{"id":330,"date":"2004-09-02T09:48:14","date_gmt":"2004-09-02T14:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=330"},"modified":"2005-01-14T00:48:19","modified_gmt":"2005-01-14T05:48:19","slug":"lets_run_an_nic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/02\/lets_run_an_nic\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Run an NIC on Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine who works for Human Rights Watch has a floor pass to tonight’s show at the convention. I pleaded with her to not get arrested. She emailed me back, unable to understand why everyone kept telling her that. So what is it like being in NYC at the convention right now? I don’t have any way of knowing since I am stuck on the wrong coast, but I am much more interested in what’s happening outside than inside the convention hall. That’s where the real stories are at. Rediff reporter Arun Venugopal gives a pretty interesting first-hand account of his “stupididty”:<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\nDumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.\n
\n
\nThat’s what I was thinking to myself, about myself, as I stood just inside the entrance of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention was taking place. In the space of a few footsteps I had gone from being just another reporter on the job to possible radical activist. Large men in suits, large men likely concealing large guns, hovered around me, asking me questions about my work, my family, my place of residence, recent trips I had made out of town and out of the country. Outside, nearly a thousand protesters had been arrested for civil disobedience and vague rumors of anarchist violence were floating about \u00c2\u2013 I had quite clearly picked the wrong day and place to be carrying anti-war, anti-Bush literature. Dumb.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I almost don’t want to quote any more of this story because its a pretty good read but I will give you one more bit:<\/p>\n\n

\nAfter passing effortlessly through the first few cordons of security, I arrived at a walk-through metal detector, and pulled out everything from my pockets \u00c2\u2013 cell phone, wallet, keys \u00c2\u2013 which I tossed into a little basket on the conveyor belt. The security guard picked up my notebook from the basket and saw the bright yellow anti-war sticker. Why do they have to make those stickers so visible?\n
\n
\n“Woah, woah, what’s this?” he asked, alarmed. He motioned me over and brought me to his superior, who looked at the notebook and brought me to someone else. This man was polite, almost apologetic, but asked me for my social security number, so he could perform some background checks.\n
\n
\n“Let’s do an NIC on him,” he said into the phone, before walking away.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Man. I hope nobody ever NIC’s my ass. Brown reporters seem to have a lot of first hand security stories nowadays<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine who works for Human Rights Watch has a floor pass to tonight’s show at the convention. I pleaded with her to not get arrested. She emailed me back, unable to understand why everyone kept telling her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}