Treated Like a Terrorist by the DMV | | AlterNet

Description

Note that she had absolutely no way of identifying me, to know that I wasn't a terrorist just paying her $30 so I could get a dreaded Pennsylvania drivers license to use as an ID for whatever nefarious purposes I might have in mind. She just took down the credit card number and bingo, I'm cleared to go. The New York DMV, happy with its little act of extortion, is now notifying the National Driver Register computer that I'm clear, and next week, Pennsylvania's DMV will find my record on the National Driver Register clean and will be ready to renew my license.

This is the DMV and Homeland Security automotive equivalent of the TSA rules that have now every flier taking off her or his shoes (even baby's' booties!), and surrendering tubes of toothpaste and mouthwash at airport security checkpoints.

A fundamental rule about rules should be that if there are records being kept, and if actions are being taken on the basis of those records, then there has to be a way for errors to be corrected by the agency that is maintaining and disseminating those records and by any agency that is acting on the basis of those records. But in the case of America's terrorism fetish, this rule is being violated routinely.

The "no-fly" and the "let-fly-but-first-harass" lists maintained by the TSA, which both reportedly now contain tens of thousands of names, are used by the TSA at airport checkpoints, but developed not by the TSA, but by the dozens of police and intelligence agencies of the federal government -- the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the ATF, the State Department, the FBI, etc., etc. If your name turns up on the TSA list, and you end up getting strip searched every time you try to fly, the ...

Original URL

http://www.alternet.org/story/108957/treated_like_a_terrorist_by_the_dmv/?page=2

http://www.alternet.org/story/108957/treated_like_a_terrorist_by_the_dmv/?page=2