More Proof that the US is a Police State

[Krogothwolf]

Let's take the example of Sarah Palin. She is a sexually desirable woman to many people. Now, let's say that 1,000 people went on to her Facebook page and said "I would just ruin her/destroy her", or words to that effect. Do you actually want law enforcement wasting their time and resources investigating all these comments? Do you support banning people from the country for saying something innocuous like this? Even if the comments weren't intended to be evidence of sexual arousal, it would still give the same result: law enforcement investigating pointless comments.

I'm sorry, what? I mean Sarah Palin isn't that attractive to begin with but that's beside the point. You just pointed out what used to be high profile government official and said you would "ruin her/destroy her". Regardless of the fact you are saying it in a sexual nature, what you just said is in poor taste concerning the individual involved. It'd be the same as saying that about an attrative girl who has received death threats in the past, if the police do see that they're not going to take it as a joke. Here's the think, your posting something on something that's public and be taken as a death threat, you think it should be treated as a laughing matter because it's meant sexually? I don't think so. It'd be the same thing as walking into an airport and going "damn, that shit is the bomb." security isn't going to give a rats ass if you meant it in a good way, as soon as you said bomb you just singled yourself out.

If people want to be morons and post idiotic things they think is funny on a public forum then so be it, they should face the consequences of being an idiot. If they use the defense of "well, it's slang in my country" then they should stick with saying their slang in their country. It's no different then a police officer hearing a suspicious comment while walking on the street and detaining the person and investigating it.

It doesn't make it a police state, it just means when you put things in a public place you best be smart about what you are posting.

[† Mute point]

MP, in a debate/argument like this, you have to give reasons for why you say certain things. I say the keyword search doesn't work and I gave my reasons (that it would swamp you with far too my false positives). You on the other hand just said that it works fine. How? Why? Can you expand on that please?

Let's take the example of Sarah Palin. She is a sexually desirable woman to many people. Now, let's say that 1,000 people went on to her Facebook page and said "I would just ruin her/destroy her", or words to that effect. Do you actually want law enforcement wasting their time and resources investigating all these comments? Do you support banning people from the country for saying something innocuous like this? Even if the comments weren't intended to be evidence of sexual arousal, it would still give the same result: law enforcement investigating pointless comments.

You want a reason why the keyword search works just fine? It stopped this guy didn't it? Face the facts, if this were a "police state" as you put it, he would have been arrested and held as a potential terrorist, not simply told to gtfo. I'd rather see them follow a thousand false leads than ignore all of them and miss the important one that leads to another disaster like 9/11.

Sarah Palin.. Sexually desirable? You have strange taste my friend. Regardless.. Those words, taken literally, or in a sexual context, it doesn't matter. Neither are appropriate. And both should be investigated fully.

[RikuoAmero]

You want a reason why the keyword search works just fine? It stopped this guy didn't it? Face the facts, if this were a "police state" as you put it, he would have been arrested and held as a potential terrorist, not simply told to gtfo. I'd rather see them follow a thousand false leads than ignore all of them and miss the important one that leads to another disaster like 9/11.

Sarah Palin.. Sexually desirable? You have strange taste my friend. Regardless.. Those words, taken literally, or in a sexual context, it doesn't matter. Neither are appropriate. And both should be investigated fully.

It works fine, because they linked a non-terrorist related tweet to someone who wasn't a terrorist? The only way you can say with a straight face that a keyword search works fine would be if it catches an actual terrorist!

I have a magic rock that I keep in my pocket, that protects me from terrorist attacks. How do I know its working fine? Because I haven't been killed in an attack.

I call it a police state because of the fact law enforcement is watching benign comments in more or less real-time and focusing on ones that are clearly not a threat. It's not like the UK guy actually stated what he was going to do. Did he say "Bomb"? Did he say "I'm gonna blow up Times Square"? No, he said the quite vague statement of "Destroy America". I do admit that my argument of a police state is weakened by the fact he wasn't arrested. which is one thing I find quite odd about this case.

No, I am not arguing that law enforcement ignore everything. I am arguing that the way they are doing things, they are being swamped with results from their keyword search. By "listening" for "Destroy" and "America" in the same tweet, they are going to get so many millions of results. How do you narrow that list down to ones that are more than likely a threat? What made this guy's tweet stand out?

For the record, I personally don't find Sara Palin attractive. I mentioned her by name merely because she's a female US politician whom many others did find attractive, which made her perfect to use as an example.

[† Mute point]

Vague statements are just as, if not more likely to be legit threats. Think about it. If you were going to blow up a target, what would give you the best chance of success but still get the threat out before it happened.. "I'm going to blow up X at Y time." Or "I'm gonna blow it up!" The second is vague, and could (by your standards) be construed as a statement of intent to have fun, yet can also still suggest violence.

[† L4ugh]

1) How was he an idiot? .... Common slang here in Ireland is to say of someone sexually desirable "I would just ruin her/destroy her [in the act of sexual intercourse]", to emphasise how aroused you are. Now, imagine if I were to go see an attractive US politician's Facebook page and I typed just that in, in no way intending to mean I would murder her? Do I actually expect US law enforcement to understand colloquialisms from all over the world? No, but I expect them to use some common sense.

Blah blah blah

He’s an idiot because he didn’t have enough functioning grey matter to figure out that a decade after 9/11 the US gov would have the ability to detect key words like “destroy America”. You talk over and over again about the DHS’s need for common sense, but what about Van Bryan’s need for common sense.

Typing that you are going to ruin/destroy an attractive US politician shouldn’t be enough to get a foreigner in trouble. However, it would get you noticed because it’s sexual harassment. Typing that when you have a trip to the US already planned is an entirely different matter. That is when your own common sense should kick in to keep you out of trouble, his didn’t. There are a lot of different ways to express yourself. Just don’t use the stupid ones and you should be fine. I would recommend a different phrase like, “I’d so tap that ass”. You'll still be a pervert, but you'll only have to worry about being treated as a pervert when you arrive on US soil.

I would imagine the DHS has all kinds of bots that are programmed to troll every inch of the internet. The “destroy America” tweet was most likely strike one. When the bot searched his other tweets and found the Marilyn Monroe one, it became strike two. Another bot probably hunted down the identity of the twitter accounts owner, and then proceeded to find out everything it could about him. When it found that he also happened to be in the possession of an airline ticket to America, it became strike three. I don’t know for a fact that the gov has systems like this, but seeing they have high tech stealth drones that can practically fly themselves. I’m sure they could russell up some AI powered bots to troll the internet. The key you insist on skipping over is that he obviously had already bought his ticket. That’s the difference between him being a fail comedian and a total asshat.

The DHS just doesn’t scan for terrorist in the sense that normal people would picture either. They also look for people like the one that shot Gabby Giffords. The DHS’s job is to protect Americans from all threats, not just the ones the terrorist pose. Don’t think that being typed into a public social media network makes any difference either. Crazy people, will at times, announce the attack they are about to commit as a way of taunting the authorities.

I’m also sure the pair was less then cooperative, so they may have sent them home just for being dicks. That is totally in the realm of possibilities when dealing with the TSA Nazis.

"They use it as evidence of intent in criminal cases if someone overheard them say it, and in this case, the whole internet "heard" him say it." Yes, a single piece of evidence would be enough for a criminal trial...wait, what? You're seriously saying that if I were to go out in the street right now, say to a random stranger, I'm going to shoot the president and defecate on his corpse, then that person reports me to the police, that that alone would be enough to convict me?

Ahahahahaha, they didn’t charge/convict him of anything. The UK however, did charge and convict Paul Chambers. I think you’re bitching about the wrong country on that one.

Yes, the DHS should do their jobs and counter threats. The problem here is they're going about it completely the wrong way. They're taking ONE statement that one guy made and blow it all out of proportions. They haven't reported that the guy had a history of anti-US tweets (that at least would, in my opinion, be something to go on, when investigating).

They don’t have to have a terrorist or other threat reason to not allow him admission either. I imagine they thought someone from the UK who isn’t smart enough to figure out that Americans don’t know or even care to know UK slang might be a huge danger to himself. Probably thought about the disaster that would occur when he walks into a crowded LA club and screams out, “I’m gonna destroy this place”. Like all the ameri-haters love to say, “We have guns, and we like to use them”. It could also be the DHS just didn’t want to risk him causing trouble since he made it quite clear he was only here to party his ass off. Is it hard to believe that the DHS wouldn’t want some drunken tourist causing trouble? If he wanted to party, he should of waited two months and flew to Cancun. They welcome that kind of crap there.

You can beat this till you’re blue in the face, but it isn’t going to change anything. He was plenty old enough to know better. He just chose not to think. You can blame America all you want, but it isn’t our job or our govs job to know the meaning of your slang. Seeing that Paul Chambers was convicted and fined for his stupidity, then fined again when he lost the appeal, Van Bryan was more than lucky to just be sent home. I highly doubt his tweets were the only reason he was denied admission. He just isn’t going to share those reasons. He’s too busy enjoying the 15mins of fame the ameri-hating propaganda machine is giving him. The DHS isn’t talking about it because they probably know that most Americans won’t give a shit either way. I don’t even remember a single news outlet covering this story.

http://publicintelligence.net/do-you-like-online-privacy-you-may-be-a-terrorist/

Did you bother to read the last paragraph of that report, or did you just read the parts that pertain to your argument? It is well known, or at least should be, that terrorists are using the same kinds of encryptions and programs that pirates use. They use them to hide their communications from the US scanners. The report doesn’t say they‘re all terrorists, just says that people using this technology could possibly be a terrorist. It’s like cops informing their fellow officers to be on the lookout for a blue van. Does it mean all blue vans are a fleeing child pedophile? No it doesn’t, it just means that somewhere in the mix there is at least one. If gives them something to look for to make finding the guilty parties easier.