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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

This is so un-American I can hardly believe that anyone in the USA would do it. Where's the due process? Where's the confrontation of the accuser? Where's the ability to redress a wrong?

This is so wrong on so many levels of Americanism. It's just Soviet, that's what it is.

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The word un-American does not apply to a nation of cowards.

But... but... their gunna take are guns!!!

No. They won't. That's because not a single shot will be fired in retaliation to government intrusion and control. Not a single thing will be done about it.

Can you support that? Isn't it more probable that furious marketing of government positions that show futility in any action against it, is causing people not to react?

It's not even Soviet. It's worse. At least in the Soviet Union, one could travel freely without shakedowns that come at the drop of a hat.

Huh? In the Soviet Union one had to be registered as residing in a particular city. You could be stopped and asked for your papers, and if you were in a different city from the one you were down as living in there would certainly be questions.

Questions, perhaps. Not: "You are not allowed to be here, we don't care if your grandmother is dying; we don't care if you are attending your sister's wedding."

This is what is happening in the US with the no-fly list.

Yes, exactly that, as in arm-behind-your-back marched to the train station under guard. If they didn't like your look, anyway.

I traveled in the Soviet Union in the 80's. Never once did I get subjected to the type of treatment that I get from the TSA, and I'm not on any DNF list.

Also, don't confuse having to register to aid in central planning with ease of travel. As an American, I traveled all over HHA and rarely had to show my papers. So, no, there certainly weren't questions...not like you alluded to.

>As an American, I traveled all over HHA and rarely had to show my papers. So, no, there certainly weren't questions...not like you alluded to.

Erm, yeah, American visitors were treated differently from native subjects. No shit.

"having to register to aid in central planning"

Wow. I'm pretty sure that aiding central planning wasn't the goal of resident registration.

That didn't end with the Soviet Union. As of 2010, at least, that was still the case in Ukraine.

China also has laws about residency permits that they use to send rural migrants back home if they feel cities are getting too crowded

You pretty much described the US/Mexico border. And a thousands miles not in the border as well.

There are checkpoints well within the USA which demand your papers, question your travel claims, and will detain you if anything seems amiss. They are spreading, and are not mere impromptu roadblocks but full-blown permanent "toll booth" structures.

Do you have any examples?

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=youtube+...

I had seen that video, I remember it now.

How ridiculous that the onus is on the citizen, not the officer, to make sure the citizen is not subject to unreasonable search (meaning: The officers will try and see if they are "allowed").

Airports.

A perfect example, which has become so normalized that it has lost all meaning as an example to most people.

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