The muckrakers at the Center for Public Integrity teamed up with Disney News to uncover a TERRIBLE, FRIGHTENING THING: electronic parts for our fancy new e-passports are being assembled in Thailand, a nation of “killer” pad thai and also TERRORISM. Why aren’t our e-passports made right here in the safe and secure, chillin’ and grillin’, paintball-playin’ US?
Apparently, the poor decision-makers who lead the U.S. Government Printing Office can’t bring the e-passport parts (or the troops) back home because they’re too busy making handcrafted zines and hanging out with nerdy librarians. They aren’t bothered that “a notorious terrorist extremist” (not Sarah Palin) was captured in the same town as the e-passport factory only seven years ago–just a handful of yesterdays. What’s worse, in May some gunman shot up an insurance building in the same city, and another “Thai-rorrist” set off some bombs.
“The violent episodes hardly registered in the United States,” notes the Center’s and ABC’s report. Perhaps it’s because we were all too busy shooting toddlers for national security purposes.
Apparently, no e-Passport parts have been reported stolen or cloned. Nevertheless, it’s all “extremely troubling,” said former Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, who probably does not dress like Superman at home, on principle. (Maybe he wears this instead?):
“This is just another example of the government’s dragging its feet, year after year, not taking action that they know they should take, in order to make us as safe as we possibly can be,” Ervin said.
At any rate, you can stop worrying about this some day soon: the head of the GPO says the e-passport operation is finally moving from Thailand to Minnesota so that Michele Bachmann’s trained militia can protect the chip thingies. [Center for Public Integrity/ABC News]
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Perhaps Michelle Bachmann’s kids can go to work making them, too. Keep the cost down and it’d be proof we’re free of pesky government regulation, such as child labor laws.
I don’t trust ‘Crazy Eyes’ Bachmann to cook chips, let alone make or assemble such things.
Who knew that outsourcing shit could backfire?
The links aren’t working. However, given the great journalistic integrity shown by ABC News ever since Disney took them over, and since Peter Jennings died and was eventually replaced with a former Nixon shill, I’m sure these concerns are all completely valid and worrisome, and not at all just sensationalistic partisan fearmongering.
First our passports. Then our fluids.
Beware America!
[re=598655]JMP[/re]: Oops, I think they are fixed now? Please retry!
Mr. Kent is right. Why doesn’t the government just put the whole WORLD in a BOTTLE?
[re=598662]Josh Fruhlinger[/re]: Thanks. And yes, sound and fury; the only way the paranoia makes since is if you think there’s some justification to the new computerized Big Brother passports and the harassment ICE gives to foreign tourists to put up a show that makes it seem like they’re doing something to stop terrorists.
How much do you want your passport to cost? One hundred bajillion dollars? Of course they need to be assembled by communist slave labor. Besides no white person can put down their bag of cheetos long enough to bother working for the Government Printing Office anyway.
Blah blah terrorism abroad–but what about that British dude who works as the Head Forwarder at GPO? With his hand-done marbling technique and his capillary attraction he’s a BP plant is what he is.
(Sorry, I’m easily distracted by nerdy zine videos.)
Hey, there is a big concern here; the factory is very close to Bangkok. And what does Bangkok have a lot of? That’s right, prostitutes. And it’s illegal for foreigners who have ever been a prostitute to enter the United States (no really, it’s a very old law that’s still on the books).
Do we really want foreign Thai prostitutes breaking into a factory to still a component that’s used in making US passports, and then somehow using that to illegally enter the US?
Man, if they’re freaked about about chips on passports, we better not tell them where cocaine comes from.
About the only things made in Minnesota these days are lutefisk and heart pace makers. When the pace makers aren’t being recalled we do pretty good work.
the only way “to make us as safe as we can possibly be” is to kill us.
I want Skoalrebel to make ‘em…chip and dip
[re=598673]JMP[/re]: Do we really want foreign Thai prostitutes breaking into a factory to still a component that’s used in making US passports, and then somehow using that to illegally enter the US?
I’m not seeing much of downside to this.
My passport is made in the good ol’ Conch Republic.
[re=598677]SayItWithWookies[/re]: “…we better not tell them where cocaine comes from.”
Or where gasoline comes from.
[re=598653]ManchuCandidate[/re]: When the Army went to berets, it was discovered that shitloads of them were being made in China. Oops!
[re=598683]Monsieur Grumpe[/re]: You can get great military miniatures from there, too. Been to the factory, but I won’t violate protocol and give the link.
[re=598712]JMP & Autoo[/re]: It’s my understanding that those hookers can pick up all kinds of things with their vajayjay’s and squirt them across the room. Better smell your new passport before you pick it up.
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