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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Tulsi Gabbard, a former US congresswoman and presidential candidate, revealed that she and her husband were placed on a terror watch list and followed by government agents under the "Quiet Skies" program, almost completely uncovered in US media:

https://www.racket.news/p/american-stasi-tulsi-gabbard-confirms

I just read that story, too; since mods are asking for context, let me help out with that.

"Quiet skies" is a TSA program that's basically the kinder, gentler version of the Bush-era no-fly list. Instead of outright stopping suspected terrorists from getting on airplanes, now they send plainclothes air marshals to ride along and keep an eye on things, possibly with the aid of bomb-sniffing dogs, keeping all of this hidden from the suspect and other passengers. Here is a post from the official TSA blog from 2018 explaining it, and comparing it to the practice of having police officers hang around crime hotspots to cool things down: https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2018/08/22/facts-about-quiet-skies

Recently, some employees of this program have come forward with claims that Trump supporters, including but not limited to Tulsi Gabbard, were put on this list and monitored whenever they flew, for political reasons. This has not yet been reported in any mainstream publication as far as I can tell; all the Google results I got were from small-time independent sources and Twitter posts. It's also unclear exactly what criteria were used - it seems the list also included individuals who went to Washington on Jan 6 but were never charged with any crime.

This seems kind of... fine? It's not a "do not fly" which creates real and tangible problems, it's rather at worst a waste of government money, right? The program description also mentions that very much unlike the Bush-era program, they take at least some people off the list after a while. If Gabbard temporarily has a few ride-alongs, maybe she gets to be outraged personally for a little while but it doesn't seem like she suffers any actual, uh, harm?

It's an improvement.

Next step, expand it to all flights.

Then, roll back the airports to the status quo ante, getting rid of the 'security' that can't find their own tuchus with both hands, a map, a GPS receiver, and a pack of bloodhounds.