MBTA transit police to be first in the nation to spy on Americans.
“See something, say something” — there’s an app for that.
MA- The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) is launching what it said will be the nation’s first smartphone app used by a transit police force to let riders easily and instantly report suspicious activity.
The new iPhone app — a Droid app will be available in July — will offer fast two-way communication, letting riders send photos and reports to police, while dispatchers can write back for more details.
“We realized that with the abundance of cell-phone cameras, it’s almost impossible to enforce that policy of asking people for identification,” T police Chief Paul MacMillan said. “We now want people to take pictures and report anything suspicious to us.”
On the MBTA'a website their slogan is "Instincts tell you to do something? Do something."
The MBTA Transit Police App is available free at http://mbta.com/transitpolice/. It also offers T service and police alerts, such as missing persons or BELO — “Be on the Lookout” reports.
The MBTA announced that it has repealed all rules against taking pictures on its property.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220521t_riders_can_report_suspicious_activity_with_new_phone_app/
http://boston.com/metrodesk/2012/05/21/mbta-announces-smartphone-app-that-allows-people-report-photograph-suspicious-activity/UOKiHOOikUlCsi4F3tFeeP/story.html?p1=News_links
http://mbta.com/transitpolice/see_something_say_something/
http://www.dhs.gov/files/reportincidents/see-something-say-something.shtm
If the war on terror is over, why should we spy on Americans?
"The war on terror is over," one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. "Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism." (In a Tuesday night update to this post, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor clarified that while the "war on terror" concept has been dropped, "we absolutely have never said our war against al Qaida is over. We are prosecuting that war at an unprecedented pace."
http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/can-obama-safely-embrace-islam.php
The Eternal "War on Terror"
By Michael Brenner Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
The “war on terror’’ began as fraud; now it is farce. Conceived in deceit, warped at birth and raised behind a veil of duplicity – the ‘war’s” mature years are marked by actions of mindless reiteration. The penalty we - and the rest of the world – have paid for this feckless exercise in vengeance and grandiosity has been enormous. The payment has been in lives lost or crippled, in trillions of dollars, in prestige and authority dissipated, and in a latent menace to our well-being that the ‘war” supposedly aimed at eliminating. This endless crusade has achieved a state of perpetual motion generated by a confluence of dogmatic ideology, intellectual obstinacy, cynical political calculation and the self-serving exertions of powerful financial and professional interests. Today, the enterprise – or at least 90% of it – is divorced from reality.
Americans’ collective image of the threat that justifies the “war on terror” project is of hordes of fanatical Muslims scaling the outer walls of the Republic with turbans, scimitars between their teeth and terrifying cries of “Allah Akbar” on their lips. They are legion. Heroic Americans clad in the colors of the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security man the battlements – targeting the jihadis with arrows, stones and hot pitch. Some join the uniformed military to sally forth in punitive raids to smite the enemy before he can muster his forces for the next, inevitable onslaught.
All this is sheer nonsense inspired more by scary TV shows and films than deliberate thinking. Yes, there once was a serious terrorist organization that had the United States in its sights. Al-Qaeda succeeded a few times; once on American soil with horrific effect that traumatized the country. That success resulted in large part from the incompetence of the CIA and FBI (especially the latter) and a national leadership that was asleep at the switch. The military action to root the leadership out of their Afghan base was necessary (although 9/11 was organized from Hamburg). The follow-up intelligence and police operations to degrade the remnants of al-Qaeda, too, were a logical and appropriate response to the danger. Circa 2002 – 2003, no significant threat to the United States still existed. Over the ensuing decade, the sole attempts at terror in the U.S. have been amateurish forays that were ill planned and on a very small scale. If all we have to worry about is some kid with a Rube Goldberg explosive device concealed in has underpants every ten years or so, we should thank our lucky stars. Instead, our leaders and the terrorism industry work overtime to persuade us that the people who couldn’t get their hands on fire retardant shorts are still out there scheming to plant a nuclear fizzle bomb in Michael Bloomberg’s City Hall.
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/is-the-war-on-terror-over.php