Will it get worse-i despise my government-rant

metrovelvet

I don't know if this belongs here or in PI, maybe it doesn't belong anywhere but I can't deal with it anymore. In the past 4 weeks several things have happened where I suspect this is a sign of the times and that things will only get worse.

1. My mother was arrested for refusing to get into an ambulence. [NYC]

2. I had my makeup confiscated at JFK airport for security reasons.

3. I had to submit every ****ing piece of ID I had to get my US passport renewed [so now I have none because the department of state took all of them]. What I have no are only my expired Irish passport and licence and they are not getting their hands on those thank you.

4. Because all my US ID was taken from me I cant open a bank account. [I aleady have one but I want another one. I cant get a drink in a bar. I can't go into buildings or offices, I can't do ****.

5. In LA my brother was pulled over by a stereotypical aryan nation looking highway policeman who then fabricated an offense of not wearing a seatbelt.

Is this just the beginning?

RedPlanet

Yes, i think it will.
I'm afraid to fly today, not because i fear an air accident or a terrorist attack, rather I'm afraid of being singled out for "special treatment" by some nutjob working Security.

Don't they disappear people in USA today?

metrovelvet

RedPlanet wrote:

Don't they disappear people in USA today?

Yes! Yes they do. And I've suspected it in my own neighborhood and no one believes me.

meepins

metrovelvet wrote:

I don't know if this belongs here or in PI, maybe it doesn't belong anywhere but I can't deal with it anymore. In the past 4 weeks several things have happened where I suspect this is a sign of the times and that things will only get worse.

1. My mother was arrested for refusing to get into an ambulence. [NYC]

2. I had my makeup confiscated at JFK airport for security reasons.

3. I had to submit every ****ing piece of ID I had to get my US passport renewed [so now I have none because the department of state took all of them]. What I have no are only my expired Irish passport and licence and they are not getting their hands on those thank you.

4. Because all my US ID was taken from me I cant open a bank account. [I aleady have one but I want another one. I cant get a drink in a bar. I can't go into buildings or offices, I can't do ****.

5. In LA my brother was pulled over by a stereotypical aryan nation looking highway policeman who then fabricated an offense of not wearing a seatbelt.

Is this just the beginning?

I think you know the answer to this...

Incrementalism

esskay

And the good news is, if the U.S. get their way all of the western world will end up like that :eek: I wonder if George Orwell could actuall see in to the future..........

metrovelvet

meepins wrote:

I think you know the answer to this...

Incrementalism

Yeah- thats what I'm afraid of. Oh not only did I have to submit all my ID, I had to bring my mother in to show all her ID and she had to sign an affadavit saying I was who I said I was and she's the immigrant! Additionally, she now has to submit her naturalisation papers to her landlord for lease renewal.

Give it five years you are going to see one angry angry population in the US.

And yeah Orwell is so pertinant today on so so many levels.

FlutterinBantam

Don't blame the US ...blame the mad mullahs who instigated all this crap for Chrissakes

toomevara

I blame the US government for its ridiculous over reaction to the threat and its propensity to declare 'war' on intangible concepts or inanimate objects i.e. the unwinnable, and well nigh perpetual, war on 'terror' and the equally laughable war on 'drugs'. You couldn't make it up..oh wait Orwell did. Just ten years ago you'd have been locked up or heavily medicated for forecasting the current reality. Remember when all we had to worry about was monicagate...truly we fiddled while Rome burned.....

juliuspret

metrovelvet wrote:

I don't know if this belongs here or in PI, maybe it doesn't belong anywhere but I can't deal with it anymore. In the past 4 weeks several things have happened where I suspect this is a sign of the times and that things will only get worse.

1. My mother was arrested for refusing to get into an ambulence. [NYC]

2. I had my makeup confiscated at JFK airport for security reasons.

3. I had to submit every ****ing piece of ID I had to get my US passport renewed [so now I have none because the department of state took all of them]. What I have no are only my expired Irish passport and licence and they are not getting their hands on those thank you.

4. Because all my US ID was taken from me I cant open a bank account. [I aleady have one but I want another one. I cant get a drink in a bar. I can't go into buildings or offices, I can't do ****.

5. In LA my brother was pulled over by a stereotypical aryan nation looking highway policeman who then fabricated an offense of not wearing a seatbelt.

Is this just the beginning?

Whats so "interesting" about you that you get this "special" treatment?

I realise that racial profileing is not PC....but come on!

metrovelvet

I dont understand your question.

That's the point, there is nothing special about me to get this special treatment, which makes me think its not so special, this has or is becoming ordinary.

Well one thing I know is that my earlier reply to this is gone probably due to something that happened when boards was down...

I'm not going to rewrite it...

Dirk Gently

Tristrame wrote:

Well one thing I know is that my earlier reply to this is gone ...

They disappeared your post :eek:

Seriously though, I don't envy you metrovelvet if you are not happy living in a surveillance state. More and more the U.S. has been moving towards a big brother type surveillance state and there are no indications that it is going to stop. Even if the republicans are voted out next election I can't see the democrats reversing all the new legislation that Bush brought in, perhaps they will stop bringing any more in though on top of what Bush already has.

All the data collected is too valuable to the government, not necessarily for anti-terrorist reasons, but increasingly for keeping tabs on citizens political activities and voting habits. Terrorist profiling hasn’t got much to do with it, they are collecting data on everyone and it has been really obvious for quite some time that they are moving in this direction. Be careful what books you get from your local library and what kind of web searches you do.

I know it sounds far fetched but you really are under the government spotlight. I wish it was all just a big conspiracy theory but unfortunately the surveillance state is a reality in the U.S. now.

Do you have any other first hand experience of this sort of thing, or do you know of other people who experienced it? I'm just wondering how overt and how much it is accepted by people in the states. Apart from your original post, would you or the average American notice any increased restrictions or was this incident the eye opener for you?

metrovelvet

You know clown bag - it's really hard to say. Because I live in a hot spot [NYC] target Im not sure if its like this in less targeted places. While I was in California I had no sense of this because its la la land over there - you really do feel like you are in a sunshine filled bubble with no sense of anything outside of it.

The only other things I have been hearing are about getting your handbag searched in the subways. But Im sure I'll be hearing more.

I know a friend of mine who works for NSA came back from vacation to find he had no job. Still waiting to hear the details on that.

No, I think that this is the beginning of taking it to a new level.

My mother being arrested for refusing hospital treatment really shocked me. I could see how they can make people "disappear" if they want to. It made me very nervous.

athena 2000

metrovelvet wrote:

I dont understand your question.

That's the point, there is nothing special about me to get this special treatment, which makes me think its not so special, this has or is becoming ordinary.

Considering that the US State department requires your old passport, the renewal application, a new photograph, and a copy of your birth certificate, I don't understand why they would want your other ID. Very strange.

I agree with Clownbag that all the data they're interested in obtaining has nothing to do with protection. Some of it has to do with money, some of it with surveillance. More security is "always good". More methods of developing security and implementing the same is "good". It's a huge industry that peddles the illusion of total control and safety. Pay cash for your books and periodicals and be glad that librarians in the USA don't want to cooperate with any type of summons of their patrons' reading lists occuring in secret or without a search warrant. Acts of going fishing for information by the US government have been legally challenged by the Americal Library Association (ALA) in combination with the affected libraries - the government backed off.

flogen

Isn't it bizarre how the Republican party, like most conservatives, used to stand for small government with minimal interference in the day-to-day (which was supposed to encourage business; less red-tape etc.) but at the moment the US Republicans are doing everything they can to interfere with everyone's lives at every opportunity.
I was watching The Power of Knightmares recently and saw the Rep. Convention from 1992 (when Bush was going for re-election) and a guy was booed of stage for saying he wanted to keep Government out of your bedroom and your wallets (which I think was a standard selling point of the Republicans until that time).

Moriarty

metrovelvet wrote:

The only other things I have been hearing are about getting your handbag searched in the subways. But Im sure I'll be hearing more.

Do you disagree with this?

metrovelvet wrote:

I know a friend of mine who works for NSA came back from vacation to find he had no job. Still waiting to hear the details on that.

Not that uncommon a situtation in sensitive lines of work unfortunately. It happens (and has happened) all the time, for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of lines of work.

metrovelvet wrote:

My mother being arrested for refusing hospital treatment really shocked me. I could see how they can make people "disappear" if they want to. It made me very nervous.

I call shenangians. What did the officer arrest her for specifically? As far as I'm aware, you're legally allowed refuse medical treatment in New York as long as you're lucid so that could not have been what she was arrested for..


Also, flogen, that would be mainly what the 'neo' in 'neo-conservative' is for. Conservative agenda, but the acceptance - even requirement - of "big government".

Hobbes

metrovelvet wrote:

1. My mother was arrested for refusing to get into an ambulence. [NYC]

Any more details as to exactly why?

3. I had to submit every ****ing piece of ID I had to get my US passport renewed

This sounds very suspect too, as to renew a US passport (that was issued in the past 15 years) all you need is the previous passport and two photos and if your name changed then the marriage cert.

http://travel.state.gov/passport/get/renew/renew_833.html

4. Because all my US ID was taken from me I cant open a bank account. [I aleady have one but I want another one. I cant get a drink in a bar. I can't go into buildings or offices, I can't do ****.

If you have an SS number and a license it is enough to open a bank account.

metrovelvet

Hobbes wrote:

Any more details as to exactly why?
This sounds very suspect too, as to renew a US passport (that was issued in the past 15 years) all you need is the previous passport and two photos and if your name changed then the marriage cert.

http://travel.state.gov/passport/get/renew/renew_833.html

That would be because it was damaged so its unlegible.

Hobbes wrote:

If you have an SS number and a license it is enough to open a bank account.

You need a US licence. I dont have a US licence. I have an Irish one. You need not only a SS number, you need to show your SS card. All of your ID has to be US Govt officiated. So my Irish ID wouldnt be viable.

Athena - they dont want a COPY of your birthcert - they want the ORIGINAL and they take it from you!

*I forgot to add that I spoke to the bank manager about this and he told me that if they accept anything less than two US govt backed IDs that the bank gets fined and the person who accepted them will also get personally fined.

Moriarty

As an aside, the requirements for new US passports are very similar to new Irish passports. Both need proof of citizenship and proof of ID; your original birth cert and seperate proof of naturalisation if applicable. I doubt the requirements have changed too much over the years either, as that would generally be the basic information any country would need to grant someone a passport.

sovtek

Moriarty wrote:

I call shenangians. What did the officer arrest her for specifically? As far as I'm aware, you're legally allowed refuse medical treatment in New York as long as you're lucid so that could not have been what she was arrested for..

I believe this could happen though. Cops will arrest you for anything in America. The idea is that your lawyer will get you off if they are wrong or you just pay the fine and shut up.
Incidentally you can refuse treatment even if your snot slinging drunk.

Hobbes

I forgot to add that I spoke to the bank manager about this and he told me that if they accept anything less than two US govt backed IDs that the bank gets fined and the person who accepted them will also get personally fined.

However how you determine those two IDs is the key.

For example. Guy working with me in the US opened his bank account with his Visa in his passport and from a letter from the government which had his address on it (as well as bringing other proof of address).

Likewise I opened mine with my Passport/Visa and my SS card which is a proof of identity (scary as it seems).

athena 2000

metrovelvet wrote:

You need a US licence. I dont have a US licence. I have an Irish one. You need not only a SS number, you need to show your SS card. All of your ID has to be US Govt officiated. So my Irish ID wouldnt be viable.

You're in the middle of an inconvenient loop that will get solved with some time. The things you want or must take care of require legal ID and everyone can't have it at the same time. If you don't have your SS card, then get one re-issued after you get your new passport.

Athena - they dont want a COPY of your birthcert - they want the ORIGINAL and they take it from you!

I stand corrected, BUT they give it back to you. They do need some verifiable proof of ID - that's not unreasonable, even if it IS inconvenient at the moment.

*I forgot to add that I spoke to the bank manager about this and he told me that if they accept anything less than two US govt backed IDs that the bank gets fined and the person who accepted them will also get personally fined.

The bank man is talking about the citizenship verification process - a form must be filled out using at least two verifiable government-issued IDs when you get a new job so they can confirm that you're a US citizen. He is uninformed, or spouting BS to deflect you. It has nothing to do with opening a new bank account.

Maybe since you already have a bank account, you can open the new account at the same bank - they already have your ID on file. I'd talk to another more informed bank employee.