The Patriot act is going to hurt all of us.

[Texas Proud]

From what I have been reading... they abused the Act... and even the controls that were put in the Act to prevent them from abusing it... sorry, but that is not acceptable to say 'sorry'...

And the TRUE problem is the NSA who is doing stuff that most would diagree... who saw the program that showed they have tapped into the internet and were intercepting ALL emails... without any judicial oversight...

Our rights are being taken away and we don't have any more security than before...

And BTW, who is there to protect all the people that are standing in line waiting to be X Rayed? If I wanted to send a suicide bomber... just get in line.. when you see a lot of people around... blow up.. you don't even have to get by security to kill a good number of people as we make a big group congregate in a confined area...

 

[dumpster56]

[

Our rights are being taken away and we don't have any more security than before...

And BTW, who is there to protect all the people that are standing in line waiting to be X Rayed? If I wanted to send a suicide bomber... just get in line.. when you see a lot of people around... blow up.. you don't even have to get by security to kill a good number of people as we make a big group congregate in a confined area...
[/quote]

Voncelle!!!!!!!!

 

[JohnEyles]

The Patriot act provided money to lots of local police forces. Police were hired (don't question qualifications, standards, or temperment).

Police have more rights than they did prior to the act.

Good point, our nation's police establishment showed on 9/11/01 and 8/29/05
that they cannot really protect us when the chips are down. And yet they
become more and more arrogant, whining that they need more money, gear,
and license to bully old ladies at airports, spy on citizens etc. What they really
needed on 9/11 (really before 9/11) was the imagination to predict something
that had been already predicted in books and movies and which even some FBI
agents had warned of (and been ignored). What they really needed on 8/29/05
and afterwards were a federal government that cares about poor people (it isn't
that Bush doesn't care about black people, it's that he doesn't care about poor
people) and a police department willing to continue to do its job even in adversity
(I know many did, but many didn't).

This is not meant to be a dig against individual police offciers, the majority of
whom I believe are well-meaning, dedicated, and professional; but against the
law enforcement establishment as a whole, which HAS let us down and only
wants more power as a result.

 

[lets-retire]

As far as N.O. police, I wouldn't do the job for the price they are paid. I damned well wouldn't stay for a major hurricane for that price either. But as the saying goes you get what you pay for.

The imagination is present for the protection of people but the will is not. One of the first skills learned in any protection field is figuring out how to defeat the area to be secured. If you really want to be scared know that most LE types can walk down a street and figure out how to kill many, many people and never be caught, but they don't. These are the people you are afraid to trust your lives to. You do it daily, but don't realize it.

Here's just a glimpse: Name your biological weapon of choice, how would you like to eat it? Do you eat at a salad bar? How difficult would it be to pour enough of a toxin into a salad at your local restaurant or 20, or 30? Even before I heard of the cult that did it, I refused to eat at a salad bar, because I figured out it wasn't really safe. How difficult would it be to put your airborne toxin of choice into the ventilation system of the local hospital with an aerosol timer. It would be dispersed throughout the building very quickly.

I can think of literally hundreds of ways to kill large number of people and get away with it. Call it a hazard of the job. In truth defending against all of the threats is not cheap and we are not willing to pay to have it done properly. So we choose the biggest ones and hope the rest don't happen. As soon as one of the small ones do happen the media is all over it about how the justice system has failed and didn't protect the citizens. When in reality the citizens didn't want to pay for the protection. The citizenry has come to expect 100% safety, but are unwilling/unable to pay for it.

 

[samclem]

That's why defending point targets is not going to be effective. Unless we want to live in a police state where everybody is watched all the time, where we have "internal controls" (e.g checkpoints, internal passports, restrictionson travel out of your home area, etc) then it is very unlikely that a defensive approach will be effective. That's not to say we shouldn't defend the most obvious points (e.g. an aluminum tube with 50,000 lbs of fuel going 500 mph carrying 400 people--that's a place that needs to be defended), but we should realize that defenses will just drive determined bad guys to other targets--hopefully ones where they'll do less damage. It's far more effective (and cheaper) to find the bad guys and apprehend/kill them. That's what investigative work is all about. Most of this is done by law enforcement, though the military is playing a role in places where LE can't be effective.

 

[lets-retire]

I agree.

 

[JohnEyles]

As far as N.O. police, I wouldn't do the job for the price they are paid. I damned well wouldn't stay for a major hurricane for that price either. But as the saying goes you get what you pay for.

Wow. What ever happened to honor ? If the NO police don't think they were paid well
enough, they should have negotiated for more pay or moved to a different police force or
profession. But to turn their backs on the people they've sworn to protect ...

If you really want to be scared know that most LE types can walk down a street and figure out how to kill many, many people and never be caught, but they don't. These are the people you are afraid to trust your lives to. You do it daily, but don't realize it.

Sounds almost like a threat. I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to kill a cop and not
be caught.

Here's just a glimpse: Name your biological weapon of choice, how would you like to eat it?

Yes. But we actually had flight schools saying "hey, they're these wierd guys learning to
fly" and FBI agents warning of this very attack mode.

In truth defending against all of the threats is not cheap and we are not willing to pay to have it done properly. So we choose the biggest ones and hope the rest don't happen.

I'm with you here, except I'd quibble and say we choose the ones that already HAVE
happened and defend against those. (Good example that we've all heard is where the
people in a neighborhood say "this intersection is dangerous, we need a light" but the
city does nothing until there is a fatal accident). Again, I say it did not take a rocket
scientist to predict the 9/11 attacks. But the scum-sucking airlines were unwilling to
pay the price for better security until they were forced to by events. And even now,
I've heard security experts say that our current efforts are mainly window dressing
to make the flying public FEEL safe.

 

[lets-retire]

Rusty--
1) Police work is a tough job and when the pay is so low when compared to the working environment, most of the applicants are just a step above a security guard. NOPD starts at about 30,000 per year then goes to about 38,000 per year. That sound like good pay, but the city has a notoriously liberal bent, so the officers are very constrained in their actions and response. The end result is the good officers leave, the bad ones stay, the public complains, and the leadership can't figure out what is wrong. I've sat through many hurricanes for far less pay, but much better working conditions than exist in NO.

2) It's not a threat just a simple fact of life. Killing one cop is almost not newsworthy in many places, and killing one person is easy, but killing enough people to be noticed is a bit more difficult for most people.

3) This goes back to the theory that if it isn't against the law there is nothing LE can do. There was nothing saying a person had to learn how to take off or land an airplane. As someone else said it's easy to use hind sight to figure things out, but looking forward and predicting things is a bit more of a challenge.

4) Agreed. As I said part of the job in security/LE is figuring out how to attack a resource and then defending against it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a vulnerability brought up to management and had the response be, "It hasn't happened yet, so it's not that big of an issue." This goes even for corrective actions that would cost a couple man hours to implement then it would be free, like moving a guard shack. Window dressing is the security of choice, even post 9-11.

 

[JohnEyles]

NOPD starts at about 30,000 per year then goes to about 38,000 per year.

I'm shocked and agree that this is too low.

 

[martyb]

We've been at this for over 4 years. A long time, with a lot of investigative work going on. Wow, these fascists must be locking up Americans by the boatload, huh? How many have these jackbooted thugs locked up without trial? Two or three hundred?

So, how many US citizens have been classified as "enemy combatants" and denied a speedy trial? The answer: Exactly one (Jose Padilla).
How many US citizens have been held, for even a short time, as material witnesses in terror investigations: less than 20 (some were later brought to trial).

Is this something we need to watch closely? Yes!
Is this something that is beng abused now? I don't think so.

Agreed!!