Core Dump » government

Posted on Jan 25 2008

Filed Under (Politics, Society) by Keithius

This is what happens when everyone is afraid of everyone else:

His mission was to photograph each of the nation’s 50 state capitol buildings and dispatch a postcard from each city, using postage stamps from a childhood collection. Each postcard would be mailed to the next state on his journey, where he would pick it up, continuing until he had gone full circle back to Indiana.

But there was a problem. On a flight from Sacramento, Calif., to Honolulu, Mr. Fazel described his project to a fellow passenger. He later discovered that she had reported him as suspicious — perhaps to the pilot or the Transportation Security Administration — and taken a picture of him as he slept.

How paranoid must we be for a passenger on an airplane to go to the trouble of taking a picture of someone while they sleep so as to make it easier to report him to the authorities?! Would you do this? Could you ever see yourself doing this? I know I couldn’t.

Once we start reporting one another for “suspicious activity,” we’re doomed. Neighbors who don’t get along will be reporting each other for fictions and imagined crimes, and the system will be abused for personal gain. After all, if you can just call a number and say “so-and-so acted weird, I suspect he’s a terrorist” and have that person arrested - I mean, c’mon people! We’re one step away from a loud knock in the middle of the night and lots of scary looking men in black jackets land here!

And if I hear one person say “we need to be like this, people are out to kill us, it’s a strange new world after 9/11,” I will say BULL. There is a fine line between healthy suspicion and rampant paranoia, and I am telling you - this is the latter, not the former.

Now that this gentleman has been (wrongly) accused, how does he clear his good name? How does he get himself off the “extra screening” list? How can he stop the harassment? He was not charged of anything, he turned out to be completely harmless. So where is his recourse?

Unlike being arrested for a “normal” crime, he has no recourse. There is no court that can seal his records (or remove them completely). He has no one to appeal to. The system is secret and allows for no questioning of its inner workings. It is a system designed to quash any opposition. If you don’t like it, be careful about saying so - you’ll end up on the list and endlessly harassed every time you exercise your right to travel. The system is designed to “bully” people into submission. You dare not speak up for fear of the inconvenience it’ll cause you.

Which, coincidentally, brings to mind the story of a bunch of people who got fed up with the same sort of thing - a system designed to “bully” them into submission. Every time they complained, the system just squeezed them harder, hoping that they’d just roll over and accept domination.

Fortunately for us, those people didn’t roll over. They were the founding fathers of the United States of America, and they stood up to this sort of harassment, bullying, and removal of their inalienable rights.

We could all do well to learn - or re-learn - from their example in these troubling times.

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Posted on Oct 25 2007

An Amazingly Good Quote

Filed Under (Politics) by Keithius

I found this quote here:

My philosophy is to “educate and then trust the general public”. This philosophy is in line with the basic values of democracies. The government’s approach to homeland security is “keep everything secret and trust nobody”. This is in line with the basic values of authoritarian governments.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?

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Posted on Oct 17 2007

New Jersey DMV and Online Forms

Filed Under (Rants, personal) by Keithius

First off, let me clarify. It’s not the DMV - the Department of Motor Vehicles - down here. (In fact, it wasn’t the DMV back in Massachusetts, either - it was the RMV, the Registry of Motor Vehicles.) In New Jersey we have the pretentious name of “Motor Vehicle Commission.” But I’ll still just say DMV.

ANYWAY.

Obviously, I’ve moved here from out of state, with the Keithmobile-D (my car), and therefore I need to register it here and get New Jersey plates & all that jazz. So, I go to the NJ DMV website to find out what I need to do. They have a very nice section for out-of-state vehicles that explains what forms you need (although the convoluted form names make no sense, at least they are listed). Basically, I need to send a form back to my bank that has the car’s title (I’m still making payments) and get them to send a copy to the NJ DMV, then I just need to fill out a registration form and an “application for titling” - so that my car’s title (i.e. certificate of ownership) is registered here in NJ. Fairly standard DMV stuff, but whatever.

My first indication of trouble was that there were no links on the page that lists what you need to do if you have an out-of-state vehicle for the forms that you need to fill out.

My second indication was that a quick search for forms didn’t turn much up. It was only after some serious googling that I found the DMV’s “forms” page - helpfully located in the “About Us” section. Riiiiiiiight.

However, NONE of the forms I needed to fill out (all 3 of them) were available online. What the hell is the point of having an online forms section if all of the forms aren’t available?? Wouldn’t this be a really good idea? New residents might not know where a DMV office is; it would be very helpful to be able to download the necessary forms and print them out. Especially since these forms often require the VIN number to be entered on them, and if you made them, say, fillable PDF forms, you could type the VIN number in - avoiding delays caused by bad handwriting.

It is absolutely unforgivable in this day and age (2007 for crying out loud!) for a state agency as common as the DMV not to have all of its forms available on their website. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I’m sure they have some sort of crazy justification that they’ve told themselves over and over again until they believed it as to why someone would have to come into one of their offices to pick up a form, rather than download it off the Internet. Maybe I have to show ID to get it? I wouldn’t be surprised. (Don’t even get me started on what you have to do to get a license here nowadays. Can you say “papers, please?”)

Note to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission: PUT ALL OF YOUR FORMS ONLINE AS PDFs. Make them fillable while you’re at it. Your people will have an easier time reading submitted forms, and people will enjoy the convenience. Everyone wins.