DHS Tells Firefighters to Spy on Americans

[Caligulette]

I'm not much for Mr Chomsky, so go ahead and burn him... Kidding, of course, about the burning part.

[ZEZOZE]

sure sure...says the lady with the flames coming out the side of her head

[Caligulette]

Ooh- Chanukah snap!

In any event- regardless of the agree/disagree factor, books should not be burned and firemen should be let to go about the business of fighting fires without the distraction of stopping to read the titles of the very flammable books.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Getting information by proxy is hardly new. AMA is requests doctors to inquire of patients (Preferably kids, as they're more likely to be honest) if anyone else in the household has firearms, for example. How this affects any ailments or diseases are beyond me.

Do you have a link for this? The only thing I could find was this editorial. I downloaded the PDF file that it links to, which is an issue of Healthy Children, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, not the AMA. The closest thing it contains to "a guideline" which "advises" doctors to "interrogate children about mom and dad’s "bad" behavior" is the following:

The study, published in the June 2007 issue of the medical journal Pediatrics, suggests pediatricians ask parents about gun ownership and review safety procedures.

Here is the full text of that study. I should add that simply being published in a peer reviewed journal published by the American Academy of Pediatrics does not make a study's conclusions "guidelines." The study recommended that doctors interview parents about firearms. This is one of the relevant portions:

If guns will not be removed from homes where children live and play, then the safe storage of those guns becomes a health priority for the well-being of children. Primary care providers need to understand better not only whether firearms are in the home but also which types are present. This should inform a tailored safe storage counseling approach for gun-owning families who are at increased risk for not using safe storage practices.

In my admittedly cursory reading of the study, I can't find anything resembling the claims made in the editorial linked above.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Similarly, teachers' groups have been known to encourage kids to report firearm ownership.

I would be interested to see more information on this as well.

On a related note, I found it interesting that firearms were not included in the list of things firefighters should be on the lookout for. Blueprints, night vision goggles, and flight manuals are all just as legal, right?

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

"...firefighters don't need a warrant to go into private houses, and critics say that's where things get sticky."

Good grief. "Get sticky!"

How about, "...that's where this proposal is a horrifying new attempt by an authoritarian federal regime to set aside the Constitution"?

I think "get sticky" was probably an editorial compromise. Before some liberal nutjob got to it, it read "...and that's where some anti-American terrorist enablers start to bitch and moan about the god-fearing plan to incorporate every organ of local, state, and federal government into the security apparatus, which is just dandy by us here at Fox."

It is unfortunate that we have no clear conception of the extent of the security state. Training firefighters (and probably other first responders) is a logical consequence of the vertical integration of the surveillance bureaucracy. Equally distressing is the horizontal expansion that unites corporatist data mining/eavesdropping with "national security" interests into a murky nexus altogether impenetrable to the surveilled.

[Caligulette]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

I have to say I am in agreement with encouraging safe storage.

[California Tanker]

Do you have a link for this

Ooof. I'll have to go back a year or two in the archives of a firearms site I'm on. I don't really have the time for it as long as I'm on my trip away.

I have to say I am in agreement with encouraging safe storage.

I prefer 'appropriate' storage as determined by the family. What outsiders consider 'safe' is not necessarily what I or other firearm owners would consider 'safe'. Ask the Mayor of D.C.

NTM

[wildernesse]

All I have to say is that I watched The Lives of Others last week, and now Brecht is everywhere.

[Seven of Nine]

Here's an article which goes into a bit more detail:
The Associated Press: AP IMPACT: Firefighter Help on Terrorism

[Qingdai]

I find this amusing also because Bush's new budget request is cutting money to first responders, such as firefighters and police. So they want them to do more work for less money.
As they have unions I would expect their unions to tell homeland security to shove it.

[Seven of Nine]

It seems to me that they already have more than enough to do, but NYC's Powers That Be must have agreed for some reason?

[Caligulette]

The DHS budget includes “a stunning 30 percent cut, government-wide, for first responders that is the latest evidence of shortchanging the homeland side of the war against terrorism,” warned former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

How about the shortchanging of the homeland side of infrastructure?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

The question is, where to draw the line. If our hypothetical firefighter is out for a drive in his shiny red truck and sees a goth teen with an AK47 heading for the school building, should he call it in?

[Ari]

No goth would carry an AK47, it's not black enough.

Ok, so you wonder what someone should do if they see someone on public property with a weapon out in the open. What does that have to do with this?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Exactly what I said.

Where do you draw the line? In your world, is it okay to pretend a potential threat isn't real simply because the potential threat is on private property?

I used the example as a straightforward starting point. Iwould hope that a concerned citizen, be they a public servant or not, would react to such a clear and present danger.

It would be interesting to see some examples of circumstances. Charges have recently been laid against activists in this part of the world over pseudomilitary activities and 'training camps'. While I'm certain that our fire service was not involved in any intelligence-gathering, I can't help thinking that if they came across a threat to the wider populace in the course of their duties, it would be for the greater good if they had the skills to identify the risk and the mandate to report it.

[Dingfod]

Or not.