Humorous Intel
Published on 1 Dec 2006 at 7:07 am.
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Filed under Politics, Airlines, Credit Cards.
Buff is back. The truth is that during most of 2006, I was imprisoned in Guantanamo for attempting to bring hummus through a TSA screening checkpoint. My possession of a Middle-Eastern food product made me an obvious terrorism suspect.
I’m free, I assume as the result of the mid-term elections. The Rs figure it’s only a matter of time before Jane Harmon or one of her colleagues shows up in Cuba to kick ass and take names.
Last night I had a rare insight into the minds of the ruling junta. I heard the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, speak about his plans to increase national security without trading privacy.
First, let me say that he is a calming presence. Not one of the Administration double-speakers or red-faced blusterers, he is intelligent and thoughtful. His ideas appear logical.
That is, until you actually listen to what he says. He sets up brilliant but false analogies to defend his proposals, arguing that no right-thinking person could reasonably disagree. But I do.
Plan Number 1: secure the borders, which in his plan means national identity cards for all Americans, and indeed, for all the world. He says that we have to be sure that passports are not phony (with his understated tone, I thought he said “phone passports” as first.) He tossed off words like “biometric” and “secure” without mentioning the obvious “database” that would be required to make such a system fully functional.
While he talked about taking all 10 fingerprints of people coming from outside the United States (instead of the current two), he did not mention what specific “biometric” identifier he expected American citizens to provide. I’m pretty proud of the fact that Buff’s fingerprints (much less her DNA) have never been taken (okay, one thumbprint when I took the GMAT, but I really, really doubt that Homeland Security has created a database of the thumbs of potential MBAs . . . but I could be wrong.)
Chertoff said that they want all 10 fingerprints for those entering the country because they intend to start collecting “latent fingerprints” (his precise words) from terrorists abroad. How are they going to get them? Take fingerprints from bomb-making sites and safe houses and at the infamous Al Qaeda schools for terrorists. How are they going to assure that these fingerprints belong to actual terrorists? He never said.
So I have a suggestion: Busboys For Al Qaeda. Someone has to be clearing away the dishes from all those conspirator monthly dinners. The CIA should recruit undercover agents to work for Al Qaeda’s caterers. They can collect fingerprints from all those teacups, and send them to Washington. America will be safe (and how hard could it be? I mean, we know where they are, right?)
And of course, we can’t complain about privacy because what’s the difference between giving two fingerprints and ten? And why do foreign nationals have any right to privacy when attempting to enter the United States anyway? No argument here.
The real problem—never mentioned,of course—is that there is no way for the accused terrorists to prove that they were just having lunch in the local souk and not making bombs. There’s nothing to keep the Sunnis and Shiites from turning over each other’s fingerprints willy-nilly. Or for that matter, to keep the TSA from turning over mine.
His second plan, to be applied to American citizens, could have been written by George Orwell himself. Chertoff argued that better passports (he never said, “identity documents” although that’s what they would be) would—this is the really good part—actually protect Americans’ precious privacy because they could be used to prevent identity theft!
That one left me rolling on the floor. Personally, I’d love it if MBNA had to stop issuing credit cards to anyone with a pulse (including a dog.) I’d love if if they couldn’t turn over the card until someone showed up at my door to check my biometric passport. But somehow, I don’t see the bloated credit industry (which contributes millions to political campaigns) letting that happen.
But I have to offer props to the Homeland Security analyst who came up with that brilliant justification for domestic biometric data collection.
It’s all a moot point in my case. I’m going to cave in and apply for the new security clearance, for which I will pay a couple of hundred dollars, because it will allow me to cut through the security lines at airports. I’d pay even more if they’d let me keep my shoes on and bring my hair gel. So me the real trade-off is between national security and frizzy hair. If the Department of Homeland Security had an ounce of marketing savvy, they’d trade Botox for DNA samples, and Americans would line up to make the trade.
Like any frequent traveler, I could list here the myriad ways that you can defeat the airport security system, but I’m not interested in returning to Guantanamo just now. And if I explain how my computer power cord can be used as a weapon, well they’ll just make me leave it behind.
Because if it’s good for national security, it can’t be bad for the nation. Or as Barry Goldwater never would have said, “Extremism in the defense of security is no vice.”
I hope I’m dead before our children’s children express their disgust at our sheep-like compliance with these ineffective, absurd, and repressive security measures. I hope someone finds this blog and notes that at least Buff Crone noted that all this “security” is nothing more than kabuki theater, played out at at taxpayer (and traveler) expense, and that the only people it protects are in this do-nothing Administration.
Buff