Suspicious, photo-taking "Middle Eastern" men were visually impaired tourists

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This has been pointed out by Mark Thomas, although he is usually doing something far more subversive than geocaching when wearing one.

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From Cory’s post: “The breathless report of the leak in the Vancity Buzz sparked a lot of Internet Tough Guy posturing on social media, and has frightened the three tourists into staying away from all public places while in town, for fear of vigilante violence.”

Giving someone cause to fear for their life or safety is pretty horrible, in my opinion. Why they feared for their safety is the real story, in my opinion.

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[quote=“art_carnage, post:14, topic:72295”]
A clipboard or an orange safety vest can make you almost invisible.
[/quote]I’ll vouch for that. I wore a big orange jacket, marked with reflector tape, to the mall the other week because it was bitter cold. I was flagged down as an employee once (while a guy wearing a vest marked ‘SECURITY’ wandered past) and later mistaken for someone making deliveries while in a store.

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So now terrorists know about the Geocaching Trail Card trick, so we must make geocaching illegal.

As for people with cameras taking pictures of things, it’s a ridiculous thing to worry about. Those things that people can take pictures of are always visible, and could be photographed by terrorists working in teams to take the photos they need to do, whatever. Cameras are not a weapon, they aren’t the enemy, and only idiots treat them as such.

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No-one ever suspects the eidetikers.

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I can’t believe we are doing this “burn the witch” thing all over again in the 21st century :frowning:

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We were doing that since being monkeys. No surprise here.

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We’re still monkeys :frowning:

Still, there are so many ways that we’ve made progress - social evolution is ongoing and justifies a great deal of hope.

That said, turning from humanity’s better moments (any time in the past 2700 years or so) to the hateful idiocy still on display is always jarring.

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The (meta)story isn’t really that the police were curious about some unusual behavior, it’s that the Vancity Buzz irresponsibly published a newsworthless leak for no reason other than breathlessly sensationalistic fear-mongering. And contrary to editor in chief Farhan Mohamed’s weak assertion, that is exactly what it was. There’s no “public interest” in encouraging yahoos to interfere with police business, or worse, take up vigilantism.

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Exactly. But you can’t blame them. It’s not like there’s any recent occurrence that might have caused them to think twice about publishing the story. Oh, wait…

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There’s a world of difference between publishing photos of criminal suspects at the request of law enforcement and taking it upon yourself to publish photos of non-suspects without being asked to.

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I’d rather it be ‘too low’, than too lax.

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You prefer to live in the world where the government kills more people than it saves, while the “saving” measures dig deep into quality of life and induce unnecessary fear and stress?

Why do you hate freedom?

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“Why do you hate freedom”.

Why do you state such silly, Ignorant, statements to people you don’t know?

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Because of what you are saying/advocating/proposing?

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Why are those the only two choices?

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Well, you are VERY wrong so far, in your assumptions about me. I treasure free speech (unlike some of these '‘micro-aggression’ obsessed misfits on some of these college campuses), and I hate totalitarian minded people, and totalitarian states.

You are welcome to your ignorant assumptions though.

If civil rights are not infringed upon, I’m not going to get all twistedly upset. It’s a very unfortunate, lousy thing to happen though. For innocent men that look Middle Eastern, it can suck, since the majority of Jihadists/terrorists, tend to be Middle Eastern. Maybe we will get lucky, and more and more Westerners will join the beheading-we-love-to-rape-western-women-and-teach-chilldren-to-become-murderers bunch. Maybe a lot of ‘liberals’ will be relieved. They can become just as suspicious looking as the Middle Eastern guys, and now gals.

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Nice photo of Bowie there. Very nice outfit! The one with the coat, that is.

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If they don’t go back out in public then the terrorists win.

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True, but a completely irrelevant statement, as the authorities never asked for that, as was revealed in the civil suit against the Post. In fact, Homeland Security sent an email specifically stating that those two men were “not of interest” and that a request for their identification was based on “bogus intel” spurred by social media accusations. Article.

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