Welcome to nineteen-eighty-four...
Every day I read the news and every day I find our world becoming more and more like George Orwell's classic story of a distopia where mindless masses are controled by an intrusive and corupt government.
It's CCTV in in England one day. Today it's youth being hasseled in airports for sharing a name with a suposed criminal.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/29/nofly-kids.html
Two boys named Alistair Butt were stoped from boarding flights here in Canada and delayed in thier travels recently. Why? Because appearantly someone with that name is on a dreaded "no fly list". This is ridiculess. These no fly lists just had one more hassel to a traveling process already bogged down with too many hoops to jump through.
There are millions of people in Canada alone, it's a no-brainer that the names on that list are not unique to those it was intended to impeed. In this case the unitended victims were childen. Again it doesn't take a genious five minutes to realise that these are not the Alistair Butt you seek, yet they were detained none the less and delayed in a clear violation of so many freedoms protected in our constitution that I don't even know where to start. In fact an airline official had the nerve to even suggest that one familiy changes thier son's name. Another quote I find disturbing is this one. "We regret any inconvenience, but security must remain of paramount concern," from Air Canada. Since when have we as a free and democratic country sacraficed all else for the sake of 'security'. Our courts have repeated over and over again that freedom and NOT security has always been our paramount concern. Our very constitution is based on the ideal that it is better to let some criminals get away than to persecute the innocent. That is what separates a democracy from a facist state.
I find this disgusting, but these boys are lucky. What if young Alistair had been just a couple years older? What if he was traveling alone? What if the next person caught in this net off 1000 or so names isn't so innocent looking? Will he be delayed for more than a few hours? Will he be thrown into a cell and held overnight untill he can prove he is not infact this man with the same name as him he's never met? And how can one prove that? The airlines and government wont even tell us wich list Alistair Butt's name falls under, let alone how to get it off there or who these people are. They wont tell us what names are on the list, so that means that MY name could be on that list, and I wont know untill I go to fly and someone slaps a pair of cuffs on me for sharing a name with a suspected criminal. Chew on that next time you're waiting in line to dump the contense of your pockets into a tray and have your body scaned while some stranger goes through the contence of your bag.
It's CCTV in in England one day. Today it's youth being hasseled in airports for sharing a name with a suposed criminal.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/29/nofly-kids.html
Two boys named Alistair Butt were stoped from boarding flights here in Canada and delayed in thier travels recently. Why? Because appearantly someone with that name is on a dreaded "no fly list". This is ridiculess. These no fly lists just had one more hassel to a traveling process already bogged down with too many hoops to jump through.
There are millions of people in Canada alone, it's a no-brainer that the names on that list are not unique to those it was intended to impeed. In this case the unitended victims were childen. Again it doesn't take a genious five minutes to realise that these are not the Alistair Butt you seek, yet they were detained none the less and delayed in a clear violation of so many freedoms protected in our constitution that I don't even know where to start. In fact an airline official had the nerve to even suggest that one familiy changes thier son's name. Another quote I find disturbing is this one. "We regret any inconvenience, but security must remain of paramount concern," from Air Canada. Since when have we as a free and democratic country sacraficed all else for the sake of 'security'. Our courts have repeated over and over again that freedom and NOT security has always been our paramount concern. Our very constitution is based on the ideal that it is better to let some criminals get away than to persecute the innocent. That is what separates a democracy from a facist state.
I find this disgusting, but these boys are lucky. What if young Alistair had been just a couple years older? What if he was traveling alone? What if the next person caught in this net off 1000 or so names isn't so innocent looking? Will he be delayed for more than a few hours? Will he be thrown into a cell and held overnight untill he can prove he is not infact this man with the same name as him he's never met? And how can one prove that? The airlines and government wont even tell us wich list Alistair Butt's name falls under, let alone how to get it off there or who these people are. They wont tell us what names are on the list, so that means that MY name could be on that list, and I wont know untill I go to fly and someone slaps a pair of cuffs on me for sharing a name with a suspected criminal. Chew on that next time you're waiting in line to dump the contense of your pockets into a tray and have your body scaned while some stranger goes through the contence of your bag.