shaken up by the ordeal and told us that she "hated it." At least the security people were polite to her. But they were like polite robots, unable to laugh at the fact that someone had mistakenly pegged a little girl as a potential terrorist. No, they insisted that she had to take off her shoes and get patted down and have a wand passed over her body and have her Hello Kitty suitcase opened and examined with a fine toothed comb.

When we got to the gate, I looked at one of the monitors, and I saw Sarina's name on the list, along with one other person's name. The list was titled "CAPPS."

My guess is that somebody decided to put Carla on the CAPPS list for showing up with an expired driver's license, and then screwed up by entering Sarina's name instead.

I'm not too mad or upset about this, but after reading how this kind of thing has happened more than once, I have lost what little faith I had in the Department of Homeland Security to do its job. I wonder if we are going to have to go through this every time we fly? I also wonder if we can get Sarina's name taken off the list? If you have any suggestions, please let me know. [Boing Boing Blog]

Keeping America safe from PC gamers

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 04:39:06 GMT

Flight Sim enquiry raises terror alert. Troopers thwart ten-year-old [The Register]

I am shocked, I tell you.

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 23:52:39 GMT

Intel that halted flights 'mistaken'. Herald Sun Jan 2 2004 4:49AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Who would have thought that if you try to track people by only transliterated surnames that you might get the wrong people?