https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151002/15583732429/homel...

https://courthousenews.com/stockton-mayor-charged-in-youth-c...

STOCKTON, Calif. (CN) — Stockton, Calif. Mayor Anthony Silva was arrested at his summer camp for underprivileged youth Thursday and faces multiple charges over his suspected involvement in an underage strip poker game. Silva was arrested at his camp by agents from the FBI, Stockton Police Department and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office. The incumbent mayor’s bail was set at $20,000. The FBI also recovered evidence of Silva secretly taping a conversation with a Stockton city employee, while another witness told investigators that Silva has cameras in his bedroom and at the Stockton Kid’s Club, Riebe said. The charges come amid recent revelations from the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office that a gun owned by Silva was used in the 2015 killing of a 13-year old. Investigators say a semi-automatic pistol that was stolen from Silva was used in two separate Stockton shootings. Silva says he informed authorities his gun was missing in March 2015, a month after the gun was used in the fatal shooting of Rayshawn Harris. Officers recovered the weapon during a domestic disturbance unrelated to the mayor.

Silva is no longer mayor(lost re-election for some reason), trial proceedings are still going on.

This is an issue much bigger than race and as soon as we stop compartmentalizing it into that it will be better for us all.

You turn it into another about race thing and people will tune out. You make people realize they are at risk no matter who they are and they might pay attention. That might sound tone deaf but the reality is people first and foremost care about themselves and their in-group before anything else. It's hard not to.

Now, they might think in terms of it being for thugs and terrorists, instead of black people and Muslims, but they 'know' they themselves can't possibly be mistaken for either because they 'don't look like a thug/terrorist'. While the searches are indeed applied along racial lines, it will be hard to convince them otherwise, because they are mostly right.

So, sure, this is about liberty, about forestalling totalitarianism, about our human right to privacy and our political right to protection from unreasonable search, but it is also about race and about xenophobia. I am not sure failing to acknowledge that does us any favors strategically. At risk of going full Godwin's Law, there were a lot of things wrong with Nazism besides anti-semitism, but analyzing why people allowed the rise of Nazism without talking about anti-semitism is foolish.

For example japan or poland are fairly xenophobic and isolationist, but they don't practice a surveillance state or ask for your social media accounts at the border. Foreigners are free to enter as long as they don't overstay their welcome.

I would say that xenophobia is the natural state of homogeneous populations. Everything different is treated with suspicioun, but not necessarily overt opposition or hatred. Xenophobia only gets used as leverage by politicians to amplify and deflect other issues (such as income inequality) onto other groups. Fix those issues and some latent xenophobia isn't going to turn into problems.

Does that mean Muslims should be discriminated against? Obviously not. However, this is a very blunt way of people trying to protect themselves (even if it's not effective or overreaching).

To wave that off as "racism" isn't really fair.

http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/27/14412420/terrorism-muslim... : "The study found that only 46 Muslim Americans (defined as “Muslims who lived in the US for an extended period”) were linked to violent extremism at home or abroad in 2016. The total Muslim American population is 3.3 million."

and, from https://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2017/01/Kurzman_Muslim-Am... : "The 54 fatalities caused by Muslim-American extremists in 2016 brought the total since 9/11 to 123. More than 240,000 Americans were murdered over the same period."

So, to prevent 46 or so crimes, affecting 54 or so people (say 300 if you think there are large numbers of wounded), we are de facto abrogating the rights of 3.3 million people, plus visitors. Nevermind that terrorism represents only 0.05% of violent crime, that violent crime itself is at its lowest in decades and that we never felt the need to become a surveillance state over said amount of crime. The only reason why people think it reasonable to do so now is that they associate Muslim with terrorist at a visceral irrational level, not because it makes sound logical sense. Hence, racism and xenophobia is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Also keep in mind that, over time, treating any group better both at home and abroad reduces incidence of terrorism from that group. But the point is that the current incidence itself is not anywhere near the point where putting millions under surveillance is worth it.

Wikipedia: "Mateen was born Omar Mir Seddique[6] on November 16, 1986,[7] in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents"

(Similarly, the Bataclan attack was carried out by French/Belgian nationals)

So he was a US-born US national. Not an immigrant or green card holder.

> Does that mean Muslims should be discriminated against? Obviously not.

Yes! Exactly!

> To wave that off as "racism" isn't really fair

.. what? It's discrimination against a group of people by religion-inferred-from-ethnic-origin-or-skin-colour. That's exactly what racism is. It's not "waving it off" at all.

Well, race or nationality. I don't think Trump voters think American citizens will be subjected to authoritarian measures, or should be. They think their in-group is safe.

By making it clear that these issues harm everyone, we can prevent these actions from happening to anyone. People are willing to take away the rights of others, but generally are not willing to sacrifice their own.

I've observed this pattern: 'bad guy' is part of another group? That whole group is bad. 'bad guy' is part of the group of the person speaking: That's just an individual rotten apple, but it does not say anything about all of us.

Or sometimes I think about ditching my GUI Linux for something really basic - same reason why some people stick with dumb phones - now what happens if I hand over full control over my neat z-shell to the TSA? Will he grep around or just consider me dangerous?

It would not surprisee if at some point, if we leave this tyranny unchecked, we will all be forced to hand over our devices while deboarding so they can be scanned while we wait in line for initial interrogation.

Disclaimer: this is all being speculative, of course. I'm not suggesting to lie to or misdirect a border guard in a real-life situation.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/us-customs-is-req...

For the sake of this discussion, replace porn with old passport scans and unimportant banking documents, for example.

Trying to outsmart the border guards essentially makes you a smuggler. Sure you're trying to smuggle your own personal data rather anything nefarious, but either way - you're trying to beat them at their own game, on their own turf, where they have every advantage, constant practice, and effectively get to write their own rules.

Every fantastic example you dream up, you have to pray no-one's thought of it before. The game's rigged.

The only real way to win is to double down on the legal position of such searches.