Monday - November 15, 2010

A Line In The Sand

The middle-aged man in the blue shirt spoke gently, but directly, to Tabitha, as if he had done this a thousand times before with 12-year-old girls like her. In words tailored to her understanding, and designed to make what he was about to do seem normal, not creepy, the man in the blue shirt made it clear that if she didn’t do as he instructed she would not get to go to Disneyland. He merely wanted to show another man what was under Tabitha’s blouse and panties. Her refusal was so firm, and her face so alarmed, that he backed off and tried another tactic. If Tabitha would merely stand still while one of the man’s friends touched her body all over (caressing her in ways that no one ever had) then that would be the end of it, and she could go to Disneyland.

If you’re one of those who has basically decided that any indignity is merely the price of safety, consider that so far, it has been airline passengers and on board crews who have prevented tragedy … not the federal government.

It’s time to return the responsibility for flight safety to the airlines and the passengers — who have thus far deployed the only effective countermeasures anyway. It’s time to end the TSA’s strip-and-grope protocol before it becomes so commonplace and accepted that we forget it was ever objectionable. In the memorable words of President Obama (on another topic), it will become “the new normal.”

Having thus submitted to such unconscionable invasion of our bodies and souls, how could we ever rationally draw the line to prevent any sort of federal government encroachment?

A growing pilot and passenger revolt over full-body scans and what many consider intrusive pat-downs couldn’t have come at a worse time for the nation’s air travel system. Thanksgiving, the busiest travel time of the year, is less than two weeks away. Grassroots groups are urging travelers to either not fly or to protest by opting out of the full-body scanners and undergo time-consuming pat-downs instead. Such concerns prompted a meeting Friday of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano with leaders of travel industry groups.

Napolitano met with the U.S.Travel Association and 20 travel companies “to underscore the Department’s continued commitment to partnering with the nation’s travel and tourism industry to facilitate the flow of trade and travel while maintaining high security standards to protect the American people,” the department said in a statement. Federal officials have increased security in the wake of plots attributed to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Industry leaders are worried about the grassroots backlash to Transportation Security Administration security procedures. Some pilots, passengers and flight attendants have chosen to opt out of the revealing scans.

More of the units are arriving at airports, with 1,000 expected to be in place by the end of 2011.

Right, so now you have a choice: either submit to a full body X-ray where some high school dropout gets to gawk at your naked body, or submit to a serious fondling by a total stranger in front of a crowd.

Proper response: Eff off, we’re not flying. Not here, not there, not anywhere. TSA is crap. After spending billions you haven’t caught one terrorist, yet you’ve made tens of millions of innocents suffer and feel degraded. Screw you.

John Tyner won’t be pheasant hunting in South Dakota with his father-in-law any time soon. Tyner was simultaneously thrown out of San Diego International Airport on Saturday morning for refusing to submit to a security check and threatened with a lawsuit and a $10,000 fine if he left. And he got the whole thing on his cell phone. Well, the audio at least.
...
He’d been reading about the scanners and didn’t like them for a number of reasons, ranging from health concerns to “a huge invasion of privacy.”
...
During the next half-hour, his cell phone recorded Tyner refusing to submit to a full body scan, opting for the traditional metal scanner and a basic “pat down”—and then refusing to submit to a “groin check” by a TSA security guard.

He even told the guard, “You touch my junk and I’m going to have you arrested.”

That threat triggered a code red of sorts as TSA agents, supervisors and eventually the local police gravitated to the spot where the reluctant traveler stood in his stocking feet, his cell phone sitting in the nearby bin (which he wasn’t allowed to touch) picking up the audio.

According to TSA at the time the controversial body scanners were installed, travelers would have the option to request walking through the traditional metal detector but that option would be accompanied by a “pat down.”

Why Tyner was targeted for a secondary pat down is unknown.

It’s “unknown” only if you are willfully stupid. Everyone else can see the obvious truth: he balked at the intrusive behavior and so was singled out for punishment. How dare this little sheep resist the shearing?

“Advanced imaging technology screening is optional for all passengers,” TSA said in a statement released Monday. “Passengers who opt out of [advanced imaging] screening will receive alternative screening, including a physical pat-down.”

But anyone who refuses to complete the screening process will be denied access to airport secure areas and could be subject to civil penalties, the administration said, citing a federal appeals court ruling in support of the rule.

Well, no. We do have a choice. And the choice is that we boycott flying. Take the train, take the boat, drive yourself or don’t go. Let the airlines rot. Let them go out of business yet again. (hell, it seems they all file for Chapter 11 every year anyway)

Want to hear stupid? The pilot of that 300 passenger missile has to go through the X-ray screening too. Just in case the guy flying the airplane is trying to sneak in a bomb. Idiots. Didn’t anyone figure out on 9/11 that a jetliner IS a bomb, fare more effective than any pair of underpants filled with PETN?

So let the protests begin. Let the boycotts commence. And let the airlines go to hell. And tell that worthless moonbat witch Napolitano to step the hell off. She’s using the “it’s for your own good” bullshit line, which is even worse than “it’s for the chiiiiildren” crap. Protecting us from an unseen, unnamed enemy, saving us from “man caused disasters”. And yet catching no one, EVER.

As part of our layered approach, we have expedited the deployment of new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) units to help detect concealed metallic and non-metallic threats on passengers. These machines are now in use at airports nationwide, and the vast majority of travelers say they prefer this technology to alternative screening measures.
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All images generated by imaging technology are viewed in a walled-off location not visible to the public. The officer assisting the passenger never sees the image, and the officer viewing the image never interacts with the passenger. The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images.  [do you actually believe that? Hell no!]

I think you could count the time in minutes between some hot famous actress getting a screening and her recognizable image being sold to TMZ or the gossip blogs. Minutes. Maybe only seconds.

Hey government: you can’t take our guns, you can’t take our land (Kelo v. New London be damned), and you can’t take pictures of us undressed. That’s our right, and that’s what digital cameras and Facebook are for. Sod off.

Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA
The Republicans control the House of Representatives and are bracing for a long battle over the President’s health care proposal.  In the spirit of bipartisanship and sanity, I propose that the first thing on the chopping block should be an ineffective organization that wastes money, violates our rights, and encourages us to make decisions that imperil our safety.  I’m talking about the Transportation Security Administration.

Bipartisan support should be immediate.  For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA.  For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

When it comes to protecting against terrorism, this is how things usually go: A danger presents itself; the federal government responds with new rules that erode privacy, treat innocent people as suspicious and blur the distinction between life in a free society and life in a correctional facility; and we all tamely accept the new intrusions, like sheep being shorn.

Maybe not this time.

A lot of people, of course, couldn’t care less if a stranger wants to gaze upon everything God gave them. But some retain a modesty that makes them reluctant to parade naked in front of people they don’t know, even virtually. Henceforth, Jennifer Aniston is going to think twice before flying commercial.

Besides the indignity of having one’s body exposed to an airport screener, there is a danger the images will find a wider audience. The U.S. Marshals Service recently admitted saving some 35,000 images from a machine at a federal courthouse in Florida. TSA says that will never happen. Human experience says, oh, yes, it will.

For the camera-shy, TSA will offer an alternative: “enhanced” pat-downs. This is not the gentle frisking you may have experienced at the airport in the past. It requires agents to probe aggressively in intimate zones — breasts, buttocks, crotches.

If you enjoyed your last mammography or prostate exam, you’ll love the enhanced pat-down. And you’ll get a chance to have an interesting conversation with your children about being touched by strangers.

Reviews of the procedure are coming in, and they are not raves. The Allied Pilots Association calls it a “demeaning experience,” and one pilot complained it amounted to “sexual molestation.” The head of a flight attendants’ union local said that for anyone who has been sexually assaulted, it will “drudge [sic] up some bad memories.”

Join the movement. Take back your right to privacy, take back your dignity, take back your country. Dump TSA and give the airlines back the responsibility for passenger safety. Competition will find an effective, dignified, low-cost solution in a matter of months. And if Red Eye Air’s safety policy is lax and their planes get blown up, they’ll be out of business the very next day.

She described to me that because I had opted out of the backscatter screening, I would now be patted down, and that involved running hands up the inside of my legs until they felt my groin. I stated that I would not allow myself to be subject to a molestation as a condition of getting on my flight. The supervisor informed me that it was a standard administrative security check and that they were authorized to do it. I repeated that I felt what they were doing was a sexual assault, and that if they were anyone but the government, the act would be illegal. I believe that I was then informed that if I did not submit to the inspection, I would not be getting on my flight. I again stated that I thought the search was illegal. I told her that I would be willing to submit to a walk through the metal detector as over 80% of the rest of the people were doing, but I would not be groped. The supervisor, then offered to go get her supervisor.

I took a seat in a tiny metal chair next to the table with my belongings and waited. While waiting, I asked the original agent (who was supposed to do the pat down) if he had many people opt out to which he replied, none (or almost none, I don’t remember exactly). He said that I gave up a lot of rights when I bought my ticket. I replied that the government took them away after September 11th.

No. This has gone too far. Dump this, dump the TSA, dump the Patriot Act, and probably dump Homeland Security. It is time to rise up.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/15/2010 at 01:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Big Brother • FREEDOM •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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