From the WTF files: Bush just now getting around to checking port worker IDs
October 17, 2007 at 8:30 am by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsFrom the Savannah Morning News:
On Tuesday, port workers, longshoremen, truckers and others at the port of Wilmington, Del., became the first workers in the nation to enroll in the Department of Homeland Security’s national Transportation Worker Identification Credential program.
Those with business at Georgia’s ports won’t be far behind. The program is expected to begin locally by the end of next month.
The TWIC program ensures that any individual who has unescorted access to secure areas of port facilities and vessels has received a thorough background check and is not a security threat.
More than six years after 9/11, and after countless reports explaining how commercial seaports would be among the easiest way for terrorists to smuggle radioactive material into the United States, the Bush administration is just now getting around to checking the backgrounds of port workers.
If you support Bush, you support leaving the United States needlessly vulnerable to terrorists. How many more examples do you need?
October 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Background checks and secured ID’s have been issued to port workers for a while now, not sure how long. This program is the electronic ID prototype hat will be issued to every American in the form of standardized e-chipped drivers license beginning next year, assuming the technology is in place and the usual civil liberties “advocates’ shut the hell up. This is after 4 million Federal employees and contractors get their cards. It will also replace all US passports.
Bush signed it into law in November 2002, but technology problems, funding, and resistance from the usual suspects (port operators, civil liberties advocates, etc) have bogged the program down since 2004.
This sucks and should have been done long ago.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:29 am
BTW, it’s still Bush’s fault, the buck stops at him.
Would this be a good place for him to ignore the Constitution and just issue a decree? He gets criticised fro doing that, but I wouldn’t complain about it.
The opponets are on the old “National ID -Big Brother tracking me” canard. Wake up, folks, that is already happening with web cookis, email, credit cards, debit cards, SSN, air travel, banking, telephone usage, etc,
October 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a civil libertarian complain about port worker screening.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:44 am
They would never oppose port worker screening, that would piss too many people off. They oppose the methods used, specifically the TWIC card and the feared future integration of these cards with other databases used for passenger profiling and other credential verfication systems.. The ACLU and other civil libertarians oppose any national id card becasue of the potential misuse of the info. Oddly, they agree in this regard with the “End of Times – Book of revelations – Mark of The Beast” whack jobs.