I guess I’ll have to stop filing posts on misguided security issues under “USA” – time for me to globalize it.
In TheRegister, Andrew Orlowski (I don’t usually like his articles at all) from San Francisco writes:
If you think that the police’s profiling of terror suspects is something that only happens to other people - think again. Today’s panicky Plod doesn’t seem to be very discriminating at all. And you could be next. ¹
And he points at the article by David Mery published in the GuardianUnlimited. There’s a copy on David’s website, too:
I check for messages on my phone, then take out a printout of an article about Wikipedia from inside jacket pocket and begin to read. The train enters the station. Police officers, all uniformed men, appear on the platform and surround me. They ask me to take off my rucksack. They must immediately notice my French accent, still strong after living more than 12 years in London. They handcuff me – hands behind my back (the handcuffs have a rigid bar between the two cuffs – i.e. not like the ones often shown on TV). They take my rucksack out of my sight. They explain that this is for my safety, and that they are acting under the authority of the Terrorism Act. ² ³
The next time somebody comes up to me and tries to persuade me that some security measure X is just a trade-off we need to make, I think I’m going to enter a shouting match.
If you read his story, you’ll notice that he asked the police to call his girlfriend before searching the flat so that she would not be scared, which they did not, and so she was, I guess. I have had policement at my door and in my appartment in the early morning hours as well, and it does *not* increase your sense of security.
#Security