The headline screams at us:
U.S. government terror ratings draw outrage
Yep, it's the AP again. Having spread around the world the fact that the U.S. government has an information-gathering program used to assign risk assessment scores to travelers, the AP is at it again today, attempting to tear the program apart.
The program draws "outrage"?
The only outrage I'm feeling is toward the Associated Press, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, and the other handful of foolish people whom the AP scrounged up to object to this perfectly reasonable and vital anti-terrorism effort.
Who writes this kind of tripe?:
WASHINGTON - A leader of the new Democratic Congress, business travelers and privacy advocates expressed outrage Friday over the unannounced assignment of terrorism risk assessments to American international travelers by a computerized system managed from an unmarked, two-story brick building in Northern Virginia.
Unmarked building? Would it help if the building were marked?
At that Virginia building with no sign, the managers of the National Targeting Center allowed an Associated Press photographer to briefly roam their work space.
But he couldn't reveal the building's exact location. None of the dozens of workers under the bright fluorescent lights could be named. Some could not be photographed.
The horror! The government workers couldn't be photographed!
How will the terorrists ever find them, then?
I cannot believe the foolishness and short-sightedness of the AP and the handful of sources it managed to find to object to this program.
Do we really want to live in an America where the government is prohibited by law from paying attention?
Do we want to force Lady Liberty to shield her eyes and see no evil until it literally is too late?
The AP whines:
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
Excuse me, but do we really need to create an entire court system -- or flood the one we have -- to deal with "challenges" to risk assessments that are merely rough summaries of data anyway?
All this program does is to ensure that governmental agencies pay attention to travelers and share the information and experience they already have.
I can see why that would be objectionable.
It might help to keep Americans safe.
It probably already has saved lives.
But by all means, let's disband the program immediately -- or choke it to death with judicial oversight and layers of red tape -- so we can find out for sure just how badly we can undermine our own security from within!
Let's make sure that our agencies don't share any risk assessment information unless they're so sure of it that they're prepared to go to court and defend it!
Let's go back to the pre-9/11 model of information sharing. It went something like this:
The AP is once again attempting to lead America down a path that would mean national suicide.
We face a genuine threat to our national security from Islamic terrorists, and that threat is as real today as it was on September 10, 2001.
The threat is also just as quiet as it was on September 10, 2001.
We blind our own eyes to it at our mortal peril.
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More at Wake Up America ("I EXPECT to be Assessed") and Stop the ACLU
Earlier Related Post: AP Spills Another National Security Secret; Terrorists Rejoice!
Great post...thanks for the link.
Posted by: spree | December 02, 2006 at 09:58 PM