4 ms·

Of course, it's all meaningless if you're just going to let people on your watch lists waltz on to your planes.

jrockway 17y ago
What value do watch lists have? If someone is a danger to society, then charge and convict them of a crime. If they are not guilty of any crime, though, it makes no sense to punish them. The 9/11 hijackers had valid passports, visas, and were not on any watchlists.
- pmorici 17y ago
  There weren't "watch lists" prior to 9/11, The FBI was alerted to shady behavior by a number of them though which seems to be exactly what happened in this case. Do you similarly think sex offender lists are a joke?
  - philwelch 17y ago
    I think a 16 year old kid caught fucking his 15 year old girlfriend, or a drunk college kid caught pissing on the sidewalk, deserves a punishment that's a little less severe than lifelong registration and shame.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      But it was sex. SEX!!!!
  - NikkiA 17y ago
    There absolutely were 'watch-lists' prior to 9/11 - in fact, I recall when I entered the US in 1995 watching as the passport control guy checked me against the watchlist - what there wasn't, was a 'no-fly list'.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Do you similarly think sex offender lists are a joke? Until we have murder offender lists, traffic violation list, and credit-card-bill-underpayment lists, yes. Why only shame sex offenders when we can exile everyone for one mistake? I think the next step is to require sex offenders to wear little stars on their clothing when they go outside. That way they can be recognized and treated appropriately. I hear that worked pretty well for getting rid of Germany's Undesirables.
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    We know sex offender lists are a joke -- because you can get on them for pissing in public, having sex with a fellow teenager, developing photos of you/your wife breastfeeding your baby, and, most ridiculously, for distributing naked pictures of your underaged self. And, we know the no-fly lists are also a joke. Unless the Penis Bomber also burned off all the memories of the "2-year-old Toddler Not Allowed To Fly" and "Senator Not Allowed To Fly" etc new stories from the past 6-7 years. It's sheer populism, pandering to the worst impulses of everyone. Bad bad bad -- not to mention ineffective.
- coffeemug 17y ago
  It's not binary. You may have enough evidence to suspect someone may be planning a crime, but not enough to go to court, or enough to go to court but not enough to get a conviction with any degree of certainty. In this case it might make sense to perform a more detailed security check. It makes sense for a minor inconvenience at the airport to require a different standard of proof from sending the person to prison. Of course with TSA watch lists "your name sounds fishy" appears to be a sufficient standard of proof, but that's a problem with the implementation, not with the concept itself.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    You may have enough evidence to suspect someone may be planning a crime, but not enough to go to court, or enough to go to court but not enough to get a conviction with any degree of certainty. So the solution is to create a secondary judicial system with no oversight so that anyone the government doesn't like can be punished for something they haven't actually done? Sign me up! It makes sense for a minor inconvenience at the airport to require a different standard of proof from sending the person to prison. Why wouldn't someone on the watchlist not just pay someone not on the watchlist to carry the bomb through security then? For enough money, this would be very easy to do. (It's easier if you ask, "can you smuggle these drugs in for me", though, instead of "can you help me murder 300 people".) Everyone criminal commits their first crime. For someone, that's going to be blowing up a plane. A watchlist does not handle this case.
    - waterlesscloud 17y ago
      The simple, clear, undeniable fact (not theory of what could happen, but fact) is that in this case, placing extra attention on this person who was on the watch list would have kept him and his bomb off an airplane full of people.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        His leader would have gotten someone else. This guy on Flight 253 was not the planner of the attack, he was just one of many people that wanted his 69 virgins or whatever.

What value do watch lists have? If someone is a danger to society, then charge and convict them of a crime. If they are not guilty of any crime, though, it makes no sense to punish them. The 9/11 hijackers had valid passports, visas, and were not on any watchlists.

pmorici 17y ago
There weren't "watch lists" prior to 9/11, The FBI was alerted to shady behavior by a number of them though which seems to be exactly what happened in this case. Do you similarly think sex offender lists are a joke?
- philwelch 17y ago
  I think a 16 year old kid caught fucking his 15 year old girlfriend, or a drunk college kid caught pissing on the sidewalk, deserves a punishment that's a little less severe than lifelong registration and shame.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    But it was sex. SEX!!!!
- NikkiA 17y ago
  There absolutely were 'watch-lists' prior to 9/11 - in fact, I recall when I entered the US in 1995 watching as the passport control guy checked me against the watchlist - what there wasn't, was a 'no-fly list'.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Do you similarly think sex offender lists are a joke? Until we have murder offender lists, traffic violation list, and credit-card-bill-underpayment lists, yes. Why only shame sex offenders when we can exile everyone for one mistake? I think the next step is to require sex offenders to wear little stars on their clothing when they go outside. That way they can be recognized and treated appropriately. I hear that worked pretty well for getting rid of Germany's Undesirables.
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  We know sex offender lists are a joke -- because you can get on them for pissing in public, having sex with a fellow teenager, developing photos of you/your wife breastfeeding your baby, and, most ridiculously, for distributing naked pictures of your underaged self. And, we know the no-fly lists are also a joke. Unless the Penis Bomber also burned off all the memories of the "2-year-old Toddler Not Allowed To Fly" and "Senator Not Allowed To Fly" etc new stories from the past 6-7 years. It's sheer populism, pandering to the worst impulses of everyone. Bad bad bad -- not to mention ineffective.
coffeemug 17y ago
It's not binary. You may have enough evidence to suspect someone may be planning a crime, but not enough to go to court, or enough to go to court but not enough to get a conviction with any degree of certainty. In this case it might make sense to perform a more detailed security check. It makes sense for a minor inconvenience at the airport to require a different standard of proof from sending the person to prison. Of course with TSA watch lists "your name sounds fishy" appears to be a sufficient standard of proof, but that's a problem with the implementation, not with the concept itself.
- jrockway 17y ago
  You may have enough evidence to suspect someone may be planning a crime, but not enough to go to court, or enough to go to court but not enough to get a conviction with any degree of certainty. So the solution is to create a secondary judicial system with no oversight so that anyone the government doesn't like can be punished for something they haven't actually done? Sign me up! It makes sense for a minor inconvenience at the airport to require a different standard of proof from sending the person to prison. Why wouldn't someone on the watchlist not just pay someone not on the watchlist to carry the bomb through security then? For enough money, this would be very easy to do. (It's easier if you ask, "can you smuggle these drugs in for me", though, instead of "can you help me murder 300 people".) Everyone criminal commits their first crime. For someone, that's going to be blowing up a plane. A watchlist does not handle this case.
  - waterlesscloud 17y ago
    The simple, clear, undeniable fact (not theory of what could happen, but fact) is that in this case, placing extra attention on this person who was on the watch list would have kept him and his bomb off an airplane full of people.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      His leader would have gotten someone else. This guy on Flight 253 was not the planner of the attack, he was just one of many people that wanted his 69 virgins or whatever.