Comic Artist Detained For Script Containing 9/11 Type Scenarios 441
Comics writer Mark Sable was detained by security at Los Angeles International Airport because he was carrying a script for a new issue of his comic miniseries, Unthinkable. Unthinkable follows members of a government think tank that was tasked with coming up with 9/11-type "unthinkable" terrorist scenarios that now are coming true. Sable wrote about his experience saying, "...I was flagged at the gate for 'extra screening.' I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then 'discovered' the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated. The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics. I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks." It's too bad that the TSA can't protect us from summer blockbuster movies and not just graphic novels.
The Lone Gunmen episode 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
From wikipedia:
Welcome to (Score:5, Interesting)
Welcome to the era of Thought Crime.
Thinking about it is a crime.
Writing about it is a crime.
Drawing about it is a crime.
Last I check wasn't DOING a crime... well.. a crime?
Next thing you know Jessica Lansbury and company will be held and charged for all those terroristic threats and murder plans called "Murder She Wrote". They were so detailed! Lets not forget the Matlock, Columbo, Perry Mason, CSI, etc... All those murder plans!!! GET EM!!
"When is a man damned? When he is oblivious to it."
Re:Bad move (Score:1, Interesting)
Reminds me of the people that try to ban "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451"
No one tried to bad either title. You should have named "We", a title that actually was banned due to its cynical dystopian view of those in power at the time.
Re:Bad move (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether they are smart enough or not, TSA and airport security are essentially required by law to not understand irony, humor, jest, satire, sarcasm, or the like. Now surely the TSA officers in question, reading a script about terrorist attacks (as if such could be the topic of fiction in today's world!) and getting suspicious indicates they fall squarely in the "lack the intellect" bucket... But in either case, trying to explain the irony would just mean they'd say "I'm sorry sir, but according to DHS regulation 372(d) paragraph 2, I'm not allowed to understand what that word means."
ignorance of your own rights (Score:5, Interesting)
"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation." Mr. Sable's ignorance or willful abdication of his 5th amendment rights caused him to perhaps waste a great opportunity to challenge TSA policies on search of personal belongings. Next time, maybe a better approach would be (disclaimer, IANAL): "Am I being detained?" followed by "I'd like you to tell me what laws you are accusing me of breaking," or "I won't make any statements until I have spoken to a lawyer," as the case may be. If Mr. Sable had actually been prosecuted simply for having exercised his 1st amendment rights, his case would have had a much more significant impact in our fear-prone society, causing perhaps some much needed "clarification" of what the federal government can/cannot do "for our own good" to "protect us from the evil terrorists." Perhaps even a re-evaluation of TSA policies, or at least application of punishment to over-zealous agents.
"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble." You're not in trouble just because a government employee says so (or looks at you funny). We do have a bill of rights, you know.
From TFA: "In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium." No one of any importance was "educated." No policy is likely to be changed as a result of this incident; law-abiding citizens are still going to be stopped in airports for carrying 'strange' books, scripts, magazines, etc. All this shows is that TSA agents can act in an arbitrary manner with repercussions.
Wait a minute... (Score:1, Interesting)
I have to ask: what led him to be flagged in the first place? Why did they search him twice and THEN find the script? Could this be "free publicity by TSA"? I think I'll patent it.
Step 1: write obscure work that might never see the light of day
Step 2: do something on purpose to draw suspicion of TSA and get handled in a way I can complain about
Step 3: complain to Slashdot
Step 4: profit! (and publicity)
Re:It's not sad. (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think this a troll. I agree 100%.
Who at this point hasn't been detained and had their stuff rummaged through?
I had to unpack a carry on full of crystal glassware (wedding gifts) while all of my other belongings were held on to by security simply because when asked if I had packed the bag I stupidly said no my wife did.
All in all I was "detained" for 20 minutes. But I made my flight with little more than some inconvenience.
If anything I was more wronged than this guy was. But I don't have a comic to sell so chances of my story hitting the slashdot front page are close to nil.
Sounds like in this guys case the airport folks found something worth checking out and were just being thorough.
Had the guy actually been a terrorist and it became leaked to the public that the guy walked right on board with the plans tweaked to look like a "work in progress comic book" people would be flaming air port security for being so naive.
It's not persecution and you can't have it both ways guys.
The guy is being a cry baby and getting alot of publicity for his comic by doing it.
Re:Proof please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do searches and seizures at airport security require warrants? Because if they did then there would be paperwork and if groups like the TSA wanted the benefit of the doubt they could say warrant or GTFO. But oh no wait travellers don't have any rights. Once you set up a rights free zone don't be surprised when everyone assumes you are abusing it. Until our freedoms are restored in an airport I'm inclined to believe every horror story I hear and assume that the jack booted morons are doing what ever they please. Because they have the power to do so.
Re:Proof please. (Score:1, Interesting)
"I can't think of any other country where reactions and measures taken are so extreme, and so disproportionate and above all so quick to occur."
Rome.
Re:That the guy's an idiot? (Score:2, Interesting)
Law enforcement generally breaks down into two types - reactive and preventative enforcement. Reactive is pretty simple. Someone gets killed, law enforcement shows up, collects evidence, figures out whodunit, and (tries to) capture the killer. Preventative enforcement is harder and more intrusive on civil liberties because you have to apply it to everyone, not just suspects. Sobriety checks to catch drunk drivers before they kill anyone, laws to prevent convicted criminals or mentally unstable individuals from buying guns, getting your luggage x-rayed and searched at airports, etc.
The monkey wrench in the works is the suicide bomber mentality. Prior to 9/11, the assumption was that a terrorist had a sense of self-preservation. So we made sure to match up luggage with passengers on the plane, asked people if they'd received any last-minute gifts from acquaintances before boarding, etc. all based on the theory that the terrorist didn't himself want to die. But if the terrorist is willing to die in the act, then most of the detectable intermediate steps between planning a terrorist act and carrying it out disappear. So your preventative options are limited to catching the terrorist in the process of carrying it out (like the passengers and crew tackled Richard Reid, aka the shoe bomber, whom we now have to thank for having our shoes x-rayed at security). Or catching him while he's planning it with only information on his person.
Personally, the number of people killed by terrorism compared to, say, traffic accidents is so minuscule that I think the magnitude of our reaction to the problem is a waste of time and money. I suspect a lot of people in law enforcement feel the same way - they'd rather be on the street combating everyday crime, rather than the 1 in a million terrorist. But the general public seems to want that level of preventative enforcement against terrorism (or at least the majority haven't complained about it vocally). And I've yet to see an alternative method of preventative enforcement which avoids the possibility of infringing on the civil liberties of innocents.
Re:ignorance of your own rights (Score:3, Interesting)
>>Mr. Sable's ignorance or willful abdication of his 5th amendment rights
Are TSA agents technically law enforcement officers? Are they trained in due process, reasonable force, constitutional rights? What power do they actually wield? As a free citizen, I expect to be able to walk out of any room without physical altercation unless I'm under the custody of a police officer or other law enforcement agent.
What would stop a person from standing up and walking out of one of these little TSA Q&A sessions? If I'm unhappy with the behavior of a TSA agent, can I request another? What recourse do I have, as a free citizen, when I am being mistreated by one of these agents?
I wish I knew more.
-b
Re:Proof please. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Brits are notorious for rolling over and taking the most ludicrous government interference in their daily lives. Look at the absurd surveillance they've built up over there, or the DNA database, or the ID cards. The British are far more likely collectively to let their elected officials do whatever the hell they want.
Two words..
Poll Tax.
Introduced 1377, Peasants revolt 1381 - revoked
Introduced 1989/1990, Poll Tax riots 1990, government folded 1990.
Granted we might put up with more sh*t than some, but sooner or later the British public stand up to be counted.
maybe you should look around your own culture before you start pontificating
And at least we have some culture to look around.
Re:it is sad.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was once one of those people who had exceptionally broad rights to conduct searches. As a military officer, I could, in theory, have searched a whole barracks full of the personal effects of a whole company of enlisted soldiers for a single stolen item. But before they would have turned me loose to do that, even as a raw Lieutenant, the government made it very clear that there was paperwork that had to be kept on record, documenting the steps of the search AND what other steps were taken to solve the crime before command decided a search was necessary. They made it clear that I had to deliver a Miranda warning (and the military form of the Miranda actually explains more rights than the Civil form.). They made it clear that the decision to authorize a search was limited to command personnel and not staff officers/staff NCOs, and why.
If I was supposed to be searching for a stolen boom-box, I had to have a good description, and not search inside anything too small to hold that boom-box. Even if I thought I smelled dope (and I've been to a controlled burn and can claim legally to know what Pot smells like), I couldn't act on it (beyond mentioning the scent to the owner of that gear, as in "Smells like pot - I hope you wouldn't mess with that stuff. - You know it's illegal and they can throw you out of the Army if you do - oh well, I'm just here to look for a boom-box.).
If I could be held to that standard 20 years ago, when dealing with people who had agreed to give up some of their rights as a condition of enlistment, and to be bound by a special set of laws (The Uniform Code of Military Justice), I have to wonder why on Earth the US citizenry allows the present situation.
Re:Proof please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, the UK is the only place I ever heard of where those wrongfully imprisoned are then forced to reimburse the government for the cost of their imprisonment.
In Norway, Per Liland, wrongfully convicted for murder and jailed for 14 years, had the cost of living he would have had if not jailed, deducted from his compensation. (Until there was an uproar and the deduction was cancelled.)
The logic was that the compensation was compensation for loss due to imprisionment. Without imprisionment he would have had living expenses. The compensation as granted by the Parliament was for lost income. Now they adjusted for lost expenses too. The logic is flawless: it had two part, the amount he would presumably have earned in a job, and a compensation for reduced quality of life. But they failed to compute a compensation for the insult of doing such calculations.
Re:ignorance of your own rights (Score:3, Interesting)
The TSA are, I believe, considered law enforcement. Mercenary law enforcers, the same way that King John hired mercenary law enforcers, the same way Blackwater/Xe were mercenary law enforcers, and - for that matter - how the Taliban is also largely made up of mercenary law enforcers.
Hands up all those who think mercenaries make bad enforcers? No, stubs don't count. The rest of you, form a line. The guy with the axe will be round shortly.
Re:Proof please. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. Citation, please?
Reichstag Fire Vs 9/11 (Score:3, Interesting)
The Reichstag fire occurred in a Germany that had seen years of continuous street battles, protests and political fracas between communist and fascist militias. Moreover, the Nazi's had preached for years about remaking Germany in a new fascist image. Top top it off, the crackdown following the fire was blunt and direct [wikipedia.org], and it would take the Nazi's years of gradual legislation to remould Germany completely.
By contrast, after September 11th, it took the US less than a month to invade another country. Within two months, the sweeping PATRIOT Act [wikipedia.org] did more and lasting damage to US freedoms than any Reichstag decree. It took the Nazi's two months to open the Dachau concentration camp [wikipedia.org], but it only took the US 27 days to open Guantanamo.
The Reichstag fire took place in a time of political upheaval, economic depression, civil anarchy and with Germany utterly downtrodden after defeat in the first World War. September 11th took place in a climate of stable government, favorable economic climate, domestic calm and with the US in a historically unprecendented position of unipolar, worldwide supremacy. Yet the reaction of the US was faster, harsher and wider in scope than any of the early day Nazi crackdowns.
I stand by my point. Americans are tightly wound, and have and will embrace a mob mentality with a swiftness and zeal that is rarely, if ever, seen in other nations. Americans will of course be the first to deny this, but the irony is that their fervent belief in innate American freedom is exactly what has lead to their great complacency in the face of encroaching tyranny.
Re:Reichstag Fire Vs 9/11 (Score:3, Interesting)
It's people like you who make legitimate critics of the American government look like loonies. You are honestly going to say that the PATRIOT Act did more to damage to US freedoms than the Reichstag decree did to Germany? Seriously? The PATRIOT Act is bad, but when has it been used as justification to violently crackdown on peaceable assembly across the nation? When has it been used to arrest tens of thousands of American citizens and hold them indefinitely, or murder tens of thousands?
And comparing Guantanamo to Dachau? All of the people that are imprisoned there were captured as enemy combatants. Some of them were captured unjustly, and even if they weren't there is no justification for holding them indefinitely with no trial, but NOBODY HAS EVEN BEEN KILLED THERE YOU ASSHOLE!
You want to talk about timelines? Three weeks after the Reichstag decree, The Enabling Act was passed, effectively turning Germany into a dictatorship. Where's the analagous act in the US? Your analogy falls apart at the first sight of rational thought.
There are legitimate criticisms to be made about the PATRIOT Act and the decline of US freedoms in general over the last ~10 years, yet you seem to be unable to make such criticisms without comparing it the most oppressive and vile government in Western history.
The US is not Nazi Germany. Show a little imagination.