Ex-LA TSA worker charged, tied to anti-US website

[avaistheone1]

Source: AP

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Authorities are examining a website they say is linked to an arrested airport security screener that contained letters declaring America would be "reduced to nothing" by events "greater than 9/11."

The letters were posted on a website apparently operated by Nna Alpha Onuoha, 29, who was charged Wednesday with one count each of making a false threat and making threats affecting interstate commerce, the day after quitting his job with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport.

The site under investigation includes Onuoha's name and a birth date that matches public records for him. It contains letters celebrating Jesus and Israel, condemning al-Qaida and lamenting that Satan has corrupted so many. There also are photos of Onuoha posing with crosses.

In one posting attributed to Onuoha, he said a message would be released Sept. 11 and America "will be reduced to nothing."


Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TSA_SCREENER_THREAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-12-03-44-23

[paulrandfu]

1. I feel much safer now

if only they could round up a few million T-bagger republicans we could put up a big mission accomplished sign.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. How does the First Amendment fit into this?

This sounds more like crazed, prophetic ranting more than any sort of threat.

Would Nostradamus be arrested in 2013 America?

How about hell and brimstone preachers?

[Peace Patriot]

3. From the information given, this is absolutely a violation of the First Amendment.

It is protected speech. It would be protected speech even if this fellow had written that he WANTS America to be "reduced to nothing." There is a HUGE difference between SAYING such a thing, and ACTING on it. According to the information in the article, he merely stated an opinion. And prophesying, and talking about "messages" and so on, is NOT "terrorism" nor anything even close to "terrorism."

This is the grave danger of NSA spying! In effect, the First Amendment--and a couple of other amendments--are dead. You can be prosecuted for FOR WHAT YOU SAY. Not what you do. What you merely SAY. Prosecuted, charged, convicted, jailed. And, also, before you ever see a courtroom, all your property can be confiscated, through federal and state forfeiture laws--it is used to pay police and prosecutors' salaries these days, and benefits and perks (according to a recent New Yorker investigation)--and will remain confiscated WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE CONVICTED.

Your life can be utterly ruined merely by your SPEECH.

You have a DREAM about another attack on 9/11, and write it up and put it on the internet (dumb you!) and YOU CAN BE ARRESTED, and all of your property confiscated with no recourse, and your life and your rights in shreds.

I suspect that this might be the purpose of this prosecution--to instill fear about what you SAY--and it is absolutely unconstitutional. It is the WHOLE POINT of the First Amendment to prevent this sort of repression and fear.

Besides that, there are all sorts of ways that America can be "reduced to nothing" by our own idiocy--by not paying attention to who is 'counting' our votes these days, by a Fukushima-type disaster (or by Fukushima itself, which is already poisoning the Pacific Ocean), by a nuclear weapons accident, by global warming and the potential social chaos it might cause, by the GMO-izing of our food supply, by all sorts of corporate-created pollutants, by rampant diabetes and dementia, by inadvertent release of some weaponized virus or other toxin from our secret laboratories, by the rest of the world getting fed up with our wars and our bullying and deciding to "isolate" us, by deforestation, by desertification of our farm lands, by another banksters/Wall Street meltdown and fleecing, etc.

Any of these are more likely than a "terrorist" attack or even a military attack to "reduce America to nothing." And we will not be the first empire to have brought about its own demise. Sad--given our Founders' passionate efforts to prevent this very thing--"forever" wars, imperial ambitions, corporate business power, government secrecy, government shredding of our rights--but true. We--or our corporate/war profiteer rulers--are much more likely to "reduce America to nothing" than any of our current "enemies."

"...lamenting that Satan has corrupted so many." Incoherent as this exerciser of his First Amendment rights seems to be, he has a point. But it ain't Satan or any outside agent. The corruption that may lead to our demise is plain old greed and our willingness to be fooled in exchange for trinkets.

It's happened before. It takes no great insight to imagine that it might happen again. And it is neither a "terrorist" act nor a "false threat" to SAY that, even if you use NSA-snooper tags, like a "message" to be released on "9/11." For all we know, he's talking about the Second Coming. Or God's vengeance with massive earthquakes.

To drag all this confused mess into court, ruin the guy's life, try to put him in jail, for such ramblings, is an insult to justice, as well as grossly unconstitutional. It MIGHT have the side-benefit of getting him some help. Off-hand I'd say he needs it. But it has nothing to do with "keeping us safe," and the cost, in yet more damage to the First Amendment, is too great.

It's interesting that a TSA employee went "off the reservation" in this way. Quit his job. Began ranting on the internet. But actually I'm surprised that it doesn't happen more often, given the insulated, "hot house," claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere in our airports--the pressure on these employees, the shitty pay, the abuse they may be subjected to by frazzled passengers or bottom-line bosses. The whole system seems designed to drive its employees crazy (not to mention passengers). It's smoothed out a bit in recent years, but still...I feel like I'm entering a police state, just to take an airplane trip. And if I feel that way, what must the people feel who are steeped in it all day long, who bear the burden of maintaining its "police state" ambience--poorly paid, probably poorly educated and desperate as well, run ragged by some private 'contractor.' And probably terrorized themselves by their nightmares of what could happen, re-enforced by repeated fear-mongering.

Anyway, we're going to see MORE of this. You can't predict America's demise, you can't wish America ill and write "9/11" in the same paragraph, you can't repeat the voices in your head if you are demented or schizophrenic, you can't have a nervous breakdown on the internet--you have to WATCH WHAT YOU SAY and CENSOR IT for NSA trigger words, as every smart terrorist who does intend actual harm will certainly do. Meanwhile, all the rest of us, who mean no harm, must live in fear of the ruination of our lives by using the wrong word or phrase, or "speaking in tongues," or creative writing, or having a bad day in America and speaking your mind about it. And they are not kidding about "ruination"--including SWAT teams kicking in your door, the police taking everything you own, and grabbing your children out of your arms, never to be seen by you again.

Terrorism, plain and simple. Government terrorism--one of the ways that countries and empires destroy themselves.

I am basing this opinion on the facts as stated, and I have to say that I don't trust the Associated Press for reasons other than that they were spied upon. (They are an extremely unreliable news organization.) It would be a far knottier problem than this appears to be, if there is other evidence--besides his reported writing--that this man was actually planning harm or connected to others planning actual harm. Should illegal, unconstitutional spying not be used to ferret out and prevent actual harm, by individuals (one of our many rampaging shooters) or terrorist groups? That is a much longer discussion (about which our Founders had quite a lot to say, not incidentally). What we have found out, thus far, is that every effort to confine government spying to actual harm situations--with the secret FISA courts, for instance--has failed, and the spying has ballooned to the communications of every American and virtually everybody in the world, and is furthermore not contained within some kind of elite, trusted and highly vetted group of spies but is wide open to abuse by corporations, the military, every police agency in the country, every prosecutor, political operatives and subcontractor employees.

I don't know if NSA spying was used in this case (don't know how they came upon his web site), but this case certainly points to the bigger and much more difficult issue. Governments ALWAYS exaggerate threats to gain more and more power. Our Constitution was DESIGNED TO prevent this. That is the basic problem--evaluating the threat of harm vs the loss of basic rights. It is probably useless to discuss this when we, as a people, don't even have the right to vote any more. (It's all now run, basically, by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using their 'TRADE SECRET' code, with NO AUDIT AT ALL in half the states and a miserably inadequate 1% audit in the other half). Absolutely nothing important is decided by "we, the people" and we have no say in important decisions like this. But we can and should still try to understand it all, and speak out, if we are so moved, if, for no other reason, than to remember how to do it.

I don't claim to have the answer on this bigger issue. I think that a lot of others need to be addressed first (like the 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting). Our government has headed, at a very fast pace, toward all the abuses that the Constitution was designed to prevent. How to stop this "military-industrial complex" juggernaut, in all its manifestations, is the problem of the century for the American people.

This is just one small example of it. There are many, many more--much bigger, much worse. We do still have an ACLU and maybe they'll take up this man's cause and win some points (but not before he has been put through legal/police-state hell for something he SAID--something that is even relatively innocuous as words go). Or maybe they won't. They're probably swamped these days. And he will just languish, in ruination or jail or both. There are many, many cases like his, of gross rights violations, plus the extremely difficult larger issues of how to recover our rights and our democracy, and what is the appropriate role of "security"--of the police, of the military and of other "security" phenomena--in a democracy?