Our tax dollars at work
After I read “Homeland Security tracks travelers’ meals” and discovered that only fifteen public comments had been made, I decided to do my civic duty.
After half an hour I gave up on figuring out how to do my civic duty, and leveraged Adam for some help. He’s my go-to guy for this kind of thing.
He has the kind of readership that provides answers in as little as forty earth minutes, making him look pretty good in the process, but none of that was the point to my story. This was all just background.
The best part is that the Federal Register entry describing how to comment publicly on this farce of a proposal contains the wrong docket number. If you search the web site for the docket number they published, you get bupkis. Presumably if you send a paper letter referencing that nonexistent number, it goes in the circular file.
Only fifteen comments, you say? No kidding. Imagine that. It almost seems like they don’t care about the opinions of the people they serve rule.
If you’re interested in doing your civic duty — and I dearly hope that you will — visit regulations.gov and search for docket DHS-2006-0060. It’ll take you five minutes to write about how compiling huge databases about law-abiding citizens does nothing to prevent terrorism or terrorist immigrants who aren’t law-abiding, or about the lack of due process related to this probably-erroneous data, or about the privacy and identity theft implications. Or any number of other concerns.
Go ahead, be creative. You can even write anonymously.
parrhesia.com » Blog Archive » Homeland Security’s Automated Targeting System said,
December 3, 2006 @ 05:29
[...] It turns out that the docket number published in the notice is incorrect, which makes it tough for people to read others’ comments about the system, or to comment on it. The correct docket number is DHS-2006-0060, as discovered by phik - comments can be read or added at http://www.regulations.gov. [...]
George said,
January 3, 2007 @ 10:49
This reminds me of an ad currently posted in the Newark subway. I can’t remember the exact wording (will take a photo if I see it again this Jan.!), but basically it lists things you can do to help Homeland Security while riding the subway. Among the obvious “watch for suspicious activity” stuff, there is a clever re-purposing of a previous “no food or drink” policy:
“Don’t bring food or drink on the subway or platform, as crumbs and other residue may be interpreted as dangerous chemicals and thus distract security personnel from real threats”.
Something like that. Let me just add that I hate the PATH’s and NJTransit’s no-food-and-drink policy; it would save me a great deal of time and stress to be able to eat my breakfast on my 7:30 am train. Still, even if you crave a clean subway, this little ad seems way over the top.