SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
CNN and a a lot of other outlets are reporting that JPL engineer Sidd Bikkannavar, an American-born citizen, was detained at the border when returning from racing solar powered cars overseas.
The border guards demanded he turn over his government-issued NASA phone and its PIN and held him in their detention area.
Bikkannavar also was interviewed by The Verge:
"It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn't even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there," he says. "You can say, 'Okay well maybe it's about making sure I'm not a dangerous person,' but they have all the information to verify that."
Bikkannavar says he's still unsure why he was singled out for the electronic search. He says he understands that his name is foreign — its roots go back to southern India. He didn't think it would be a trigger for extra scrutiny, he says. "Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this. Maybe you could say it was one huge coincidence that this thing happens right at the travel ban."
Land of the free? Home of the brave?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:35PM
Your post is important because everyone needs to wake up and understand this dystopian nightmare is where we already are. The NSA spies on you in your home via your computers and phones every moment of every day. The government puts up license plate scanners and cameras with facial recognition in more and more places you have to traverse every day. Big data mines your information and profiles you every day. Social networks map out your friends, what your favorite soda is, etc, every day. The federal government assassinates American citizens by drone, today. I have seen the TSA VIPR [wikipedia.org] thugs waving machine guns in the NYC subway. I have seen American citizens penned into "free speech zones."
This is not a misty, 50 years into a future populated by an Arnold Schwarzenegger character, but today. The only difference is people are still coasting along in a bubble of nostalgia for the way things used to be, and which they fervently wish was still true but know in their hearts it's already slipped away. It's going to get worse. It won't stop until people make it stop.
Washington DC delenda est.