What could this mean for our Second Amendment rights?

[runrabbitrun]

IF Homeland Security is so concerned, why not just issue all
tax paying citizens a nice M4 or something?

[nazshooter]

nazshooter, have you read 1984, did you watch the video? It is very spooky.

Of course I've read 1984 and watched the video. Frankly that big of an image of Janet is going to look spooky no matter what is coming out of her mouth but I don't think anything she said was unreasonable.

As noted above what if a shopper thinks an older man in the infant/children's clothes department is a pedophile, when it's an uncle buying clothes for his newborn niece?

Or me buying 5 boxes of .45 ammo, and a fellow shopper thinking I am going on a murder spree?

So what? Sure people sometimes make mistakes but for the most part people know what is and is not normal in their environment. I don't see how you can argue that people are smart enough to carry firearms but too dumb to know trouble when they see it.

Ask any active duty person about their opinion of Homeland Security, you may be shocked by the answer.

(Hint: over-reaching, ineffective, unconstitutional, and incompetent come to mind)

No argument here.

Remember Janet said" The system worked" when talking about the underwear bomber, but if the system worked how was on the plane in the first place?

What "worked" in those cases (underwear and shoe bombers) is that regular citizens took action DESPITE being disarmed by the TSA . I'd bet that someone at the airport noticed something about both of those folks but just assumed that security was someone else's problem.

[tigwiz]

Report anything or anyone that looks strange at WallMart, this must be a joke

[IA_farmboy]

Report anything or anyone that looks strange at WallMart, this must be a joke

Why? Because just about anyone that enters a WalMart looks odd?

I've been in a WalMart only a handful of times in the last decade, and only because I was brought there by another person. I'll never enter a WalMart again willingly. I see too many shady characters in the aisles, and too much worthless crap on the shelves.

[ThrottleJockey]

I hate walmart. Even more now. The problem is that there is just no way to buy things at reasonable prices elsewhere. I'm on a pretty tight budget these days. I'm sure at some point they'll be about the ONLY place to buy goods and then the prices will be really screwed up.

[mica]

I wonder if there isn't some 'intelligence' blowing around that some terrorist want to target WalMart, a big symbol of capitalism.

Being that there are a lot of idiots out there. If this program catches on I think WalMart managers will spend half their day dealing with reports of suspicious activity.

[runrabbitrun]

Yep, lets report shady people in Wally.

I just heard that the Homeland Security (I think is who was mentioned)
is going to 'streamline' the process and allow 'some people' coming from Mexico,
to bypass inspection/entrance channels on the southern border.

Breaking news I guess, as I just heard about it on the news this morning.
Missed the whole segment. Need more details.

[therewolf]

I'm just going to be the devil's advocate here for a moment.

What were we SUPPOSED to do in the past when we noticed suspicious activity?

Start a lemonade stand?

OK, Nancy, we would have NEVER mentioned it BEFORE if we saw a terrorist

going to blow up the Wal-mart Gardening Department, but NOW WE

WILL!

[White Horseradish]

I see suspicious people...

[pmeisel]

Suspicious people? I always got a description and called Nancy Drew....

[Mr White]

White Horseradish, LOL! I figured that would be coming from someone...

"Yes, Homeland Security? I'd like to report a 300# woman with pink hair wearing leopard print spandex tights and and a blue t-shirt that says 'You know you want this', and SHE'S BUYING AMMO!"

I think I'll start acting as suspiciously as possible whenever I go to walmart from now on. I just HOPE someone hassles me.

[pmeisel]

I think I'll start acting as suspiciously as possible whenever I go to walmart from now on.

Buy duct tape, a ski mask, and whistle the Mission Impossible theme....

[daorhgih]

"FOOD FOR THOUGHTS" While you are buying nitrogen-based fertilizer, and butane Bics® and charcoal-lighter in ☭hi-☭om-mart :: (From a private newsletter)

Hamadoun Toure, chief of the UN's telecommunication agency talks to Associated Press in London, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010. (AP / Sang Tan) Internet groups fear UN could threaten cyberspace.
*
Officials from 18 countries held an impromptu, late-night meeting early in January at the United Nations office in Geneva, and made a decision that rattled Internet technocrats around the world.
*
Autocratic governments like China and Iran attended the meeting, as did several democratic ones. Despite protests by Portugal and the United States, they voted to staff a working group on the future of the Internet Governance Forum - an important theatre of discussion on matters of cyberspace - by governments alone.
*
The seemingly arcane move reverberated through a community of technical experts, academics and civil society groups who felt they had been unfairly excluded.
*
*
Fourteen technical organizations that help oversee how cyberspace runs wrote an open letter asking the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) to reverse its decision. Meanwhile the Internet Society, an umbrella group that helps manage technical standards online, posted a petition to its website in protest.
*
"A significant fuss has been kicked up about it," said Byron Holland, president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the .ca domain.
*
Even Google waded into the fray. Vint Cerf, a vice-president at the online behemoth and one of the pioneers of the Internet, added his name to the petition, alongside 2,600 others. He also attacked the UN decision in a Dec. 17 blog post on Google's website.
*
"We don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance," Cerf wrote. "The current bottoms-up, open approach works - protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let's fight to keep it that way."
*
Eleven days later the UNCSTD buckled under the pressure, and agreed to include up to 20 non-governmental groups.
*
The episode underscored what has become an uneasy relationship between organizations that have helped gently steer the Internet since its infancy, and UN bodies that came to focus on Internet governance during the 2000s as cyberspace continued to unfurl across the brick-and-mortar world.
*
"The root of the debate here is a philosophical difference between how you approach the future governance of the Internet," Holland told CTV.ca by phone. "Everything that goes forward from that will have a very different tone or direction."
*
Technocrats like Holland have also been hinting at a specific threat: that the UN could become a forum where authoritarian governments who are riled by the free flow of information work to put the breaks on its superhighway.
*
Cyber "peace-treaty"? A second UN body - the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which manages the world's radio frequencies and orbiting satellites - has been debating who should govern the Internet for years.
*
Its secretary general, Hamadoun Toure, would like to spearhead the creation of a "cyber peace treaty" to prevent the Internet from becoming another domain in which countries wage war against one another, as they do by air or at sea.
*
"Cyber threats can reach critical infrastructure of any country, the nerve centre of any nation," Toure said by phone from Geneva. "A sophisticated attack can bring even the most powerful nation to its knees."

There have been several recent examples of such events. During a dispute with Russia in 2007, Estonia was hit by widespread cyber attacks that knocked out bank, newspaper and government websites. Similar denial-of-service attacks struck Georgian media and government websites a year later as Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia.
*
Then last July, the discovery of the Stuxnet worm led to speculation that a foreign government was trying use malicious software to cripple Iran's nuclear program.
*
But there are a number of hurdles to creating an international agreement that would discourage such attacks. One is who would forge it.
*
"If we were to have a roundtable on this, you would see not only governments around it. Are we mentally prepared for that, to have around the same table private sector, civil society, consumer groups and governments?" Toure said. "That is what it will take for meeting the challenges of a cyber peace treaty."
*
Delegates discussed a Russian proposal to take over managing Internet domain names. Currently that task falls to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private organization whose president and CEO was barred from attending the meeting.

[therewolf]

I'm suspicious, therefore, I am.

[Jamie B]

I think I'll start acting as suspiciously as possible whenever I go to walmart from now on. I just HOPE someone hassles me.

Remember that house arrest ankle bracelet when you do

[ArfinGreebly]

Thread moved to Discussion and Planning.

Feel free to open a shiny new thread for actual activism implementation.

[Big Gay Al]

I don't get it. What do the rest of you do, if you see someone acting suspicious? Ignore it and move on? I don't care if it's wal-mart or where ever, if I see someone who is acting in a suspicious manner, I either let store security know, or the manager, or 911. I don't need any message from DHS to tell me that as a responsible citizen, I should report a crime if I believe I'm seeing one in progress. And that's my definition of suspicious activity. IF it looks like someone is shoplifting, I say something.

Not if someone is dressed strangely. Well, unless they're wearing an overcoat in 90 degree weather, that's a sure sign of a shop lifter....or a real crazy person, or someone hiding a really big gun.

But hey, if you all want to let criminals continue on their merry way, unabated, that's your call.

[mlr1m]

I don't get it. What do the rest of you do, if you see someone acting suspicious? Ignore it and move on? I don't care if it's wal-mart or where ever, if I see someone who is acting in a suspicious manner, I either let store security know, or the manager, or 911. I don't need any message from DHS to tell me that as a responsible citizen, I should report a crime if I believe I'm seeing one in progress. And that's my definition of suspicious activity. IF it looks like someone is shoplifting, I say something.

I highlighted the part I have difficulties with. It is when the government specifies who to watch that I get worried. Anyone else remember when the government hired informants to spy on student political groups when Nixon was president?

Michael

[Big Gay Al]

I highlighted the part I have difficulties with. It is when the government specifies who to watch that I get worried. Anyone else remember when the government hired informants to spy on student political groups when Nixon was president?

Vaguely. Although, some of my "older" friends in the 1980s liked to reminisce about "the good old days" when they'd spy on SDS and other anti-Vietnam War groups.

When someone tells me I need to watch Arabs, Jews, Latinos, American Indians (I refuse to use the PC term, "Native American", since I am part Cherokee, and all my full blooded friends hate it too.) or any other ethnic group, THEN I'll be standing in front of some government building, watching THEM instead. But to keep an eye out for suspicious people, is no big deal to me. As a person licensed to carry concealed, I am usually on the lookout for suspicious people. Even more so when I open carry. I don't like surprises.

[therewolf]

But let's face it, most of us would have reported somebody even back before

all this 911 brew-hah, if we thought they were going to be a public menace.

So she's basically saying "Hey, I think you guys are just incredibly stupid."

OR she's saying "The more people LEOs can shake down, the more revenue it

generates."

Take your pick.

[NEOKShooter]

I know this thread is really old but it's still on the first page for this forum topic. And there's nothing else going on here. And I'm bored.

But I just cannot help laugh watching this. I'm sure you have all seen the People of Walmart site? And the associated videos on youtube? Suspicious or odd behavior at walmart? Seriously? The only ones odd our out of place at walmart would be a clean-cut, modestly dressed, soccer mom or her family.

http://www.google.com/search?q=people+of+walmart