A much bigger threat than the threat

The government at the people, against the people, and on top of the people continues to spy on us without telling us. The color-coded morons at Homeland Security have been keeping records and assigning scores to everyone crossing U.S. borders.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

The government calls the system critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

Think about that the next time you request falafel in seat 27D.

In a privacy impact assessment posted on its Web site this week, Homeland Security said ATS is aimed at discovering high-risk individuals who "may not have been previously associated with a law enforcement action or otherwise be noted as a person of concern to law enforcement."

Ahern said ATS does this by applying rules derived from the government's knowledge of terrorists and criminals to the passenger's travel records.

Right--the government's infallible knowledge of terrorists and criminals.

The Homeland Security privacy impact statement added that "an individual might not be aware of the reason additional scrutiny is taking place, nor should he or she" because that might compromise the ATS' methods.

Ah, yes, Amendment 10.5 to the U.S. Constitution: No person shall have the right to question or compromise ATS methods, no matter the risk to their own life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, and no matter what it might say in Amendments 4 and 6 above.

Combine this with the Torture Bill's repeal of habeus corpus (whose constitutional protection was apparently erased by another invisible-ink amendment), and some day you could be locked up forever based on information in an Orwellian database you'll never even be allowed to see, much less question. And it could be simply because a small group of people similar to you commit, or are accused of committing, some atrocity.

Try as they might, the founding parents must have known that their best work could be effectively repealed once power fell into the hands of the types of people ruining this country today (including many Dumbocrats like Debbie Stabenow).