The US government, US media, and the American populace seemed to have created a bizarre little symbiosis for themselves. It now goes like this: An incident occurs, real or "could be real, really soon", manufactured by the media. Two people on 34th and 8th indicate on newscamera that they are scared and don't feel secure. Media reports on how people are not secure. Government leaders see media report on how "people are scared" and perform security-enhancing activites, including overseas. Overeseas, or at home, "an incident occurs"... And so on. Soon I'll install a security camera in th' crapper to make sure no terrorists get me while I'm on the can. -TD

From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) To: camera_lumina@hotmail.com, cypherpunks@minder.net Subject: Re: Fatherland Security agents above the law? Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 18:10:24 +1200

"Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> writes:

...

"The Fatherland Security troops are publicly embaressed and showing their brown shirts."

Well, I'm not convinced you guys have detected the right intended message here.

Basically, the real message may be: "it's impossible to protect Americans through local policies alone".

I thought it was "The news media will do anything for a story, even if they have to manufacture it themselves". Given that the US is currently obsessed with terrorism, creating a sensationalist story related to it is a sure-fire winner, even if the more accurate wording of "ABC ships expensive yacht ballast to US" would get less attention.

(Come to think of it, I'm sure I could raise at least a moderate stink over here by letting it slip that some of the America's Cup yachts that were here earlier in the year may have had (shock, horror!) dangerous radioactive uranium in their keels, in violation of the government's anti-nuclear stance).

Peter.

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