Airport Tyranny:
[Scroll down slowly] The bulk of the people hassled by these and other TSA procedures are law-abiding
Americans who have no malicious intentions, along with a few people traveling with drugs and other contraband.
The TSA routinely confiscates about 15,000 items a day from passengers, in addition to the hassle, rudeness and
arrogance. With these kind of costs imposed on the traveling public, I'd like TSA to give an account of
themselves, namely just how many hijackings or bombings they have prevented, along with the evidence.
Americans have been far too compliant and that has given the TSA carte blanche to treat travelers any way
they wish.
The View From
Gate 14: America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a
rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after
a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until
proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. … All the frisking, beeping and patting down
is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in
control, that common sense is yesterday.
Abuse
of Government Power. I never believed that American women, and the men who purport
to protect them from abuse and humiliation, would passively accept the physical pawing and
groping that is taking place in America's airports under the watchful eye of the United
States Government. Before you start to tell me that it is better to be safe than
sorry, let me say this: We can be a lot safer than we are right now without exposing
women in this country to meaningless groping under the guise of security — conducted
by a workforce that has already adequately demonstrated that it can't be trusted to put its
hands inside your luggage, much less your grandmother's underwear.
Why do people put up with this
treatment just to board an airplane?
The
Airport Security Follies: In the end, I'm not sure which is more troubling, the inanity of the
existing regulations, or the average American's acceptance of them and willingness to be humiliated.
These wasteful and tedious protocols have solidified into what appears to be indefinite policy, with little
or no opposition. There ought to be a tide of protest rising up against this mania. Where is
it? At its loudest, the voice of the traveling public is one of grumbled resignation. The
op-ed pages are silent, the pundits have nothing meaningful to say.
Excellent
If Cattle Flew: This
week I flew to Florida and back to give a speech and got another up-close look at how well the Transportation
Security Administration is running the show. And it's clear that no one jokes about TSA screeners
frisking grandma anymore, not because it isn't still happening, but rather because it's not even darkly
funny anymore. … [It was like] East Germany in 1960.
She follows up with this:
That's no way to
treat a lady. I experienced the search not only as an invasion of privacy, which
it was, but as a denial or lowering of that delicate thing, dignity. The dignity of a woman,
of a lady, of a person with a right not to be manhandled or to be, or to feel, molested. Is
this quaint, this claiming of such a right? Is it impossibly old-fashioned? I think it's
just basic. There aren't many middle-aged women who fly who haven't experienced something
very much like what I've described.
Melbourne
Airport scanners 'will show private parts'. Domestic travellers leaving Melbourne Airport over
the next six weeks will be asked to test new security scanners that can see through clothing. Transport
security authorities are trialling the new "X-ray backscatter" body scanner, which has been described by
critics as a "virtual strip search".
Nothing sexy about nude
scans. Airline passengers barely blinked at using a new security scanning system this week that
essentially lets guards peer beneath their clothes, a spokeswoman for Amsterdam's airport said Wednesday.
"People figure, if this is going to let me get through the lines quicker, then I'll do it," spokeswoman
Miriam Snoerwang said.
You will submit, or you won't fly.
Airport Scanners Now
Peer Beneath Clothing. Airports in New York and Los Angeles have become the latest equipped with
body scanners that allow security screeners to peer beneath a passenger's clothing to detect concealed weapons.
The machines, which are about the size of a revolving door, use low-energy electromagnetic waves to produce a
computerized image of a traveler's entire body. Passengers step in and lift their arms. The scans
only take a minute, and Transportation Security Administration officials say the procedure is less invasive
than a physical frisk for knives, bombs, or guns.
Bullies at the Airport. If you traveled
by air … for the Thanksgiving holiday, you undoubtedly witnessed Transportation Security Administration
agents conducting aggressive searches of some passengers. A new TSA policy begun in September calls for
invasive and humiliating searches of random passengers; in some instances crude pat-downs have taken place in
full public view. Some female travelers quite understandably have burst into tears upon being groped,
and one can only imagine the lawsuits if TSA were a private company. But TSA is not private, TSA is a
federal agency — and therefore totally unaccountable to the American people.
[After reading the article above, take a moment to read the dictionary definition of "terrorism" at the top of
this page.]
A New
Form of Homegrown Terrorism: The plan to subject air travelers to the
indignity of having their uncovered bodies peered at by airport screeners in the
quest to find explosives hidden away under clothing is nothing short of insanity.
Smile, you're on millimeter wave
camera. The Transportation Security Administration has purchased a dozen cameras that use
millimeter wave technology and sophisticated algorithms to screen crowds of rapidly moving travelers for
weapons from up to 20 meters away. The SPO threat detection system made by QinetiQ measures waves
"naturally emitted by the human body," exposing "cold" objects such as metal, plastic, or ceramics concealed
under clothing. A red light on the system's display alerts the operator if you're packing, so there's no
need to rely on interpreting images on a screen. It also means no one is ogling your naked body, which
was one of the objections when similar technology was deployed at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport last October.
Jihad
undoes gel-filled bras. Millions of people will now be inconvenienced and discomforted at
airports and on flights around the world, in perpetuity. … Birmingham Airport in England has banned
passengers from boarding with gel-filled bras. … I feel safer knowing that unusually curvaceous women
are being subject to extra security screening. So gel-filled bras are out, and presumably in another year
or two we'll be preventing gel-filled breasts from boarding. This is where we came in five years ago.
Why I Avoid Airports: One
of the consequences of 9/11 has been the across-the-board federalization of airport security. Security
checkpoints have practically become owned subsidiaries of the federal government. The people working in
them have a lot of leeway to do as they please. Vastly more than they should have, under any
circumstances.
Airport security plans called
'disgusting'. Norway's Data Inspectorate, charged with protecting Norwegians' right to
privacy, has branded plans to use revealing new airport security scans as "disgusting." Georg Apenes,
director of the inspectorate known as Datatilsynet, told newspaper Aftenposten on Monday [11/12/2007] that
the revealing scans are "an affront to one's decency."
TSA: Turbans don't have to be removed.
Air passengers will no longer have to remove bulky headwear such as turbans at screening checkpoints if doing so
makes them uncomfortable. A revised federal guideline, effective Oct. 27, gives airport screeners the
option to pat down headwear at the metal detector if a passenger does not want to remove it for personal reasons.
The Editor says...
What if it makes me "uncomfortable" to take off my shoes?
New full-body scan at airports could replace
walk-through metal detectors. The federal government will begin testing a body-scanning machine
that could eventually be used instead of the metal detectors passengers walk through at airports. Tests
were scheduled to begin Thursday [10/11/2007] at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with passengers
pulled out of the security line for secondary screening.
If New Scanner Gets
TSA's Blessing, Travelers Can Keep Their Shoes On. A government lab is testing a "very
promising" new machine that would allow airline passengers to keep their shoes on while going through
security checkpoints, the nation's aviation security chief said Thursday [5/18/2006].
"This Is Not Right". Cecilia
Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of
Sunday is also a suspected terrorist. … She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or
documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph
of the knife. "They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said
what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't
have any'."
Same story:
TSA
to 57-year-old grandma: "At this point you don't have any [constitutional rights]". Cecilia
Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of
Sunday [5/29/2005] is also a suspected terrorist.
I No Longer Understand My
Country. Where are the men in this country who perceive that the
elaborate security measures at the nation's airports cannot accomplish more than to
shift the burden of death to some other Americans at some other time
and place, and who understand that this lifeboat philosophy — don't take me, take
some other American — is both unchristian and conduct unbecoming a man?
A
nation of sheeple. The anti-smoking movement might be the beginning of the softening
up process. They started out calling for reasonable actions like no-smoking sections on
airplanes. Then it progressed to no smoking on airplanes altogether, then private establishments
such as restaurants and businesses. … Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation
Security Administration nonsense. In the name of security, we've allowed fingernail clippers,
eyeglass screwdrivers and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane.
SFPD Officer Accused
of Using Airport Cameras to Ogle Women. A police officer is facing
possible disciplinary action for allegedly using surveillance cameras at San Francisco
International Airport to ogle women as they walked through the terminal, according to
San Francisco Police Commission documents.
Some Women Objecting to
Airport Searches. Women across the nation say the patdowns go too far. Some
are so angry that they have stopped flying altogether. Sommer Gentry, a Massachusetts
Institute of Technology graduate student who commutes twice a month from her home in Baltimore,
said she now takes Amtrak, rather than submit herself to the intrusive airport search. Gentry
said she has had several upsetting encounters with the screeners, and calls the way she was
touched "humiliating and deeply offensive." "I will go to great lengths to avoid flying
now, because patdowns make me feel dirty and ashamed," she said. "It just gets worse
every time. Now I'm afraid."
Editor's Note:
If the general public puts up with this treatment at the airport, it won't be long
before we're all throroughly searched and xrayed when we show up for jury duty, or when
we enter any federal building.
Losing the War for Civil Liberties: It
used to be that Americans packed for air travel with a mental checklist of personal items needed for their
holiday or business engagement: which clothes to bring, shoes, cameras, etc. Today, however, in
the backwash of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mainland, a new and more detailed (often ridiculous)
list of concerns must be considered.
Do
You Fear the Terminal More Than the Flight? So all in all, it was a good
day for me at the airport — I wasn't required to stand in line for very long,
I didn't set off the magnetometer, my carry-on bag wasn't hand-searched, I wasn't required
to remove my shoes and or flip over my belt buckle, and I wasn't patted down. But
best of all, I wasn't selected for the "random" search at the gate where a search team
dumps the contents of your carry-on bags on a table, requires you to assume the same
position that police officers require of suspected felons after an arrest, and be "wanded"
and or patted down by the "random selection security police." Having been excused
from the potential security frustrations that plagued other passengers in the terminal,
I was better able to withstand the food deprivation on my transcontinental flight.
Due Process
Vanishes in Thin Air. Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management
consultant, must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he flies to and
from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get off a government watch list
because he shares the same name as a suspected terrorist. But Asif Iqbal, the
suspected terrorist, is eight years younger than his Rochester namesake. What's
more, the suspected terrorist Iqbal has been in U.S. custody at the U.S. naval base
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since January 2002 when he was captured in Afghanistan.
Walter Williams leads the rebellion against Airport
safety regulations: Secretary of Transportation
Norman Y. Mineta — Czar Norman — has ordered
new, ill-thought-out, oppressive airline regulations in the
wake of recent terrorist attacks. Among them: a ban on knives — plastic
or steel — anywhere in the airport and on airplanes, even in kitchens, no curbside
check-in, restricted carry-on luggage, no visitors beyond security checkpoints
and who knows what else.
Airport forces girl to remove fake
limb. Australia's tallest female basketball player says she was humiliated when forced to prove
her right leg was a prosthesis in front of dozens of other horrified airline passengers.
Plan
to snoop on fliers takes intrusion to new heights: The government now is
proposing to take screening to an unprecedented level of intrusiveness: rifling
through extensive commercial and government data on all air travelers without their
knowledge or permission and using the information to assign each flier
a security-risk ranking.
Rebellion
at the Airport: I led a revolt against airport security
yesterday. They've had it coming. I'll wait longer in line in order to keep the
airplane safe. I'll submit to having my less than fresh boxer briefs fluffed on
the return trip by someone named Delbert who couldn't spot a shank if it was stuck
in his porkchop gut. I'll have my luggage x-rayed, my belt buckle checked and
re-checked by unusually interested minimum-wage rent-a-cops, my children patted
down while swarthy young men named Mohammed board unmolested.
Great-Grandmother
Strip-Searched at Airport: The daughters of an 80-year-old
great-grandmother said Tuesday [7/2/2002] that their mother was strip-searched at
Gerald R. Ford International Airport after her knee replacement set off
metal detectors.
Something in the air at Bush?
With several puffs, a new device at the airport screens travelers for explosives.
Making
Citizens the Enemy: Seasoned travelers have concluded that the real
purpose of U.S. airport "security" is to establish a precedent for unreasonable
and warrantless searches. By making citizens the enemy, the suspension of
civil liberties that is imposed on air travelers can be extended to pedestrians,
motorists, and people in their homes and hotel rooms. Terrorists can endanger
some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the
Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by
arbitrary government power?
A U.S.
Police State? I've experienced my share of hassles with incompetent,
power-intoxicated airline screeners. But this experience really frightened me. It
heralded the very real specter of a police state in America, something I would
have thought impossible less than a year ago.
Airport Security: Groping for Guidelines
(CNSNews.com) - At the airport, when does a
"screening" become a grope? A growing number of women say they know a grope when
they get one, and they're taking their complaints to the Federal Aviation
Administration. According to press reports, dozens of women accuse male security
screeners of improperly touching them in the course of random body searches, or "pat
downs." Under current policy, female travelers may ask for a female screener to
perform the pat-down, but federal law does not require airlines to provide a same-sex screener
for that purpose. After the recent flurry of complaints, that may change,
however. Right now, the FAA is sending the complaints to the individual airlines,
which are responsible for disciplinary measures involving screeners.
National
Guardsman orders reporter to destroy photos at L.A. airport: R.V. Scheide,
a long-time free-lancer for the Sacramento
News & Review, was questioned by the California National
Guard, FBI and Los Angeles Police Department, and held
for three hours at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on October 12.
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