Entries Tagged "overreactions"

Page 9 of 15

Random Stupidity in the Name of Terrorism

An air traveler in Canada is first told by an airline employee that it is “illegal” to say certain words, and then that if she raised a fuss she would be falsely accused:

When we boarded a little later, I asked for the ninny’s name. He refused and hissed, “If you make a scene, I’ll call the pilot and you won’t be flying tonight.”

More on the British war on photographers.

A British man is forced to give up his hobby of photographing buses due to harrassment.

The credit controller, from Gloucester, says he now suffers “appalling” abuse from the authorities and public who doubt his motives.

The bus-spotter, officially known as an omnibologist, said: “Since the 9/11 attacks there has been a crackdown.

“The past two years have absolutely been the worst. I have had the most appalling abuse from the public, drivers and police over-exercising their authority.

Mr McCaffery, who is married, added: “We just want to enjoy our hobby without harassment.

“I can deal with the fact someone might think I’m a terrorist, but when they start saying you’re a paedophile it really hurts.”

Is everything illegal and damaging now terrorism?

Israeli authorities are investigating why a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem rammed his bulldozer into several cars and buses Wednesday, killing three people before Israeli police shot him dead.

Israeli authorities are labeling it a terrorist attack, although they say there is no clear motive and the man—a construction worker—acted alone. It is not known if he had links to any terrorist organization.

New Jersey public school locked down after someone saw a ninja:

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Police tell the Asbury Park Press the man was late to a costume-themed day at a nearby middle school.

And finally, not terrorism-related but a fine newspaper headline: “Giraffe helps camels, zebras escape from circus“:

Amsterdam police say 15 camels, two zebras and an undetermined number of llamas and potbellied swine briefly escaped from a traveling Dutch circus after a giraffe kicked a hole in their cage.

Are llamas really that hard to count?

EDITED TO ADD (7/2): Errors fixed.

Posted on July 3, 2008 at 12:57 PM • View Comments

Filming in DC's Union Station

This video is priceless. A Washington, DC, news crew goes down to Union Station to interview someone from Amtrak about people who have been stopped from taking pictures, even though there’s no policy against it. As the Amtrak spokesperson is explaining that there is no policy against photography, a guard comes up and tries to stop them from filming, saying it is against the rules.

EDITED TO ADD (6/7): More.

Posted on June 3, 2008 at 1:57 PM • View Comments

The War on T-Shirts

London Heathrow security stopped someone from boarding a plane for wearing a Transformers T-shirt showing a cartoon gun.

It’s easy to laugh and move on. How stupid can these people be, we wonder. But there’s a more important security lesson here. Security screening is hard, and every false threat the screeners watch out for make it more likely that real threats slip through. At a party the other night, someone told me about the time he accidentally brought a large knife through airport security. The screener pulled his bag aside, searched it, and pulled out a water bottle.

It’s not just the water bottles and the t-shirts and the gun jewelry—this kind of thing actually makes us all less safe.

Posted on June 2, 2008 at 2:27 PM • View Comments

Tourists, Not Terrorists

Remember the two men who were exhibiting “unusual behavior” on a Washington-state ferry last summer?

The agency’s Seattle field office, along with the Washington Joint Analytical Center, was still seeking the men’s identities and whereabouts Wednesday as ferry service was temporarily shutdown when a suspicious package was found in a ferry bathroom and taken away by authorities.

“We had various independent reports from passengers and ferry employees that these two guys were engaging in what they described as unusual activities on the ferries,” Special Agent Robbie Burroughs, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington state, told FOXNews.com.

“They felt that these guys were showing an undue interest in the boat itself, in the layout, the workers and the terminal, and it caused them enough concern that they contacted law enforcement about it,” she told FOXNews.com.

The two were photographed by a ferry employee about a month ago, and those photographs were distributed to ferry employees three weeks ago by local law enforcement.

Turns out they were tourists, not terrorists:

Turns out the men, both citizens of a European Union nation, were captivated by the car-carrying capacity of local ferries.

“Where these gentlemen live, they don’t have vehicle ferries. They were fascinated that a ferry could hold that many cars and wanted to show folks back home,” FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.

[…]

Two weeks ago, the men appeared at a U.S. Embassy and identified themselves as the men in the photo released to the media in August, a couple of weeks after they took a ferry from Seattle to Vashon Island during a business trip, Burroughs said.

They came forward because they worried they’d be arrested if they traveled to the U.S. and so provided proof of their identities, employment and the reason for their July trip to Seattle, according to the FBI.

Posted on May 8, 2008 at 7:32 AM • View Comments

The Continuing Slide Towards Thoughtcrime

A suggestion from the UK of putting primary-school children in a DNA database if they “exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life.”

Pugh’s call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled ‘Make me a Criminal’, said: ‘You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.’ However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a ‘negative’ way.

Thankfully, the article contains some reasonable reactions:

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any plan to target youngsters. ‘Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science fiction novels,’ she said. ‘The British public is highly respectful of the police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our innocent kids is a step too far.’

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers’ Association, said most teachers and parents would find the suggestion an ‘anathema’ and potentially very dangerous. ‘It could be seen as a step towards a police state,’ he said. ‘It is condemning them at a very young age to something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.’

Posted on March 18, 2008 at 2:12 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.