Former Santa Fe public defender Andrew J. O'Connor was
handcuffed last Thursday at the St. John's College library and
interrogated by Secret Service agents for several hours. He
was taken from the school's library about 9 p.m. while he was
using a computer. "They Mirandized me, handcuffed me and
took me to the police station where two Secret Service
agents from Albuquerque interrogated me for hours," O'Connor
says. "This whole level-orange (terror alert) thing has them
all paranoid, I guess." Bill Scannell agrees?he?s boycotting
Delta Airlines, which is testing the new CAPS II security
system of background checks on all passengers.
The FBI and the Secret Service field office in Albuquerque
refuse to comment on the O?Connor case, saying
it?s "classified," and Santa Fe Police Chief Beverly Lennen
referred all inquiries to the Secret Service. O'Connor says he's
being accused of making threatening remarks about President
Bush in an Internet chat room, but he denies doing this. He
was using the computer to look for a new job and thinks he
may not have logged off and a later user may have actually
made the threats. But internet chat is fast and loose?who
defines what a "threat" is? This is a case that should chill any
internet user.
O'Connor says, "There is this thing called freedom of speech.
I never said anything close to threatening Bush. ... (The
government) is just so paranoid right now about anyone who
is anti-war, and they just took this way too far." He was a
member of a pro-Palestinian group in Boulder, Colo., before
moving to Santa Fe last year.
Bill Scannell is calling for a boycott on Delta Airlines, which is
testing a new Homeland Security plan that will do background
checks on all passengers. The CAPPS II Computer Assisted
Passenger Prescreening System will check passengers' credit
reports, banking and criminal records, and some will not be
allowed to fly. Delta will try out CAPPS II at three undisclosed
airports during March, and the program will be used
throughout the country, by all airlines, within a year.
Scannell says. "CAPPS II treats all Americans who want to
board a plane as if they were thugs. It's a horribly misguided
attempt to make flying safer. It's ridiculous and horrible, and
it has to stop?Every time a credit report is run on you, it
hurts your credit rating. Frequent fliers will not only have a
nice thick Delta dossier, but a damaged credit history to
boot."
"CAPPS II threatens our liberty, but its security benefits are
far from clear," says ACLU?s Barry Steinhardt. "It will leave
security screeners at sea in an ocean of private data; some
of that data will be fraudulent, and much of it just plain
wrong."
"This system threatens to create a permanent blacklisted
underclass of Americans who cannot travel freely,'' says
ACLU?s Katie Corrigan. "Anyone could get caught up in this
system, with no way to get out." Passenger information will
be stored for up to 50 years.
Should we join the boycott
or accept the inevitable? It's time for each of us to decide.
There are many different ways to
fight back.
For more information, click here.
