Wednesday, June 16, 2004

The latest government attempts to make everyone of intelligence leave the country

Do you ever get the feeling in the post-9/11 world that this is what policy makers are trying to do? Though I guess if everyone of intelligence left the country George Bush would have much less trouble being reelected. (This is not to say that there are no smart Republicans, because I know some; it's just that there are many more smart Democrats.)

Today's signs that the police state is upon us are brought to you by Bruce Schneier's monthly Counterpane Crypt-O-Gram newsletter (with perhaps some addenda when/if I get around to going through my Bloglines). These are not national policies, and they're not actually final yet, but if you want existing national policies that resemble them I'm sure I can dig up a few.

Item #1: Evidently "the LA police are considering jamming all cell phones in the event of a terrorist attack" because of the technological possibility that a cell phone can be used to remotely detonate a bomb, a concept familiar with anyone who has ever seen an action movie.

Item #2: In NYC, the transportation gods are considering banning photography on subways for security reasons. Evidently they're also considering banning walking between cars on a train, even when the subway is stopped. Because someone walking between train cars while taking pictures must be a terrorist.

Maybe there's a reason for all this. Maybe it's a plan to deal with the excessive immigration problem by ensuring that no one in their right mind would want to live in the US. Maybe closeted conservative economists have released private formulas that determine the economy improves with higher citizen dissatisfaction. Or maybe the administration is tired of making the rest of the world hate them and has switched to us.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The part I hate about Blogger is this whole need an account to post a comment. Argh. Anyways, in point #1 I have heard of reports that Nextel phones (operating at the 900 mhz frequency) have actually conflicted with emergency services radio communication. Now if this is actually true, can be proven by the FCC who is licensing out these airwaves and should know better than to overlap, I can understand the jamming of cell phones in the event of a terrorist attack.

The flip side to this comes on the technological side of things. Using NYC as an example, no cell phone in the Northeast corridor worked thanks in part to a two step process. The first was the primary tower in NYC was no longer functional causing an extrodinary amount of traffic re-routing. The second was the complete and utter overload of the cellular network while loved ones tried to get in touch with each other.

Dan

9:27 AM  

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