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Posts Tagged ‘REAL ID ACT’

SUICIDE BY DEMOGRAPHICS

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 15, 2016 at 12:02 am

Starting in 2016, traveling by air in the United States became more complicated.

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.

The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that some states haven’t complied with its requirements.

As a result, driver’s licenses from those states will no longer suffice to pass through airport security.  And that includes domestic flights as well as international ones.

Those states:  New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana and American Samoa.

The reason: Licenses issued by those states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).

So how are residents of these states supposed to cope?  The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.

Your old New York driver’s license may make it harder for you to fly in 2016 | syracuse.com

And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own.  As one soon-to-be affected New York traveler outlined:

“To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certifcate.

“And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license.  A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you?

“So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, whch gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”

Got all that?

Related image

Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act

And while TSA is beefing up security at the back door, the Obama administration is casting aside the front door.

On September 10, 2015, the administration announced that it would accept at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year.

That is in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States has already accepted.

According to U.S. Census data, America welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.

The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.

The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online

And while all this is happening, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.

On July 8, 2015, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.

“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.

“But it is incredibly difficult.  I cannot see my stopping these indefinitely.”

Consider the math: The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects.

And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.

How did all of this come to be?

To start at the beginning: On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war. Since then, more than 470,000 Syrians people have been killed.

Put another way: More than 470,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.

But European nations and the United States have chosen to see this truth as a negative, not a positive.

More than a million Islamic migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015.

And all it took to make this happen was a photo that’s been seen the world over: A photo of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach.

A cartoon parody of this picture showed a group of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at Kurdi’s body.

It also highlighted a Politically Incorrect truth:

While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.

According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”

These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States.  And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.

Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile, the Arab world has closed its own doors to Syrian refugees

The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post

* * * * *

During the 1980s, the United States government considered Islamic acts of anti-American terrorism as simply crimes, and not acts of war.

The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For almost 15 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. 

To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.

PUBLIC ENEMY #1: CITIZENS WITH CAMERAS

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on October 29, 2015 at 12:04 am

Want to report a crime to the FBI?  First you’ll have to prove you deserve to even see an FBI agent.

Step 1: Visit a Federal building where the FBI has a field office.  To enter, you must show a driver’s license or State ID card.

If your name is on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, you won’t show it at all (let alone visit any FBI office).

And if you aren’t a notorious criminal or terrorist, handing over a driver’s license or State ID card with the name “John Smith” isn’t going to tell the security guard anything relevant about you.

It’s simply an invasion of your privacy in the name of security theater.

Step 2: You must remove

  • Your belt;
  • Your shoes;
  • Your watch;
  • Your wallet;
  • All other objects from your pants pockets;
  • Any jacket you’re wearing;
  • Any cell phone you’re carrying.

All of these must be placed in one or more large plastic containers, which are run through an x-ray scanner.

Step 3: Assuming you avoid setting off any alarm system, you’re allowed to enter.

Step 4: Take an elevator to the floor where the Bureau has its office and walk into a large room filled with several comfortable chairs that sit close to the floor.

Step 5: Approach a window such as you find in a bank–made of thick, presumably bulletproof glass.

A secretary on the opposite side greets you, and asks why you’ve come.

Step 6: State your reason for wanting to speak with an agent. If the secretary thinks it’s legitimate, she requires you to show her your driver’s license or State ID card.

Step 7: Slide this through a slot in the glass window.  Then she makes a xerox of this and hands the card back.

Step 8: Then you must fill out a single-page card, which requires you to provide your:

  • Name;
  • Address;
  • Phone number;
  • Social Security Number;
  • The reason you want to speak to an agent.

Of course, you can refuse to fill out the card. But then the secretary will refuse to let you meet with an agent.

So the FBI has no qualms about requiring others to give up their privacy.  But its director, James B. Comey, believes the public actions of police should be hidden from citizens’ scrutiny.

Addressing a forum at the University of Chicago Law School on October 23, Comey offered a series of possible reasons for the recent surge in crime rates in America.

Click here: FBI — Law Enforcement and the Communities We Serve: Bending the Lines Toward Safety and Justice 

“Maybe it’s the return of violent offenders after serving jail terms.  Maybe it’s cheap heroin or synthetic drugs.  Maybe after we busted up the large gangs, smaller groups are now fighting for turf.

“Maybe it’s a change in the justice system’s approach to bail or charging or sentencing. Maybe something has changed with respect to the availability of guns….”

Then Comey offered what he thought was the real villain behind the rise in crime: Cellphones aimed at police.

Comey-FBI-Portrait.jpg

FBI Director James B. Comey

“In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?

“I spoke to officers privately in one big city precinct who described being surrounded by young people with mobile phone cameras held high, taunting them the moment they get out of their cars. They told me, ‘We feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars.’

“I’ve been told about a senior police leader who urged his force to remember that their political leadership has no tolerance for a viral video.

“So the suggestion, the question that has been asked of me, is whether these kinds of things are changing police behavior all over the country.

“And the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior.”

The FBI has

  • Lobbied Congress for an electronic “key” that would allow it to enter a cyber “back door” to eavesdrop on even those emails protected by encryption systems;
  • Monitored electronic bugs and wiretapped phones–as well as social media sites like Facebook and Twitter;
  • Treated law-abiding citizens like criminal suspects before they can even seek help from an agent; and
  • Repeatedly preached to Americans that if they have nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear from police surveillance.

But according to the FBI, citizens who aim cameras at cops in public places present a clear and present danger. This holds true even if they don’t interfere with the ability of police to make arrests.

They make heavily armed police feel so threatened that many officers are refusing to carry out their sworn duties.

SUICIDE BY DEMOGRAPHICS

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 28, 2015 at 1:04 pm

Starting in 2016, traveling by air in the United States is going to become more complicated.

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.

The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that some states haven’t complied with its requirements.

As a result, driver’s licenses from those states will no longer suffice to pass through airport security.  And that includes domestic flights as well as international ones.

Those states:  New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana and American Samoa.

The reason: Licenses issued by those states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).

So how are residents of these states supposed to cope?  The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.

Your old New York driver’s license may make it harder for you to fly in 2016 | syracuse.com

And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own.  As one soon-to-be affected New York traveler outlined:

“To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certifcate.

“And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license.  A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you?

“So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, whch gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”

Got all that?

Related image

Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act

And while TSA is beefing up security at the back door, the Obama administration is about to cast aside the front door.

On September 10, the administration announced that it will take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year.

That is on top of the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States has already accepted.

According to U.S. Census data, America welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.

The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.

The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online

And while all this is happening, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.

On July 8, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.

“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.

“But it is incredibly difficult.  I cannot see my stopping these indefinitely.”

Consider the math: The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects.

And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.

How did all of this come to be?

To start at the beginning: On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war.  Since then, more than 310,000 Syrians people have been killed.

Put another way: More than 310,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.

But European nations and the United States have chosen to see this truth as a negative, not a positive.

The United Nations refugee Agency, UNHCR, estimates that 366,402 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year.

And all it took to make this happen was a photo that’s been seen the world over: A photo of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach.

A cartoon parody of this picture showed a group of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at Kurdi’s body.

It also highlighted a Politically Incorrect truth:

While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.

According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”

These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States.  And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.

Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists.  Meanwhile, the Arab world is closing its own doors to Syrian refugees

The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post

* * * * *

During the 1980s, the United States waged a cold war against Islamic nations.  These acts of anti-American terrorism were seen as simply crimes, and not acts of war.

The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that.  For the last 14 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And now Syria.

To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid.  It is a guarantee of national suicide.