[Robotgroup] CAT scan at 70mph..?

[Vern Graner]

 From this link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2004300343_danny23.html

Comes this story:

-------------------------- CLIP ----------------------------
Sunday, March 23, 2008

Watch out, you're being watched

By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist

The unsettling thing about living in a surveillance society isn't just 
that you're being watched. It's that you have no idea.

That's what struck me about a story told last week by a border agent at 
a meeting of 200 San Juan Islanders. He was there to explain why the 
federal government is doing citizenship checks on domestic ferry runs. 
But near the end, while trying to convince the skeptical audience that 
the point is to root out terrorists, not fish for wrongdoing among the 
citizenry, deputy chief Joe Giuliano let loose with a tale straight out 
of "Dr. Strangelove."

It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 
"dirty bombs." They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led 
to the following incident.

"Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour," Giuliano told the crowd. "Agent 
is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off 
and identified an isotope [in the passing car]."

The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the 
monitoring spot (near the Bow-Edison exit, 18 miles south of 
Bellingham). The agent questioned the driver, then did a cursory search 
of the car, Giuliano said.

Did he find a nuke?

"Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological 
treatment three days earlier," Giuliano said.

He added: "That's the type of technology we have that's going on in the 
background. You don't see it. If I hadn't told you about it, you'd never 
know it was there."

About all I can say is: Wow. Wow that the government now has the ability 
to detect radiation in a cat inside a car going by at 70 miles per hour. 
And wow at this world we live in, where we feel compelled to sniff, at 
random, inside the traffic coming out of Bellingham.

What else is the government watching? Is it all too much?

We're watching lots, said Giuliano when I called him. Giuliano is No. 2 
in the border patrol's Blaine sector. He is refreshingly open about the 
surge of post-Sept. 11 surveillance, and its pros and cons.

 From bomb sniffing to bank monitoring of the kind that brought down 
Eliot Spitzer to phone and Internet data crunching to citizenship 
checkpoints — all are becoming commonplaces of American life.

Giuliano says the point really is to catch terrorists. He says it's true 
that the odds of catching one here may be "a billion to one. But despite 
that, we have caught two." (Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who tried to sneak 
in at Blaine in 1997 to blow up the New York subway; and Millennium 
Bomber Ahmed Ressam, nabbed at Port Angeles in 1999.)

"There's your one or two in a billion, looking right at you."

It's a good point. Yet even he, a federal agent for 35 years, is queasy 
about the snooping's reach. He said he opposes parts of the Patriot Act, 
namely the section that expands warrantless searches.

"I think we can do this without tossing out our checks and balances," he 
said.

The debate has the San Juans abuzz. While we're doing citizenship 
checks, why not also do it in Seattle? Is it constitutional? Does the 
story of the radioactive cat reassure you? Or creep you out?

Said San Juan County Councilman Kevin Ranker: "I think it's fair to say 
many people up here have been left wondering just what kind of country 
it is they're living in."

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 
206-464-2086 or dwestneat at seattletimes.com.
-------------------------- /CLIP ---------------------------

wow. On so many levels...  O.o

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG


-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG