FBI @ Ginne Spring...

[SCUBAgator]

Heard on the news tonight in G'ville that the FBI was investigating an old lead about a suspicious person trying to get certified back in Sept. Apparently he was very interested in cave diving, wanting to get certified in it right away, i believe. The good people at Ginnie sent all his info to the FBI back in Sept, but they didn't think much of it until the FBI's recent bulletin about SCUBA diving terrorism. The repotr also mentioned that the FBA is supposedly beginning to put together a list of all the certified SCUBA divers in the U.S. for some kind of master list of all divers... Interesting...

 

[JamesK]

I had a very long post written, but deleted it. The FBI is probably already monitoring this board, and my ranting about the Imperial Federal Goverment of the Socialist States of America probably would not have gone over too well with them. LOL.

A list would be nothing more then ridiculous. It is funny how the same people who would complain racial profiling, and stand strong in the fact that we need to be PC (blah!), will probably support profiling in this sort. Just like they stand by when private pilots are grounded. Ok, I better stop now, or this is going to turn back into the long post I deleted.

 

[JakeUSAF]

As a retired member of the US Military if this list can make this Country a safer place, go for it. After Sept 11 we must continue to give just a little. If you have nothing to hide why would you care about a list.

 

[JamesK]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

 

[DennisW]

This country was and still is based on certain basic rights for the people. However, the act of keeping these rights is neither free, nor is it safe. We cannot expect to always be safe. There are people in the world that want to kill us just because we have these basic rights. We have to understand that and realize that unfortunately, sometimes they will succeed. We cannot, however, give up any of those rights to our government or another government to keep ourselves safe. Ben Franklin was right. So were the rest of the founding fathers.

As for the list of SCUBA divers and any other lists the FBI may keep, it's not the lists that bothers me, it's what they may do with them. Look at what happened with Hoover and McCarthy. Terrible abuses of power that were against the law. I can only hope that the people will not allow the same things to happen in this situation.

 

[Bob3]

We Americans have earned and maintained our liberties with our blood for almost 300 years.
Serving up our Constitutional Rights on a platter will be handing the terrorists a win.

 

[JamesK]

Originally posted by JakeUSAF
If you have nothing to hide why would you care about a list.

Going along that line:

If you have nothing to hide why do you care about illegal search and seizure.

If you have nothing to hide, why do you care about Carnivore.

If you have nothing to hide, why do you care about the "know your Customer" bill.

 

[Divesherpa]

I could not agree with James K more on this one.
We lost a couple of buildings and a few people. It's sad, but we lost a lot more in Vietnam. We lose more from Big Tobacco. More people starve every year than died in the accident.

I vote no on giving away freedoms of any kind because someone wanted to drive some planes into some buildings. How did Japan feel when we bombed the SH*$ out of their civilians? Didn't the US racially profile people of Asian descent (sp) around the same time?

The whole business about racial profiling and giving up liberties pisses me off.

 

[Burke]

First off, this whole thing has been discussed in detail in another post. Forgetting that for a moment, I will go ahead and give my 2 cents.
As anyone reading my sig. line might be able to guess, I am not big on the government trying to take our freedom. However I don't have any real objection with them finding out who is a scuba diver. We don't really know what they are doing with that information but I would assume it is something along the lines of compiling a list of recently certified divers and then cross checking it with a list of, for example, people claiming to be Saudi Arabian, and in the country on expired student visas, just for one possible example. Before anyone gets pissed of by my opinion on this topic you might want to go find the other post and read it first, just for some more info.
On the topic of racial profiling, that REALLY PISSES ME OFF, but not for the reason that everyone else seems to get pissed off. I seem to be one of the few people that sees this attitude of "we are being attacked by young middle eastern men, but we can't watch out for young middle eastern men because that is racial profiling" as a completely asinine attitude. How anyone think that security people need to be searching little old ladies and balding white men just as much as they need to search 25 year old men with names like Akmed Abdul is completely beyond me. How about this, if the KKK started a full on terrorist war against the African American community by suicide bombing black churches and people set up security check points at the front door to all churches, and then these security guys started searching only WHITE people, and they didn't even search any black people at all, well wouldn't that be RACIAL PROFILING, guess what, it would, and I would support it. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!

Man, I wonder if there is anyone I didn't just piss off.

 

[Divesherpa]

Why would anyone be pissed at you, Burke?
Part of the beauty of freedom and lack of racial profiling is that we are ALL entitled to our opinion. even South Beach, Californians who scuba dive and quote dead people.
Liberty is an all or nothing deal. You can't select who has what liberties. This means fair treatment under the law and fair protection from the powers that be.

Read Big James' quote from Uncle Ben again.

And again.

And again.