> Who was talking about security checks? I was talking
> about police investigation of terrorist conspiracies
> and arrest and prosecution of reasonably suspected
> conspirators before they do things. But security
> checks (now that you mention them) are not a bad idea
> either. They're expensive and inconvenient, although I
> am impressed at how good the TSA has gotten at
> minimizing the inconvenience, and they miss a lot.
> There may be failures, jsut as the cops may not catch
> all the conspirators. Is that a reason to do nothing
> about the immediate threat?
Normal, civil-society police work is one thing; but probably many of us suspect that police work in the context of the "war on terror" is highly politicized and anything but normal, and that the Great Mouthwash Plot, in particular, is being, erm, oversold. Since none of us is privy to what's really going on, the trusting and the suspicious alike are operating on surmise, well- or ill-founded as the case may be. For the record, count me among the suspicious.
As for security checks -- I personally would rather take my chances with Qaeda et al. than have my stuff searched by TSA thugs. I'm not exaggerating here, or being melodramatic. It's literally true: better a small calculated risk of being blown up, than a regime of ubiquitous, systematic humiliation and police-worship. Can't imagine how anyone with any self-respect could possibly feel otherwise.
There's also good reason to be very skeptical about just how effective all this searching and surveillance is; I suspect it belongs more to the realm of political theater than police work in any reasonable sense of the term. I myself have taken stuff on planes that should have been detected and stopped, and I'm neither very motivated nor very crafty.
I take pictures on bridges, too, and encourage others to do likewise, for no other reason than the signs telling us we mustn't. Now _there_, if you like, is political theater par excellence, and very silly theater at that -- who can possibly believe that a rule like that is enforceable?
--
Michael J. Smith
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org