After a lot of time on the phone, trying to stay calm while asking questions such as, “How can I prove to you that I don’t live in a candy factory?” someone took pity on me and cleared things up.
That story was the first thing I thought of when I read this article in the Washington Post: FBI Plans Initiative to Profile Terrorists. The proposed System to Assess Risk (STAR) “assigns risk scores to possible suspects based on a variety of information, similar to the way a credit bureau assigns a rating based on a consumer’s spending behavior and debt.”
If you end up in the terrorism equivalent of “living in a candy factory,” how easy will it be to get that cleared up?
Please share widely!
8 bags of fertilizer for your new lawn: $177
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5 gallons of diesel fuel for your lawnmower: $15.25
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1 two-day white van rental to help your son move: $220
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2 late fees from the BPL for “Terrorist” (John Updike) and “The Plot Against America” (Philip Roth): $5.00
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1 ACLU annual dues payment: $100
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1 online donation to muslimaid.org: $500
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Missing your daughter’s wedding because an FBI computer assigned you a high enough risk score to bump you onto the “No-Fly” List:
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Priceless.
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There are some things that the Constitution allows. For everything else… there’s the NSA.
So you won the golden ticket…