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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gottfried who wrote (9194)	10/8/2001 11:15:28 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Herr Doktor, I understand your concern at the idea of a TIC and having your travel whereabouts known, but I think dying of anthrax at the hands of a middle eastern intern with a strange sense of humor is immeasurably worse. Actually, your travel whereabouts are already known, as Larry the plagiarist Ellison noted in his WSJ article (he still hasn't called me!). You buy your airline ticket with a credit card, show photo id at the airport, have your picture taken by airport security cameras, have your name and address registered on the passenger list, get photo'd as you leave the destination airport, get your rental car with your credit card and driver's licensen, pay for your hotel room with a credit card (perhaps already reserved with one, c'est necessaire, hein?), etc. etc. All the TIC would do is centralize this information, away from VISA/Mastercard, along with legal residency status (citizen, green card, legal visa visitor, visa violator) and face and fingerprint for the authorities to cross check. As the system goes now, we're trying to fight all kinds of criminal activity (terrorism, drugs, mafia, etc.) with our hands tied behind our backs. People are always looking backward, trying to fight the false analogy. Perhaps having a TIC reminds you of the Stasi, it reminds Yuri of the KGB, it reminds Jose Manuel of Franco's El Gris or Guardia Civil, but this is America and I'm a native born American. It may one day remind me of a necessary step so my children and grandchildren don't have to breathe anthrax delivered to the school cafeteria. Liberals are afraid engaging this war in Afghanistan is going to be Vietnam Redux, but I'm afraid if we don't see it clearly enough, it will be Czechoslovakia and Poland (and France and Holland and Belgium) Redux, and we will look back and see that we could have saved the world with only casualties in the thousands, instead of casualties in the tens or hundreds of millions. Just my thoughts, :^-) Kb