Originally posted by: ahurtt
But the firemen or medical personnel still need a reason to be there. . .Like say a fire or a medical emergency. Not like they are just gonna be allowed to go cruising neighborhoods chopping down people's front doors to get a look inside.
Now. . .if an EMT or Fireman responding to a call for help happens to be inside somebody's home during the course of a response to a routine call and happens to notice that the person has "Death to America" posters on their wall and pictures of O.B.L. hanging all over the place or something and decides based on that to call in a tip to homeland security, can you really blame them? It's no different than if it were the UPS guy or the Domino's pizza guy really then is it? Just a concerned citizen calling in a tip. I just wish they could give the same training to everyone, not just firefighters and EMT's.
If people really see something disturbing enough to call in a tip, that's fine...but that's a totally different thing. Actively enlisting amateurs to help spot terrorists is stupid. I don't care what 2 day course these firemen or pizza delivery people have had, spotting terrorists is not their job, and chance are pretty good that "'Death to America' posters" are not going to be hanging on the walls. You really think we need to "train" people to report stuff like that?
Personally, I'd rather the Domino's guy just delivered a pizza instead of informing on everyone like we live in East Germany...he's delivering for Domino's pizza, is he REALLY the guy we want to rely on for this sort of thing? And fireman and EMTs...Jesus Christ, what a fucking brainstorm! Now, instead of doing their job and saving lives, they can draw on their many hours of classroom experience to decide whether or not the house that's burning down is a terrorist hideout, and whether the anti-Bush slogan on the t-shirt of the guy who's going into cardiac arrest is subversive enough to warrant reporting. You enlist amateurs, you get amateur results...especially when those amateurs are professionals in some area that they really should be concentrating on.
If a citizen is really concerned, they'll call in the tip. "Training" them to do so is a sure way to get a lot of useless information, because most people are pretty worthless at that sort of thing.