Authorities Arrest Men With NYC Maps, Videos

Someone from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority sent out an email to everyone that works at the airport with this story. The email had this posted above a copy of the story:

CONSTANT VIGILANCE & SECURITY AWARENESS REQUIRED ‘24/7’
See Event NEWS
Below

Here at the airport they are definatly worried about this sort of thing, and I suppose rightly so, but after thinking about it for a while I began to see how dumb or missleading this article can be.

Now, I must admit that immediatly after seeing this article I felt a little bit relieved the men were arrested, and scared for what they had planned. But then I began to realise, in a post-9/11 world, I was just sensationalizing the story because of my predisposed American affinity for hatred and fear of terrorists. Lets look at the facts:

• First of all, the men were four illegal immigrants and a law enforcement fugitive, and so they deserved to be arrested.
• They had in thier possession NYC subway maps (not mentioned what kind), video of New York Landmarks (not mentioned the quality or nature of the video), and lots of cash.
• One claimed to be a street vender, 2 brothers lied about there being 3 other men in the apartment, and they all claimed to be unemployed civil or chemical engineers.
• The FBI did not link them to a terror network yet, but the men could still not explain the iteams in their possession or reasons for being in the US.

That last point in crucial, and I skipped over it on my first read through the article. They were not accused of being terrorits, and are being deported for being illegal immigrants, not for ties to a terrorist network. When I read the email and realised I was mearly giving into fear by assuming they were terrorists and some kind of attack was just averted, I tried to research the story. I found that ABC news seems to be the only agency reporting the 'story'. That made it nearly impossible to get any more facts.

As such, I could not be sure what kind of subway maps they had. Basic route maps would probably be no good except for getting from place to place. The civil or mechanical drawings from constuction might be another issue that goes beyond them being tourists. Then money, being $8000, seems like a lot, but I know there are people that carry lots of cash around, especially when touring other countries, because of exchange rates and such, so this lead may not be anything. As for the video, how many people a year take video of New York landmarks? Millions! A big chunk of the economy there is based on tourism, so a guy with a camera is a common occurance. So you see, the actual content of the video is what matters, what is the commentary like, what kind of things are they stressing as subjects in the film, etc.

There was a good discussion going on at this forum debating the merits of this story and the possibilities. There seems to be an even split between people are scared and people who believe it might all just be coinsidence. Then there are people like myself that think it could be nothing or it could be something, but the important thing is to realise that by fearing it we are in fact just giving into the reign of fear the terrorists are trying to instill in the first place! There is a difference between terrorists and tourists, there is also a difference between being safe and being paranoid. They were illegal, so deport then. Then give me more information about what they had in their possession and whether it appears they were indeed planning something. Until then, I will assume the police did a good job keeping illegal immigrants out, and the media (once again) did a poor job informing us about the facts of the story and twisted it to sensationalize it.

If anyone has any other information on this story, I'd like to hear it so I can better decide what to think. I have kind of lost hope in the Patriot Act at this point, and I kind of hope no one uses this story as a reason to renew the Patriot Act without further information.