MetaFilter posts tagged with homelandsecurity and 911

Using Big Laws to Catch Little Terrorists

digaman — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:44:27 -0800

The terrorists in New Jersey have been captured. They're, uhm, like 15 years old. A fine example of how anti-terror laws like the Patriot Act can be subject to mission creep. (The "terrorists" at the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice in Pittsburgh seem to be still at large.)

GWOT in the Stacks

digaman — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 09:41:15 -0800

[TotalitarianismFilter] Don't be asking your college librarian for a copy of that Little Red Book to do a class assignment, or your parents might get a visit from the good folks at the Department of Homeland Security. More evidence that the Bush administration cannot restrain itself when granted enhanced surveillance powers.

Terror Alert: Yellow!

digaman — Wed, 11 May 2005 20:49:53 -0800

Be afraid: The national threat-alert level today is yellow or "elevated," with "significant risk of terrorist attacks," says the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, the alert level has been elevated since December of 2003, when it was raised from orange. During the election season, the Fox News network flashed the terror alert level in their "crawl" as if there was breaking news -- the sort of thing that prompted some liberal wags to ridicule the entire system. Now former DHS secretary Tom Ridge says that the Bush administration was "really aggressive" about raising the threat-alert level during his tenure, even when the agency felt that the intelligence didn't warrant it.

The Southern Danger

The Jesse Helms — Tue, 29 Apr 2003 12:08:44 -0800

The Government is acting quickly. Quickly, to stem the deluge of Mexican terrorists.

mattpfeff — Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:47:18 -0800

From a piece in the NYTimes today, Home Front Is Minefield for President: "The lesson we're learning," one administration official said today, "is that you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it. But don't mess up at the post office."

Leave it to the White House to come away with exactly the wrong interpretation. But the facts are there, too -- most Americans are more concerned about the (relatively slight) risk of getting Anthrax than the rather significant risk that, if we screw up in Afghanistan, we might lose the current coalition against terrorism, Bin Laden, and any hope for "homeland security" for a long time to come....