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Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.
The previously undisclosed program, called "Quiet Skies," specifically targets travelers who "are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base," according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.
The internal bulletin describes the program's goal as thwarting threats to commercial aircraft "posed by unknown or partially known terrorists," and gives the agency broad discretion over which air travelers to focus on and how closely they are tracked.
[...] But some air marshals, in interviews and internal communications shared with the Globe, say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat — a businesswoman who happened to have traveled through a Mideast hot spot, in one case; a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, in another; a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third.
Since this initiative launched in March, dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe.
"What we are doing [in Quiet Skies] is troubling and raising some serious questions as to the validity and legality of what we are doing and how we are doing it," one air marshal wrote in a text message to colleagues.
Source: http://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies/?p1=HP_SpecialTSA [Ed Note: Not available for all browser modes]
Also at CNN, Fortune, The Verge, and The Hill.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:01AM (1 child)
Why do you assume it's not the economy who is doing it and the welfare isn't compensating for a problem that the free and independent market has created because it creates an efficient pseudo-slavery model like it always does? Ah right, religion. The free market is our lord and savior and Adam Smith is his one and true son that came to save us from the red devil.
Welfare applies to everyone, and only some population groups exhibit the behavior you describe. Therefore it is not welfare that is the root cause, if it did then you would see a more uniform distribution among populations who receive welfare. It might compound an existing maladaptive social behavior among some social groups, but the problem is already there to begin with.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:39PM
I'm glad that you can see the possibility of negative feedback loops in all of this. And, I'll maintain that single parent homes are one of the contributory feedbacks in the loop. No, of course not all kids from single parent homes are bad. And, of course not all kids from two parent homes are good. But - I wonder - has anyone ever done a survey to see how many of each are incarcerated? Hmmmmm - - -
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf [bjs.gov]
Please click the link, there are more interesting bits of information on that page, like racial and ethnic breakdowns of prison population. But those are the highlights you can't deny - single parent homes, and abusive parents really put the hurt on people who may or may not be prone to break the law anyway. Bottom line? Kids need a mom, and kids need a dad. The prison population pretty much proves that. Someone might make a case that if a kid can't have both a mother and a father, then maybe they need Mom more than they need Dad - but I've seen no evidence of that, whether empiric evidence, or psychobabble evidence.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.