border checks

Just read an article in the New York Times that sent shivers down my spines. So this is what "homeland security" has come to. Soon they will ask us to carry inland passports a la the Soviet Union. Basically - for those who don't click on the link - border patrol officers board New York bound trains that travel close to the Canadian border and ask random passengers to produce ID. This is INSIDE U.S. territory and without any prior suspicion or proof. Strictly random, most likely racially profiled, interrogations. One of the astounding facts one can read about in the article is that the Immigration office personnel at Rochester quadrupled after the Toronto - Rochester ferry went bankrupt. I.e. no more ferry, no more direct traffic from Canada, but the office now has four times as many officers as before. One assumes they pull people off the streets of downtown Rochester at random? What else could they be doing? There is no ferry and no direct border crossing in Rochester, N.Y. (there's not much of anything else, either)

Even the name "homeland security" is so Orwellian it would be laughable if it weren't so scary.

Let me tell you a story about "homeland security". When I was a lad 0f 12, my parents and I undertook a journey from Prague to Israel. Today, no one would think of any other mode of transport but flying but in those days (1965), we took the train to Greece and then a ship from Piraeus to Haifa. Three days on the train, three days on the ship. Here's what "homeland security" looked like in Czechoslovakia, cca mid-1960's: the train started slowing down about 10 km from the Austrian border. It then stopped and about 20 officers armed with sub-machine guns and with large German shepherds boarded the train. They entered each compartment in pairs. Every person in each compartment had to produce their passport, their exit visa, their return ticket and their proof of purchase of foreign funds. Every person then had to open every single bag and suitcase, as well as wallets. This inspection lasted about two hours. At the end of it - and after numerous citizens were pulled off the train for insufficient documentation or for trying to smuggle something OUT of the country (such as forbidden books or a few more dollars than they were permitted), the train started moving towards the Austrian side. On each side of the train, electrified barbed wire reached about 25 feet high, with watchtowers and machine gun armed guards every 300 yards or so. This "no man's land" (but in fact a minefield designed to capture anyone trying to escape the socialist paradise)was about 3 km long. The train traversed it in a few minutes. Suddenly, there was nothing but green fields on either side of the train. Austrian custom officers boarded (about 4 of them for the whole train) and conducted a completely perfunctory check of our documents. They smiled and joked, offered people light for their cigarettes and told us to relax and enjoy their country. The relief, the joy, the elation throughout the train was amazing. We all laughed, and drank beer in the dining car (well, my folks did) and rejoiced at how wonderful life in a free country can be.

QUO VADIS, America, with your "homeland security" idiocy and your curtailing of freedoms and you usurping of citizens' rights by a cruel, faceless and metastasizing beaurocracy?