On Sat, Oct 13, 2001 at 11:36:12AM -0700, Tina Gasperson wrote:
> The editor of Forbes magazine was on Fox News today
> and said that the "west coast" (read Silicon Valley)
> should get busy designing security applications for
> the US. The theme of the show was how businesses and
> entrepreneurs can get involved in the war effort. He
> suggested something along the lines of a system that
> would keep track of visitors to this country.
>
> 1. I care deeply about my liberty and rights as a
> citizen of this country. However, I'm not as concerned
> about the civil rights of visitors and non-citizens
> because I believe the safety of our citizens comes
> first. I don't think we should open any concentration
> camps or close off our borders, but keeping tabs is
> legit, in my book. What do you think? Should we track
> the whereabouts and activities of aliens? If you think
> not, don't bother with the next point. :-)
>
The rights accorded to the citizens of this country do not necessarily
extend to those who are not citizens of this country. I suspect the
Framers would disagree, since many of the rights they espoused were
considered God-given, and beyond the reach of the Constitution or
governments. My view is that if you want the rights and privileges
afforded citizens, learn the language and salute the flag.
That said, I'm not sure we should track the activities of aliens. The
whereabouts, perhaps. But even that is difficult. What about aliens who
come here for a sightseeing vacation across the U.S.? I don't think
concentration camps are right, but I think that lessening the flow of
people across our borders is a wise thing. America exists for the
benefit of Americans, not foreigners.
Really, though, this gets into the issue of profiling. I believe in
profiling. Police and the FBI can't really do their jobs without
profiling. It's difficult to track serial killers without profiling. The
only people who bitch about profiling are people who are the "victims"
of it. And those people, as a group, are the ones who commit the most
crimes. Which is the reason why they are profiled in the first place.
By all means, track Arabs coming into this country. Of course, they are
not all guilty. But by the same token, you don't detain every person who
fits the profile. You simply track them as much as practicable.
Arabs may complain, but it should be noted that for thousands of years
the Arabs have fought amongst themselves, and now export terrorism
globally. It is within the power of Arab states and Arab populations to
eliminate this type of behavior. But they have chosen not to. Now, their
populations suffer because of it. So be it. I am not against Arabs or
Islam in any way. But these countries and regimes have allowed this
behavior to flourish, and even encouraged it. The time to atone for this
sin is upon them. All these countries have families whose members have
gone off to learn terrorism. But the families have chosen to stand by
and do nothing. Rather than turn their own family members in, they have
remained silent. And their governments have been willing accomplices.
How long can you do such things and expect not to be punished? They
simply had the misfortune to pick a fight with the most powerful country
in the history of this planet. Poor judgment. As a result, their people
in this country may be tracked, detained and questioned. I have no
sympathy, so long as innocent Arabs are not actually _persecuted_. They
have brought this upon themselves.
We stand as a beacon of freedom in a world which is not. Whether the
world likes to admit it or not, they would suffer immeasurably if it
were not so. As a result, we must protect this land and its ideals.
Perhaps to the detriment to some who are not citizens. It is the price
they and we must pay.
By the way, this _is_ a war. While the ideals and principles that make
America great are still operative in times like this, the rules change a
bit during wars. We need to be mindful of that.
> 2. Designing such a system would make a great open
> source project. Or not. What do you think? Could we
> rally enough serious support to carry it? I think the
> government (NIST) would get behind it.
>
Here's the problem. Upon what do you base your tracking? The first and
most obvious answer is an ID card, which could contain any number of
things. You could have one for every alien and for every American. Even
if it only contained a 24 digit number, you'd still have a significant
portion of Americans howling about this (aliens don't get a vote). And I
can't say I blame them. The problem is that we have a basic and
well-founded distrust of governments. That number, simply used to track
movement today, could be used to track gun purchases or drug
prescriptions tomorrow. Do we really want such a thing? What if your ID
card shows that you bought a foreign-made non-low-flow toilet? Do you
really want the police knocking on your door because you don't like
having to flush your toilet twice every time you go to the bathroom?
Perhaps as important, in order to track people, you have to have
infrastructure in place to do so. When they go somewhere, something has
to say they've arrived at such-and-such place. Credit card transactions
do this nicely, unless someone uses cash. Then what? Social security
numbers are widely used as identification, but aliens don't have them.
And you can't expect a hotel owner in Baltimore to call the FBI every
time a foreign born person with a passport tries to rent a room.
> 3. Thinking along those lines, what are some other
> potential war effort projects that the open source
> community could do a much better job at than the usual suspects?
>
The Open Source community could do almost anything better than Larry
Ellison or Bill Gates. But this community is driven by itch-scratching.
And that itch may not even occur with issues like this.
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 19:37:42 EDT