Orwell rolling in his grave: The newest iteration of the intrusive, massive database cross-referencing passenger screening system has a new tagline: "

I don’t even have the energy to write much about this much-maligned system that was CAPPS and then CAPPS 2 and now SecureFlight. It is essentially a passenger screening system (like the flawed one I wrote about here and here) that has cost $100M to date and that is being relaunched with a new, friendly tagline to appease the anxiety of all of those nice people being screened. The new tagline is:

Obviously they are not talking about preserving the freedom to travel anonymously in your own country without travel papers.

When are you, my American friends, going to rise up and say enough is enough, throw Bush out of office, and restore some semblance of normality to your police state?

Some further items of note in this article: “it will not scan for wanted violent criminals, a function that senior homeland security officials added last summer over the objections of the program’s designers. ” Remember how the original plan was to scan for terrorists? Well, now that the system is in place, shouldn’t we make use of that money and scan for criminals? How about dead-beat Dads? Or runaway kids? Or how about anybody we damn well please?

Another frustrating thing is this statement:

In other words, if we’re going to shove this intrusive system down their throats, let’s do it after they’re stupid enough to elect us again.

I’m baffled, and bloody happy that I live in a country that thinks that fiscal prudence, healthcare and education are the three biggest priorities, not massive over-spending, fear-mongering, and spying on its citizens.