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TSA to expand use of body scanners. The Transportation Security Administration plans to install 150 security machines at airport checkpoints that enable screeners to see under passengers' clothes. The installation will vastly expand the use of the controversial body scanners, which can reveal hidden bombs and knives. But the devices have been labeled as intrusive by some lawmakers. Is Tougher Airport Screening Going Too Far? The Transportation Security Administration has moved beyond just checking for weapons and explosives. It's now training airport screeners to spot anything suspicious, and then honoring them when searches lead to arrests for crimes like drug possession and credit-card fraud. But two court cases in the past month question whether TSA searches — which the agency says have broadened to allow screeners to use more judgment — have been going too far. 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. TSA Tells Airport Screeners to Stick to Weapons and Explosives. The American Civil Liberties Union has dropped its lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration after the TSA revised its policy on searching travelers, telling screeners they can only investigate transportation-related issues, barring them from seeking evidence of crimes unrelated to air safety. Airport tests scanners detecting more than threats. As [Bruce] Brenneman stood with his arms over his head with his fingers laced, then straight out and shoulder high, he could see the two machines that could rescue him from such searches in the future — at the immodest price of a virtual look under his clothes. Computers, Customs, and You. Without a warrant, probable cause or even the faintest suspicion, US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) may decide to search your computer and all its files, your cell phone, and iPod when you return home from abroad. It offers the usual excuse for eviscerating the Fourth Amendment: "Our ability to inspect what is coming into the United States is central to keeping dangerous people and things from entering the country and harming the American people." Actually, its ability to inspect is harming the American people since Customs' warrantless rummaging sends some victims to prison. Fast-lane airport security service halted abruptly. Customers of Verified Identity Pass are seeking refunds and protection of their personal information after the company abruptly closed down the service that sped passengers through airport security for an annual fee. VIP said it wasn't able to negotiate a deal with its creditors, and its Clear fast-lane security check service stopped operations late Monday. Airport security bares all, or does it? Privacy advocates plan to call on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to suspend use of "whole-body imaging," the airport security technology that critics say performs "a virtual strip search" and produces "naked" pictures of passengers, CNN has learned. Security my butt. If the airline security crackdown on shampoo bottles and toothpaste makes you feel safer about flying, a new airport scanner that will drop your drawers for Big Brother ought to bring bliss in the friendly skies. The federal agency responsible for airline security in this country wants to equip Canadian airports with so-called whole-body scanners that see through clothing, exposing travellers in the buff to screening officers. Forget about emptying your pockets of change and other metal objects. Airport security is about to provide the naked truth. Homeland Security to scan fingerprints of travellers exiting the US. The US Department of Homeland Security is set to kickstart a controversial new pilot to scan the fingerprints of travellers departing the United States. From June, US Customs and Border Patrol w ill take a fingerprint scan of international travellers exiting the United States from Detroit, while the US Transport Security Administration will take fingerprint scans of international travellers exiting the United States from Atlanta. 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? Michael Yon on Misguided Airport Security. Michael Yon has an excellent piece called Border Bullies about a female friend of his, a Thai woman, who was excessively bullied — and then some — by Homeland Security officials at the airport in Minneapolis. Yon, who just returned "from Afghanistan and Iraq on a trip with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates," writes of that his friend's experience illustrates how misguided DHS is at airports. Border Bullies: Knowing that Homeland Security officers are creating animosity and anxiety at our borders does not make me feel safer. How many truly bad guys slip by while U.S. officers stand in small rooms and pick on little women? 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. Flying Without ID? Know What's in Your Files. Fliers who find themselves attempting to fly without identification should prep themselves on what their old addresses were, when their wedding anniversary is and and their children's addresses. Knowing those and other bits of personal information in public records will be key to convincing federal employees to let you past the x-ray machines onto your plane. That's because under new rules from the Transportation Security Administration, travelers who try to fly without identification now have to do more than just let screeners paw through their bags and wand them up and down. 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. Stewardess' Grope Gripe vs. Newark Feds. A veteran flight attendant claims she was groped and poked by a female Transportation Security Administration security officer at a Newark Airport gate — and now she wants the feds to pay. Victoria Coulter, a 30-year vet at American Airlines, said the inspection by Patricia Lamb was "physically invasive, abusive and harassing," according to court papers. Tulsa passengers try out TSA's full-body scanners. The 35-year reign of airport metal detectors began its slow descent this week in Tulsa, where for the first time some passengers are skipping metal detectors. People are instead being screened in a 9-foot-high portal with glass shields that rotate to produce vivid pictures of what is underneath passengers' clothing. 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. Update: Amtrak is not a refuge from warrantless searches. Amtrak conducts major East Coast security search. Amtrak, with other transit agencies and dozens of law enforcement groups, conducted a broad security crackdown Wednesday [9/9/2009] that included random bag searches at train stations along the East Coast including Union Station. Amtrak conducted the major show of force at train stations in Virginia, Maryland and as far as Vermont just two days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 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, 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 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. Back to the Airline Insanity Page. Back to the Home page 
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