Alpheca is a gunblogger who is also a car salesman. Recently he had a guy turned down when trying to get a loan--Not because he was a poor credit risk, but because he was on the Terrorist watch list.
This needs oversight--If someone is too dangerous to be trusted with a car loan, he's too dangerous to be in the US.
What pisses me off about this is that the reaction to terrorism brings us closer to the kind of government that they want us to have.
I'm fine with eliminating techicalities for real terrorists--Forget to read their Miranda rights, if they are still proven to be a terrorist, they still get the consequences. What needs to stop is the ability of the government to delcare someone a 'potential terrorist' with all sorts of attached rights violations, without any duty to prove it. Without limits, the list essentially covers all of us--If you don't properly bow to the most corrupt government official with the ability to add to the list, what prevents him from putting you on the watch list out of nothing but spite?
It's security kabuki. These people are so dangerous that they can't be allowed to fly, or buy a car, but they're not dangerous enough to arrest.
ReplyDeleteI think in this case, there's no downside to a nameless bureaucrat who leaves him on the list "just in case", (after all, he's just following orders...) but a risk to the same bureaucrat if he lets a terrorist do something he could have stopped. "Terrorist buys a new car and drives to site of attack!!!"
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