Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

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If I want to fly to Latin America from Europe, I'd rather make the stop for the second plane in Europe, and then go straight to Latin America, than make the stop in US. I just don't want to deal with TSA in any way, especially after stories that now they even have data on what you tweeted and stuff like that, and they can take you aside or even arrest you for a while because of that.

Will TSA consider me "suspicious" just because I tweeted articles such as this one? Or maybe some Wikileaks-related articles or some OWS articles? That is ridiculous, and I don't even want to risk that by flying through the country, let alone want to live there (which is something I really wanted to do before). The world's view on America is changing fast and the view is increasingly more negative.

The world wants America to be its role model, something to aspire to, and a place where they want to live in. It doesn't want to see an America as the bully of the world, or a bully even of its own citizens. So yes, I do think this will impact tourism, cloud businesses, as well as other type of businesses, if they keep going down this road of increasing surveillance and more government abuses, not only against Americans, but against foreigners, too.

I really wish people would stop mixing up TSA and USCBP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protect...)

Perhaps the worry should be that people just shorten all that to "USA", and give up. I know I would never travel there, and I don't really care which acronym is out to wreck my life.

> Perhaps the worry should be that people just shorten all that to "USA", and give up.

I've done exactly that.

Too bad, there are a lot of really nice people there that I consider close friends.

You seem to have been around (here at least) for a while... is there a story here, or are you just cutting off your nose to spite your face?

EDIT: Removed leading "Honestly?". Am serious if an experience led to this.

I've lived on the US/Canadian border for several years and I've seen enough of US immigration to last me a lifetime.

The specific incident that made me decide to stop visiting the US took place at an airport but that merely made the bucket overflow, it was already pretty full.

Now I am curious. Care to go into detail on either the specific case that made "your bucket overflow" or the overall situation that maddens you so much? I haven't been to the US for over a decade now and only pick up things on the news here and there...

> Now I am curious. Care to go into detail on either the specific case that made "your bucket overflow" or the overall situation that maddens you so much?

No.

> I haven't been to the US for over a decade now and only pick up things on the news here and there...

My last visit to the states was in 2005, so we're getting to that decade. I used to go at least once every year, sometimes more often. But until the madness is brought under control (probably not within my lifetime) it's not going to happen again. Too bad, really.

It's not hard to understand the confusion. One agency takes a nude photo of you and punishes you for asserting your rights, the other demands that you let them explore your laptop and cites decades of precedent in ignoring civil rights, and both take pride in examining personal luggage and publicly embarrassing people.

OTOH they've been pretty successful at preventing attacks on America since 9/11.

Well, they've been very good at preventing attacks before 9/11, too.

There has not been a major attack on US soil since 9/11. This may or may not be because of the level of security apparent in airports. You can't tell.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the absence of 9/11-like attacks has anything to do with the TSA?

None. By their nature, measures like this annoy people. If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?

When was the last time a locked cabin door annoyed you?

There is nothing inherent about security measures that cause annoyance. Security theater measures on the other hand...

As a Brit, I have a huge problem with all this. In the old days of US funded IRA attacks against amongst other things, our government, we never let the terrorists win. We didn't budge our principles or give up core freedoms. Sure our side did some very iffy things to combat the terror, but it was still illegal. We didn't try to legitimise it by tearing up principles that applied to normal people. But once 9/11 happened and the US gave US freedoms up, we and other nation states were heavily leaned on to also give up those freedoms and principles. Sadly, we capitulated to US pressure.

So, no my opinion never budged before, during or after 9/11. In fact, it hardened. But, I'm afraid the terrorism worked. We lost freedoms, rights and principles all due to the 9/11 attacks and US reaction to it. Terror won. Bin Laden won. We became more like them.

Is indefinite detention without trial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment) of members of a particular 'native' ethnic group in your country a sign of a free society? This happened during the 1970's in Northern ireland

Just last week david cameron had to apologise for the UK security forces' actions in passing information to terrorist groups to enable the murder of, amongst others, a lawyer. He also had to apologise for cases where the security forces had prior knowledge of murder and did nothing about it and for the wilful destruction of evidence by the police and the army. Is that the 'iffy' stuff that you refer to?

Edit: link to youtube of apology http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcS_FswjqrM

I disagree, the US haven't faced a real threat since 2001. I agree with you that the UK cannot have a position of moral superiority. Perhaps the UK has learned the error of their ways, and in recent times has sought to mend them. A apology more than twenty years after the incident isn't much solace though.

This article about an incident in Northern Ireland may be interesting to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Showband_killings

9/11 was an inside job, designed (along other things) to take away personal freedoms.

Please leave.

Why?

Simply stating what you believe is frowned upon here, you are supposed to include your reasons.

The basic assumption that we all hold about our opinions is that everyone else would believe in them too if they knew the facts we did, so it is best to accompany all statements of opinion with a logical argument for their validity.

Rules are made to broken (especially on a site called Hacker News) ;-) Plus I don't think jacquesm's "Please leave" has anything to do with the rules.

Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite:

1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account for.

2. On 9/11 a part of the Pentagon, including the budget analysis department rooms, was destroyed. Most of the victims were accountants.

3. Same day WTC building 7 (not mentioned in 9/11 commission report, not investigated by any other authority) was destroyed in NY. Pentagon's primary financial information backup site was inside.

One out of the many, many "coincidences" on 9/11 ...

Re: Item 1 and Item 2

Are you claiming that the government 'whipped up' the terrorist attack in under 24 hours?

No, a possible scenario is there was a group of Pentagon employes that knew about the missing money and were pushing for investigation for months. 9/11 was (among other targets) a way to delay the investigation, eliminate key people/evidence and give a lesson to the rest.

>In the old days of US funded IRA attacks against amongst other things, our government, we never let the terrorists win.

Are you implying our government funded the IRA? Also, it's pretty rich being criticized by a Brit for the surveillance state. You guys have a camera system that would have made Orwell proud.

"By their nature, measures like this annoy people."

You know what annoys me? How many tax dollars are spent on a full body scanner, when the airport bar right on the other side is full of breakable glass. Nevermind the tests that showed that a knife, gun, or even high explosive could be snuck through the checkpoint; a determined attacker could just make their weapons after passing through security. This is not to mention the large, densely-packed crowd of people waiting to go through the checkpoint, a prime target for terrorists.

"If this was the 12th of September 2001 would your opinion be different and if so, why?"

People were talking about terrorists making their weapons after passing through airport security in 2001. People were talking about the crowd of people waiting to pass through security being a target. People were talking about the corruption, the friendly contracts that pour tax money into well-connected companies' coffers, in 2001.

You're thinking of the FBI and CIA... unless you were under the impression that nail clippers and bottles of water were actually dangerous?

And they likely could have prevented 9/11 as well, but then they wouldn't have been able to increase the state's power to "fix" things. There wasn't a lack of intelligence warning of 9/11: there was a lack of will to deal with the intelligence.

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete...

They've also been effective at preventing UFO invasions.

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