If you do it dressed like an Arab, you get intercepted by security within 3 minutes. Dressed like an American, you get instructions on getting inside the nuclear facility. “Moral for terrorists: dress like an American.”
Tag: safety_fetish
GIS Security Theater
Santa Clara County has stopped selling GIS data, citing concerns the information could end up in the hands of terrorists. But the plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the high costs of that data claim the security concerns are nothing more than a convenient cover.
isn’t that safety fetish useful to hide some government pork behind?
Terrorist school-buses
the FBI has sent out an “informational bulletin” about the possibility that terrorists might try to become school bus drivers. The FBI notes that they have no reason to believe that this is actually happening, though — it’s just something someone there thought of.
WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN meets TERRORISM
CYA Security
much of our country’s counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.
+1
Life as an Airport Screener
Last fall, Barbara S. Peterson applied to work as a Transportation Security Administration screener. Her mission: to investigate reports that despite a 5-year, $20B overhaul of the passenger screening system, checkpoint personnel are failing at the job. Being hired was only her first surprise.
an actor in this security theater tells all
The Fear Industrial Complex
the decline in vaccination (via may)
SUV Terrorism
From the inside, he watches the judicial system spend a small fortune in taxpayer dollars prosecuting, imprisoning, and then drumming up paranoia among prison guards and prisoners over a college kid who went on a vandalism spree against Hummers. “Here we have [our] politicians, who are not charged with crimes, setting this planet on a disaster course for some fleeting political advantage, while others are sent to prison for taking a stance against this”
SUV, safety fetish, prison state, religious nuts, this story has everything that is wrong with the US
Security theater
the core mission of the TSA
Wifi Paranoia
Vancouver’s cops have espoused vague, technologically ignorant objections to city-wide WiFi. They argue that the ability to communicate anonymously will help criminals (cough pay-phones cough) and that WiFi is all about people stealing each others’ connectivity.
this is really the vendors / media fault. all this BS talk about how you have to use WPA now comes home to roost.
2007-05-31:
A Michigan man was arrested for accessing a coffee shop’s public Wifi hotspot. He was charged with a felony and faced up to 5 years in jail, but he took an offer of “paying a $400 fine, doing 40 hours of community service and staying on probation for 6 months.”
fucking technophobes are ruining everything.
2007-09-12:
This is the other reason I believe that uninhibited piggybacking is not completely without harm / consequences. If we want those networks to get built we have to understand that unlimited network sharing has to carry some consequences. That’s why it is probably necessary to find ways to deter the most egregious uses. Again, no one has any real problem with a little casual use at the margins, but my point here is that not everything takes place at the margin on a “casual” basis. Some piggybacking activities impose real costs and could result in real harm. That harm might be direct to the user in the form of rising monthly bills, termination of service, or computer corruption / other privacy loses. Alternatively, that harm could be longer-term and more indirect in nature, as would be the case if broadband operators refused to provide next-generation services for fear of the inability to recoup the significant sunk investments it entails.
it is inane people like this guy who are ruining it for everyone.
2007-10-02:
fighting the good fight against wifi spoilsports.
2007-12-04:
The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wifi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300k.
WTF? this “but think of the children” bullshit is getting way of hand when it is transparent what is going on here: open hotspots are threatening entrenched telco interests.
2008-01-09:
Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea
+1!
Glorifying Terrorism
The anthology, edited by Farah Mendelsohn, was inspired by a ridiculous British law that makes it a crime to “glorify terrorism” in Britain — an effort by Parliament to save the British democracy by destroying freedom of expression.
the safety fetish spreads to the uk
Gregor J. Rothfuss 