Pay too much and you could raise the alarm

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Gibsie
Up to $10,000 a month, ~£60,000 a year? Drinks are on you next poly meet PH!

Because of bonus...it's not my regular income

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


There is a reason that "Godwin's Law" came about.

What are you babbling on about now?

[Sirotnikov]

Dear god, PH.
I used to think you're a nice guy, but you came out a c*nt in this thread.


And on topic:

The reason the government is following 'suspicious leads' is that it tries to find terrorist / criminal activity before it actually starts. That's called prevention.

Obviously you have to draw a line somewhere.

However, following money transactions has proved a successfull strategy and it does help fight terrorism. Assuming you do not know all terrorist networks, you can also try and figure out patterns of terrorist like activities, and follow them.

Yes, a person suddenly cashing in a huge sum of money, is often a possible lead on a terrorist activity, and the govt. can check that lead to see if it is or isn't a terrorist. And it is true that in most cases, it is not. But that doesn't mean that one shouldn't follow leads.

Half the time, police work is about following leads on innocent people. That's the catch - you don't know for sure if someone is guilty or innocent, until you've followed the lead and checked. So there's a choise, between following leads, to discover 9 out of 10 people innocent; and not following a lead, which can result in not catching a terrorist.

So why is it the boundry has suddenly moved so much in favor of following every small lead, and making every second person a suspect? Because missing a track on a terrorist is much more dangerous than missing a track on a regular criminal.

There's a different risk and a different price to pay, for not preventing a terrorist plot. A regular criminal, if not stopped in advance, could rob a store, or a house. He could kill some people. A terrorist, could infect a city with chemical weapons, or cause the collapse of huge towers.

Such a greater risk makes the security agencies increase its efforts to track much more leads - knowing that 99% will turn out false.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

winston you really have low expectations on your own government actions! You'd be a perfect citizen in commie times I mean that you get checked for 6k dollars deposit on your own credit card ?!? Well the US has really gone far in "checking the citizens" quite unbelievable I'd say, just wandering how much taxpayers dollars does this cost. And at the end as if the would be terrorists will not find about this and if they need to finance something they will send multiple amounts below the limit and that's it.

Bigger the government = bigger the waste of money.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

as for fighting the terrorist...

it would do wanders if

1. US did not start a war in Iraq
2. Israel recognized Palestinian state and worked to get it up on the map and in functional state both economically and politically
3. US+Europe got out of ME and got onto nuclear/alternative energy bandwagon...

It is political actions like these that will prevent terrorism and not "spying the citizenry".

The whole point is that if you are fighting against them the agencies should use "normal" methods, ie infiltrations, and not screen the population at large, the population screens will most likely reveal nothing and capture innocent people, that is all. What a collosal waste of money, and loss of liberty. It is relatively easy for small, focused (agile) groups to find out about such inflexible and huge measures like population screening in order to avoid them.

[Dauphin]

Even if there was no such thing as terrorism that payment would probably have been stopped anyway. Such prevention is not all about the terrorist, in fact, its hardly anything to do with the terrorists in the grand scheme of things.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison


Why? Ignorance is one of the worst problems of a society, where they let a government take liberty after liberty...it's a very slippery slope. Before you know it, you could be a police state...ignoring it and pretending it will all be OK is tantamount to a German being indifferent to the Nazi regime at the time.

There's a difference between pointing out someone's ignorance and simply retorting to name-calling like calling someone a would-be Nazi sympathizer just because you can't form an effective counter-argument.

[Winston]

Plus having a different opinion is not necessarily the same as being ignorant.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Winston
Plus having a different opinion is not necessarily the same as being ignorant.

Really, I am still honestly surprised in how far you're willing to let your government intrude on your privacy, unless some of what you have posted is exaggeration.

[Winston]

I just don't see anything in the article even remotely proportional to the hell he's raising about it.

I've had my credit card blocked twice, both times while on vacation in the U.S., for having hit the charge limit of ~$3,500 within a 30-day period. Big deal. A nuisance, sure, (well, in the first instance a bit more than a nuisance actually), but a call to the bank opened up the card again and all was fine. I didn't go on national news with it, and I don't see why this guy feels the need to. Or why all of you rush to his side like lemmings for that matter. Oh wait, I think maybe I do. It has to do with the dreaded Homeland Security Dep., and - OMG! - perhaps even an unpopular administration. Entirely beside the point of course, but hardly surprising.

Bottom line, the guy suffered no harm from this. I still maintain it sounds like it's the best thing that ever happened to him..

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Winston

I've had my credit card blocked twice, both times while on vacation in the U.S., for having hit the charge limit of ~$3,500 within a 30-day period.

It was the credit card company that took that action and not any government, correct??

[Winston]

The end result was the same. In most cases, the bank will probably tend to be more cautious than "the government".

If what he claims is true, that it was Homeland Security who froze the deposit transfer, I honestly don't see what the problem is here as opposed to one's bank setting charge limits on the cards they issue.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Winston
The end result was the same. In most cases, the bank will probably tend to be more cautious than "the government".

There's a difference with a private credit card comapny taking appropriate action to look after their own money and profits, and a government overstepping its bounds over an obvious false alarm.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
as for fighting the terrorist...

it would do wanders if

1. US did not start a war in Iraq
2. Israel recognized Palestinian state and worked to get it up on the map and in functional state both economically and politically
3. US+Europe got out of ME and got onto nuclear/alternative energy bandwagon...

It is political actions like these that will prevent terrorism and not "spying the citizenry".

You're both right and wrong.

You're right because all the things you mentioned do affect terrorism.

And you're wrong because following your suggestions wouldn't really stop or prevent terrorism.

Terrorism is always politically motivated. It is usually there to get some political goal achieved. Obviously, if we fulfil terrorists demands, it would to an extent, lessen their enthusiasm against our countries.

However, what this fails to acknowledge is that terrorism is a phenomena that is not tied to a certain political motivation, but rather to a cultural group that sees it as a potencial and 'fair' weapon. What you list are all supposed 'reasons' for terrorism. They are infact more of excuses or immediate reasons. The 'deeper' reason, is that certain cultures see terrorism as legitimate. (ps - by culture - i mean exactly that. cultural subgroups. not necessarily related to ethnicity or religion).

As such, if we follow your steps we would no doubt remove some of the current excuses, but the underlying reason - a sound belief in the legitimacy of terrorist methods, will remains.

Thus - your suggestions would not, eventually 'fight' terrorism. It would only reduce it for a period of time, until various groups will find new and different reasons to terrorize their targets.

The whole point is that if you are fighting against them the agencies should use "normal" methods, ie infiltrations, and not screen the population at large, the population screens will most likely reveal nothing and capture innocent people, that is all. What a collosal waste of money, and loss of liberty. It is relatively easy for small, focused (agile) groups to find out about such inflexible and huge measures like population screening in order to avoid them.

That's a big bunch of generalizations.

There are different means for capturing criminals/terrorists/children rapists.

One of those is going after known suspect groups, which is good, but it is lacking, since the whole thing with current terrorist groups is that they often work in various secretive networks, which are hard to find.

To compensate for that, you can employ, in parallel a system that is meant to find irregular behavious patterns in things such as movement, money transactions, expenses and what not. This obviously gives you results which are 99% not tied with any wrongdoing. But 1% of that, can be worth it. To find out, you cross reference the data, and hopefully, reduce the 99% of false positives.

This method is very expensive in terms of work, therefore, it is usually left to computer rules. The positives obviously, undergo a check by an expert.

If you hadn't noticed, no one had declared Bob is a terrorist. His transaction simply took more time to go through the 'safety net'.

[Winston]

Originally posted by MrFun
There's a difference with a private credit card comapny taking appropriate action to look after their own money and profits, and a government overstepping its bounds over an obvious false alarm.

If it was a "false alarm", it can't have been very obvious. I have no problem with government agencies monitoring large transfers of funds to ensure financial security and public safety. Not even when it's under Pres. Bush' leadership..

Now the limits for the money amounts being monitored can always be debated. Problem is, we're not in the business of assessing these things. But if it came to a point where a significant number of people would actually be bothered by it, of course it would be subject to scrutiny and possible change. But that is not the case. Note that this dude only ever became aware of it because he made a point of tracking his account transactions on a day to day basis. Otherwise, he would never have noticed, much less been "bothered" by it.

Now, some may say that makes it even worse, but let's keep our heads level here. It's a discrete check being performed for security purposes, it's not like there's some evil-minded information gathering operation going on against individual citizens who deposit funds to their account.

This seems like a reasonable measure, taken for public safety reasons, democratically instituted, democratically controlled, discretely executed, confidentially kept, and of no inconvenience to anybody - unless of course they absolutely insist on being inconvenienced, like this guy. Presumably in order to gain one's 15 minutes of fame, or maybe for some other obscure reason which beats the hell out of me.