Flight 007 and our Civil Liberties

[Bill Stewart]

At 12:11 PM 11/18/1997 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>The FBI has just completed a long press conference in which it reported its
>"no terrorist activity suspected" conclusions. Having watched most of it,
>and having seen the CIA animation shown at the press conference, I agree
>with their conclusions.
...
>However, now that the Flight 007 explosion has been ruled a non-terrorist
>event, will we get our freedoms back?

Flight 800, actually.....
KAL007 was the Korean plane shot down by Russians.

>So, these were the two big events which stimulated the FAA, under higher
>orders, to require mandatory ID of all travelling passengers. And more
>multimillion dollar sniffers to be installed in airports.

Is that multi-million-dollar explosive-sniffers,
or have they developed dollar-sniffers to support the War On Cash :-)

One of the parts that's irked me most about this (as distinct from
outrage at the loss of civil liberties) is that the thugs won't even
come out and say "The Government Requires You To Have Papers To Travel",
since they can't do that, at least without PR problems.
Instead they bully the airlines into requiring more obedience to 
avoid arbitrary $10,000 FUD penalties than a direct law could require.
And the airline employees keep telling me "it's always been this way"
a couple of weeks after each change of the rules.

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts at ix.netcom.com
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