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Franklin Harris|3.4.05 @ 12:38PM|#
I say, if the guys in Washington are intent on turning the country into a police state, then the capital should damn well look like the capital of a police state. I don't want any illusions about this.
|3.4.05 @ 12:43PM|#
It's the same thing in the streets around the only building in NYC deemed worthy of such protection, the Stock Exchange. The thing that creeps me out the most is the grinning tourists who pose for snapshots with the machine-gun-toting soldiers.
|3.4.05 @ 1:13PM|#
When the TSA recently started enforcing their rules about no lighters on airplanes or the controlled areas of airports, one of the local stations here in Las Vegas interviewed a bunch of smokers at the airport and said every one of them agreed with the policy. If we don't already live in a police state, it won't take much to truly make it one.
|3.4.05 @ 1:38PM|#
There's no reason why they couldn't open that street to traffic. The White House is far enough back that even a spectacularly huge car bomb would at most blow in its windows.
However, my favorite stupid security measure is the uniformed secret service agents they have parked at various intersections around the white house to stop trucks (they're banned from 17th street along the Old and New EOB and on 15th street along the treasury, plus probabaly some other places I don't know about). There is a uniformed SSA sitting in his car at the corner of 17th & Penn. When a truck comes down Penn and looks like it's going to try to take a right or left on 17th, he gets out his car and motions for it to stop. When it does he talks to the driver who then either turns around and finds another way, or if the driver needs to make a delivery on G street (one block south of Penn and one way so the only way to enter is from 17th) the SSA inspects the cargo and lets him continue on his way.
Do they think a terrorist with a car bomb is going stop the car, throw up his hands and say "you got me!" when the SSA gets out of his car and waives at him? Just plain stupid.
I once had half a mind to get a map of DC, walk around downtown and when I found one of the SSA guys, plunk the map down on his hood, mark off his location, and continue on, but they likely would not be amused.
|3.4.05 @ 2:07PM|#
I once had half a mind to get a map of DC, walk around downtown and when I found one of the SSA guys, plunk the map down on his hood, mark off his location, and continue on, but they likely would not be amused.
Trouble is, I think they'd display their lack of a sense of humor by arresting you. You'd get released eventually, but you'd probably be financially ruined by the legal expenses even if you have a spotless record.
Making jokes is one thing; fucking with paranoids is another.
Mike|3.4.05 @ 3:04PM|#
Do they think a terrorist with a car bomb is going stop the car, throw up his hands and say "you got me!" when the SSA gets out of his car and waives at him? Just plain stupid.
Bruce Scheiner made a good point earlier this week, in the context of airport security: "Every time the TSA takes a pocketknife from an innocent person, that's a security failure." In this case, it's keeping law abiding citizens off roads, but it's a security *failure* none the less.
|3.4.05 @ 7:33PM|#
Re: NYC - And I forgot to mention the bottleneck/checkpoint set up for the last two and half years or so in front of my place of work, taking up 2 of the 4 lanes of Broadway just before Wall Street, where the cops pull over roughly every other truck to inspect its contents. I guess it's a good idea... until you realize that it's quite possible to drive *around* the roadblock...
|3.5.05 @ 2:40AM|#
This is what's to frickin' hilarious: we are starting to LOOK like a police state, but unlike an actual police state, the effectiveness is limited to those least likely to cause a ruckus.
If you really want to take down a target, it just takes a little prep and time to observe the security rituals. I call them rituals, because they can hardly be taken for actions of substance.
The real Department of Homeland Security is the Great Oz. Pay no attention to that bureaucracy behind the curtain.