I Feel Safer Already

As if I needed to continue to point out that “Safety” mantra that our government continues to feed us is an illusion, I have been pointed to several articles in the last few weeks that prove that we are in fact less safe than before this WAR on TERROR. Example #1 : This story from Albany, New York shows us that the highly competent TSA officers can find a water bottle in a piece of carry on luggage, yet they cannot locate a bomb. Interestingly, I read this story right after I returned from a vacation with my family in which we passed through security 4 times at 3 different airports. Interestingly, while passing through with the same luggage each time, we received different results every time from the heroes at the TSA. While they dutifully unpacked our bags for things like a miniature fork, swabbed my video camera for bomb making residue and made sure that my wife’s SQUARE purse was laying properly on its side, they missed the lighters, razor sharp cigar cutter and all the subversive material that I keep on my thumb drive (hopefully you folks can imagine my tongue firmly in my cheek on that last one). The point is this: there is no continuity of standards from one airport to another, and what this works out to is that these “security measures” end up treating everyone like a criminal while not preventing crime. Terrorists have been very good at changing their tactics when needed. Let’s not forget that the weapons used on 9/11 were legal at the time, no amount of extra screening would have stopped them from boarding with those box cutters and pocket knives. We cannot possibly try to imagine and prevent every scenario which they will try to exploit. What we can and should do is look at why they want to come here and kill us. That is a topic for another post, which I may or may not get to!
Example # 2 : As the Department of Homeland (in)Security continues to build massive databases of information from your mother’s maiden name to your favorite brand of breakfast cereal, we are constantly being warned to guard our personal information from identity theft. Why? Well there is the obvious reason; you wouldn’t want people to steal all your money. But what about
terrorists who steal identities to board planes under false names, funnel money to terrorist organizations around the world, purchase illegal weapons and so on? Well, what better place to get this information than from the source that has it all, the Dept. of Homeland Security and the
FBI. That’s right, these two agencies have a terrible track record of controlling the information that they are gleaning from your credit card purchases, surveys of records and databases, etc. Hence the cycle is complete, they gather the information illegally, tell you it’s for your own safety, then passively give it to the very people we are supposed to be scared of. TADA! Now we are less safe than we were before. Is this starting to make sense?