Another Victim of the Patriot Act

by Rock

A story in my local paper told about a woman who was rudely awakened at 6:30 in the morning and taken off a cruise ship in handcuffs and leg shackles by customs agents when her ship arrived in Miami.

Was she a terrorist? No. Gasp. She was a teacher's aide.

It turned out that she had been fined $50 a year earlier for having marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park. Talk about strict. She had paid the fine before leaving the park, but somehow the federal law enforcement database didn't reflect that.

They kept her in custody for over 9 hours before releasing her. It's a good thing she didn't have an outstanding parking ticket. They might have made her walk the plank.

I'm normally not for lawsuits, but in this case I think it would be justified.

I would like to remind you that the customs office is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the same swift-moving group of bureaucrats that approved the visa of one of the 911 highjackers months after the attacks.

How skewed are the government's priorities? How many people were involved in this case of collecting a $50 fine that had already been paid? How many thousands of dollars did it end up costing us, the taxpayers? While the agents were messing with this case, how many potential terrorists made it into the country because there wasn't anyone paying attention to them?

The only thing worse than bad intelligence is bad intelligence filtered through a bureaucracy. Bad intelligence is one of many aspects of the Patriot Act that bothers me. Although the Patriot Act wasn't specifically mentioned in the article, it was one of the aspects of it and other initiatives that caused this situation, the sharing of information between government agencies. Now that the federal agencies are sharing information, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing. If the information is bad, this is going to cause more harm than good. The Patriot Act, not just for terrorists anymore.