more on Fascinating Airline Security Story

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Kevin Bankston  @ EFF" <bankston () eff org>
Date: July 21, 2004 12:16:03 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story

Salon on "the hysterical skies":

"That her story concludes in such a painfully boring anticlimax ought 
to be
the very point, and in the final few pages she still has time for a
constructive moral, the clear lesson being not the potentials of global
terror, but the dangers of our own preconceptions and imagination. 
Instead,
she pulls a vile U-turn and chooses to bait us with racist innuendo and
fearmongering. Nothing happened, but something might have happened, and 
so
it serves us to remain frightened and draconian at all costs, 
furthering our
nation's pathetic embrace of maximum paranoia."

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2004/07/21/askthepilot95/index.html

 --
Kevin S. Bankston
Attorney, Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: (415) 436-9333 x126 / fx: (415) 436-9993
bankston () eff org / www.eff.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com
> [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com] On Behalf Of David Farber
> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 2:14 PM
> To: Ip
> Subject: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story
>
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Richard Perlman <perl () lucent com>
> Date: July 20, 2004 4:24:41 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net, Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story
>
> Dave:
>
> There is a disturbing undercurrent to this current discussion
> re: civil rights and airline passengers.  There appears to be
> an unstated
> association
> between "men of middle-eastern decent," the Moslem religion and
> terrorism.
>
> I have seen groups of white, anglo-saxon (probably protestant) people
> arrive
> on planes in ones, twos and small groups, congregate, go to the
> bathroom,
> talk in the aisle, etc.  Most of the time they were part of
> some team or performing group and, as a native born American,
> their behaviors seemed normal to me.  By the same token, in
> my travels around the world I have
> seen
> behaviors that were down-right odd, approaching the bizarre,
> that were completely normal in the cultural context of my
> location at the time.
>
> The point: that which we know, seems normal and safe, that
> which we do
> not
> know may seem confusing, even threatening, even while, in the
> context of another culture it would be perfectly normal.
>
> So, we could certainly start treating people of "apparent
> middle-eastern origin" differently, search them, etc.  Of
> course, we would then be completely open to an attack of what
> looked like a college basketball
> team.
>
> We must resist attempts to drag us into a state of jingoism and
> xenophobia
> to protect us from a threat that may well be of our own making.
>
> Richard
>
> On 7/20/04 12:58, "David Farber" <dave () farber net> wrote:
>
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > From: Hiawatha Bray <watha () monitortan com>
> > Date: July 20, 2004 3:01:12 PM EDT
> > To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
> > Subject: RE: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story
> >
> > Actually, some bloggers have checked into the Jacobsen
> "Terror in the
> > Skies" story and say that it appears to be substantially
> true.  They
> > also say that
> > the "creative writer" Annie Jacobsen is a different person.  A good
> > roundup
> > may be found at http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000207.htm.
> >
> > Hiawatha Bray
> > Boston Globe
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com]On
> > Behalf Of dave () farber net
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 2:22 PM
> > To: ip () v2 listbox com
> > Subject: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
> >
> > Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889
> >
> >
> >
> > ...... Forwarded Message .......
> > From: "Meeks, Brock (MSNBCi)" <Brock.Meeks () MSNBC COM>
> > To: dave () farber net
> > Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 11:11:59 -0700
> > Subj: RE: [IP] Fascinating Airline Security Story
> >
> >
> >
> > I thought this story was fascinating, too, when one of my sources
> > alerted me to it.  The story started to fall apart pretty
> quickly when
> > I dug into
> > it.
> >
> > The woman at the core of this story fancies herself as a "creative
> > writer" (just Google her) and indeed, it seems she got a
> bit creative
> > in her narrative.
> >
> > Like Bruce, I believe that this kind of "boots on the ground"
> > vigilance is what is needed on a larger basis.  The trouble, as I
> > found with this story,
> > are over-zealous, over imaginative or out right paranoid
> people that
> > are
> > unable, unwilling (or both) to step back and ask themselves some
> > logical
> > questions before pressing the panic button.
> >
> > --Brock
> >
> >
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