Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/05/dhs-directive-0480-1.html
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Well, technically he might be right, but…
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Apparently Abuse of Power seems to be catching.
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He wasn’t refusing the entry though. He was just harassing the journalist.
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In a separate email, a DHS spokesperson said that the agency’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office has “received the information and is reviewing it.”
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What I’m hearing is “He wasn’t refusing entry, he just was not allowing it.”
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A CBP officer has no power to refuse entry, and neither has he power to not allow it. He only has power to harass.
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"Yes I write propaganda for Fox News"
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If you want to see where this kind of abuse of authority can lead, watch Pan’s Labyrinth.
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CBP officers haven’t recognized limitations to their authority, yet. Why start now?
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Ah, there’s nothing like reading about petty authoritarians in positions of power abusing that power in petty authoritarian ways to raise my blood pressure.
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Apparently, frontier sentinals in “land of the free” aren’t required to take an elementary school level civics test about the liberal-democratic institutions they’re supposed to be defending.
“Just” harassing the journalist? You say that like a LEO deciding to use his position to bully someone on the basis of his personal ideology is no big deal, even in the border civil rights grey zone. It is a big deal.
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These stories have altered my travel preparation. I travel a lot and do personal business online from various overseas locations so I keep banking and personal finance data with me. I also tend to post unflattering things about our current administration on social media. I keep 2 social media presences. First is the one that I would give up that contains primarily aunts and uncles posting cute cat pictures. The other may contain more honest posting by myself on current issues. The last thing that I need is for CBP to have me in their custody with all of my personal financial information. I keep important data on an SD card in encrypted files. I then replace the SD card with one containing fake confidential engineering files that I would “reluctantly” give up the password to if pressured. That would explain the presence of encryption software. I run Bleachbit just before traveling. It is pretty easy to hide a micro SD card in your luggage or even in a cuff of clothing. Fortunately my job title is engineer rather than journalist.
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The transcript reads like someone intentionally trying to enrage the other person to a point where he could have that person pulled out of the queue and strip-searched, just because he hates journalists.
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In that case, definitely do not look at the comments on the linked article. Yikes.
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After reading the Defense One article, I’d say the CBP only hires the “best people”.
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This is not unique to sentinels of the frontier, whenever an inferior person is in the position of power, that person will be delighted to abuse this power just to make you appreciate their existence. One needs way more than elementary school education to get past the excitement of making somebody else miserable.
Comparing to not being allowed into your country of residence, being harassed is “just” being harassed. In this particular case this exchange took one extra minute of that journalist’s time, plus all the sweet karma afterwards. To the journalist it was totally worth it.
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It’ll only be worth it if the officer loses his job, preferably in a way pour encourager les autres.
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Serious question-
Whomever is elected next, is it possible to mass fire everyone hired by the Trump administration?
I’m quite serious, this kind of shit is happening nonstop daily and I’m sick of it. I want the idea of removing these cancerous rats from their jobs in a mass “fuck you you’re fired” of every crony Trump’s ilk have hired since joining office, in every post possible, to be replaced by competent, decent people who obey the law, regardless of party
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