more non-news from the department of insecurity

[topaz]

Stolen from fj:

Watch out when doing your homework; you too could be charged with Photographing While Black.

Lose your resident alien paperwork, spend seven months in detention. Part I and Part II. (I'd like to find more coverage of this issue to find out exactly what the backstory is, but this is all I can find so far.)

I like bookteacher's suggestion quite a lot: if you're white, the next time you see agents in a public place searching or checking IDs of a non-white person, demand to join the party. "Excuse me, officer? Are you here to perform random searches? Here, please search my bag. No, no, I insist that you search my bag!"

(At least it's more productive than my other instinct, which was to say "no" to anyone demanding to search my bags on the T and thus become a test case for the ACLU when I got arrested.)

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

Photographing While Black

It can't help that there aren't a whole lot of African-American people in Seattle -- not compared to most other large American cities, that's for darn sure. I swear, I would go days without seeing an African-American person there, unless it was a driver who'd gotten stopped on the freeway. I think the Seattle P.D. tends to get a little jumpy when they see non-white people.

[d3l1r1um.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely horrified, in an unsurprised sort of way.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

That kind of sums up my reaction to almost everything following 9/11.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

I'm among the first to admit that non-whites ARE likeliest to recieve this kind of treatment out of all proportion to their numbers, and do quite like the idea of saying "here! inspect my bags too!" However, I do find it (slightly) amusing that Stephe got HIS baggage inspected the first three times we flew after the World Trade Center+planes incidents. (for those of you who don't know him, Stephe is about as white as it's possible to be while still retaining some semblance of normal coloration.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

It's the beard, man. Beards are suspicious.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

You might want to be really careful about interfering with a cop in the performance of their duty. Getting in a cop's face is rarely a good idea, and you could easily end up getting charged and doing some time if the officer is so inclined.

With regard to losing resident alien paperwork, it's not like they can take your word for that, and the INS (or whatever they're callign themselves today) is now obligated to hold people. They don't want a repeat of what happened in the early 1990s, when they caught Ramzi Yousef (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_Yousef), the mastermind of the first WTC bombing, illegally entering the US on a false Iraqi passport and let him go with an admonition that he'd better show up at his hearing in a few months.

Incidents like this are not confined to the US, either. They happen in London (http://argument.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=535288), for example. Doesn't make them right, but security theater seems to be popular and common.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I like option B: test case.

Remember: if you're under arrest, you have the right not to say anything and the right to a lawyer. If you're not under arrest you can walk away. If they don't let you walk away then you're under arrest.

- Very unhappy and outraged in Virginia, but not very surprised.