Terrorism and Privacy

Yesterday (this was started yesterday...) in London they discovered a major terrorist plot. The intent of the terrorists (according to the authorities) was to blow up about a dozen planes en route to the US simultaneously. This is a very tangible threat and probably the most significant threat the US has faced since 9/11. However, the threat might not be as serious to us as it was to the Brits. In reality, the threat of damage from planes taking off from London is much less than if they had taken off from Boston, as the fuel load will be far lighter and the likelyhood of a building strike is far less. The most likely scenario for the attack would have been for the planes to have blown up over the Atlantic, killing 2000+ people. That would have been devastating, but how directly would that affect us here in the US?


The #1 issue I have with making "The War on Terror" a priority is that we ignore the fact that terrorism is a very small problem in our day-to-day lives. Simply by focusing on the terrorists we're giving them what they want: attention. I've spoken before about how the deaths related to Terrorism are so minute when compared to many other things: AIDS, Malaria, Car Accidents, Starvation, Gun Violence, Tobacco and Alcohol to name a few. If we spent the billions we spend on thwarting 3,000-5,000 deaths a year (which would be sad and all, but not exactly that big of an impact when you think about it) on feeding the poor or on the fight against AIDS we'd be saving a lot more lives. It's not that I think terrorism isn't a problem, it is. I know firsthand what a terrorist event looks like because I've seen two. I've also had my life saved by a snowstorm that kept me from being in Atocha Station on March 11th, 2004 at 8:02am for the train to Barcelona. But I also know that the impact of terrorists on San Francisco or Houston has been nil.


What annoys me about the "homeland security" obsession is that the ones fighting for this most are from middle America. Not exactly a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorists. Who the hell would bother attacking South Dakota? Yet, South Dakotans list fighting terrorism as one of their top priorities as if Osama Bin Laden actually knows where the Mitchell Corn Palace is. If you spend all of your time working on your physique without paying attention to your nutrition, you'll still keel over from a heart attack. It's the same for protecting our borders. If we concentrate so much on our external enemies, we'll neglect the Timothy McVeighs out there. In fact, the department of Homeland Security listed Indiana as the state with the most terrorist targets with over 8,000! California, by comparison, was somewhere near 3,000...and that is why Indianapolis inexplicably gets more funding from DHS than San Diego. They named, among 8,000 other non-targets, a petting zoo and truck stops as some of the major targets in Indiana. I'm sure Muqtada Al-Sadr has been planning his attack on the Gary, Indiana rest stop for years...


So what will happen next? London is already making its way towards 1984-style big brotherism. They have cameras basically in every major public area and will only increase surveillance as a result of this event. On MSNBC just now, I saw the headline "Your privacy or your life" as if our lives will be in danger if we continue have privacy. Sad thing to me is that many people actually believe this to be true. The reason why the PATRIOT Act and all of the NSA spying programs are still allowed to exist is simply because congress believes that privacy isn't a right and the people aren't outraged enough to fight back. I know it's a stretch to compare us to the Weimar Republic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_republic ) , but the Weimar was a fine democracy that collapsed and became the Nazi regime within 14 years. The people of Germany ELECTED Hitler and continued to support the government till they eroded every one of the people's civil rights. They used their failing economy as a way to shift public opinion far to the right and to create scapegoats out of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and the handicapped and we all know what happened next.


Americans are arrogant. They think that we're above everyone else and that we would never commit atrocities like the Germans (or Spanish, or Italians, French, Russians, Chinese, Rwandan...I could go on for days...) but we forget about the concentration camps we created in WWII for the Japanese. Sure, WWII was 60 years ago, but not much has really changed. We're demonizing Arabs while ignoring our own problems. How many attacks have occurred in the US that were committed by Arabs from within our borders? I can't think of any (9/11 was done by foreign terrorists), but I can certainly think of many white-Christian Americans who've murdered 10-500 people. But I bet that keeping a parent of a 7 year old from bringing apple juice on the plane will keep us all safe. After all, there have been a whole 4 American planes attacked by terrorists since 2000, so obviously we're having an epidemic of terrorism within our borders. The saddest thing to me is that we're talking it up as if it's our victory against the terrorists...it's not! It's the Brit's victory!


Finally, I propose that we all just travel naked now. If we're not allowed to bring liquids, electronics or anything else on the plane, why not just have everyone in the airport walk around completely nude? That would really speed up the security checkpoints, would make us all feel safer if we could be sure that nobody was hiding anything under their clothes and, as an added bonus, would serve as an incentive for Americans to get into shape when travelling anywhere. After all, who'd want to walk around naked in an airport looking like crap? Either that, or we can spend 3 hours in the airport to take that 45 minute flight to San Francisco...