November 11, 2013
By: Kelly Diamond, Publisher
Just as we get comfortable with the government’s hold on our necks, they have to squeeze a little more to remind us of how “free” we are? With all these invasions of privacy already in place, it’s assumed that folks are being conditioned to accept the ever watchful eye of government as a reasonable or small price to pay for the illusion of safety. But what starts as inconvenience, could very well and quickly turn into an all-out elimination of your freedoms.
Do not look at these policies in isolation. The militarization of our police, the invasions of privacy, FATCA, and now the further tightening of restrictions on flying are all part of the same effort. And while there is still time and space we would be well advised to at least keep our options open and know our escape routes for when the shit inevitably hits the fan. You cannot kill and idea any more than you can prevent the spread of information. Get your hands on and your head wrapped around some information that could be key in preserving your property and facilitating your personal freedom with a subscription to GWP Insiders, today.
Right now, they are just watching, monitoring, and screening. But the next step is prevention and detention. We’re all suspects of something. We all pose a threat. Remember Janet Napolitano’s address nine years after 9/11 to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security: “We must recognize that virtually anything is a potential target”. I mean, what do you do with 450 million rounds of hollow-point bullets anyway but get ready for a total reenactment of “Minority Report”?
I never trust that one piece of legislation is, in and of itself, an end. I have learned to believe that certain policies sometimes have the job of paving the way toward a more onerous or tyrannical one down the road.
For example, in the case of the Affordable Care Act. The government is going to create these quasi-private entities called “exchanges” and require that they accept everyone regardless of risk, and offer certain features as minimum standards in every policy. THEN, when the price tag is inevitably too high and people balk at losing their ACTUAL affordable care, the government can say, “SEE! The free market didn’t work. We need a single payer program to streamline the process of administering healthcare for all.”
Essentially, they set up a false free market scenario to fail, and later say, “I told you so, now let me nationalize and control the whole thing.”
I don’t see the TSA as being much different. The TSA, among every other federal agency from the IRS, FBI, DHS, and NSA have been trying to profile every single individual in one way or another. What’s worse is that they are now realizing that sharing information across agencies is quite an efficient way of data mining.
These all being givens, it wouldn’t then surprise you to know that there is now and extensive background check taking place on every American who wants to travel conducted by the TSA and backed by the DHS. (Teamwork make the dream work, right?) The type of scrutiny that was once reserved only for those trying to enter or reenter the United States is now being extended to everyone trying to travel out of or within the United States by plane.
Now, rather than personal prejudices and biases leading the way in profiling, we have an “algorithm” in the system that responds to certain red flags in your life. Like that is any better?
My gripe with any sort of algorithmically based assessment is that a human being first had to program it. And while I’m a huge BitCoin advocate in the sense that it challenges the government fiat currencies out there, it is still a product of a human being’s programming. So while it won’t have the same knee jerk responses as a person, it will reflect the lack of omniscience inherent in all human beings.
In the case of Abdulla Darrat, according to the New York Times, he undergoes such scrutiny that by the time he gets to his plane people are suspicious of him for no other reason than because every airport official has treated him as such.
What Info Could They Want?
Here’s a list of what they will be screening for per FreePatriot.org:
- private employment information to include who you work for
- vehicle registrations
- travel history
- property ownership records and what property you claim
- physical characteristics
- tax identification numbers and tax history
- past travel itineraries
- law enforcement information
- “intelligence” information (the key word list used by the NSA)
- passport numbers
- frequent flier information
- other “identifiers” linked to DHS databases (including web history and information, critical speaking of the government)
Do you owe back taxes? Perhaps you didn’t register your vehicle this year? Where have you worked in the past? Where have you traveled to in the past? Interesting……… Perhaps you don’t NEED to go see your relatives, this time.
I have to wonder what risk I assume by sharing a plane with someone who didn’t re-up their car registration. What nefarious plots are we to assume this person is capable of exacting on the American people? Is there some correlation between those who don’t register their cars and mass murder or human trafficking? According to PoliceStateUSA.com:
“Nobody is explaining what criteria the agency will be looking for to indicate whether a passenger will be denied the right to travel.”
“Is owing taxes going to prevent people from flying? Actually, the NYT reports that the TSA will be reporting their findings to ‘a debt collection agency for the purpose of debt collection.’”
They also head down a similar path in their conclusions as I do. For now, the ridiculousness of these screenings would create a “demand” for a more streamline process. That process happens to already be in place, but not receiving the level of participation originally anticipated: The “Precheck” Program. It costs $85 for 5 years. They perform ALL the checks on you upfront, and that will smoothen the process of travel for those who travel often or cannot be bothered with the screening process each time they travel. The TSA stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars off this scam… I mean, program.
As if it weren’t bad enough that I need “papers” to drive, “papers” to leave the country, “papers” to enter the country, “papers” to fly domestically… now I need a background check to see if I qualify for air travel? Does air travel deserve the same amount of scrutiny as applying to be adoptive parents? Should I expect a visit from a Social Worker soon to see if I keep my house up to the standards of one deserving to fly?
Proliferation of Profiling
The matter of national security is often predicated on the existence of terrorists: both foreign and domestic. The foreign ones seem to get a nice rally cry in solidarity. The domestic ones, however, require some spin and propaganda to garner the same response. The image below captures, in a concise way, what constitutes a “home-grown terrorist” (a more detailed enumeration can be found here):
While I’m all for open borders and suffer no tribalistic sense of nationalism, nor am I a veteran or a racial supremist, the other items are not an inaccurate depiction of where my ideologies lie. Of course, by these standards, I would be keeping the company of such people as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and John Taylor of Caroline…
(The irony of calling Veterans home-grown terrorists is rather telling. It’s practically an admission of guilt on the part of the U.S. government!)
I get my information from alternative media sources, I find the federal and local laws to be immoral or otherwise unnecessary, I oppose all the wars (including the next one that has yet to be waged), and I hold that taxation is theft. While I don’t go as far as PETA on the animal rights or ELF on the environmental rights, I am rather ardent that all life should be treated with dignity and likewise believe that we should be good stewards of the earth and its resources.
To conclude from this list of convictions that I wish to terrorize people in some way — that I pose a physical threat to society, even tangentially — requires all who accept it as fact to totally suspend the very gift of reason that sets them apart from all other forms of life!
The liberties of every individual are at odds with an elite few who wish to suppress them. If we can vilify people based on ideology, then where is the challenge in convincing a majority that “those people’s” rights are not worth defending, or that they in fact are not deserving of those rights, or simply making the argument that rights were not meant for people who think that way?
These convictions already preclude any expectation of privacy, and in fact invite more scrutiny. These convictions are well on their way to precluding my right to travel freely. In the name of safety, my thoughts, housed in my mind, cannot share a plane with those who trust the mainstream media, love them some taxes, and are into some big-time yellow ribbon wearing patriotism! Who knows? A conversation could start, and I could talk them down from that crazy ass ledge. Then what?
I don’t need to argue the finer points of the slow and painful death of our liberties and natural rights. Chances are, if you’re subscribed to this, you are only too aware of the malignant and metastasizing nature of the tumor we call government. But think about North Korea: no one in… no one out. Are we heading in that direction? If your right to simply come and go as you please is now considered a threat to national security, and measures are already being put in place to abridge that in some way, then ask yourself how much more time do you have to get yourself or your wealth out of the country?
The desperation of the US government to get a stronger hold of individual action can be likened to that of tightly gripping sand: the more you squeeze your hand, the more the sand falls out. There are ways to be the sand that escapes the clenching fist. There are still options. Learn what they are, and what you can do to safeguard yourself and your assets from the iron fist by joining GWP Insiders today!
