Abusive and Invasive Searches


It's understandable that people should be allowed aboard an airliner only if they are not carrying weapons.  And it's a shame that there are people out there who want to make a name for themselves by blowing up airplanes or crashing them into buildings.

But isn't it possible to accomplish some reasonable level of security without treating everyone like felony suspects?  Isn't it time to admit that there are some people who are obviously harmless and others who are obviously suspicious?  Is it wrong to be able to discern one from another?  Since one hundred percent of the people involved in terrorist attacks on airplanes have been Muslims, isn't that where all the attention should be focused?


Harassing Air Travelers OK — But Not Illegal Aliens.  When Senator Rand Paul was detained by Transportation Security Agency (TSA) airport security agents on his way to Washington D.C. to address the Right to Life March, the Obama Administration stood behind the agency's actions.  It always does.  Last year, it defended an intense public pat-down of a 6 year old girl as "following proper screening procedures".  In 2009, the TSA forced a 4 year old severely disabled child to remove his leg braces and walk through a scanner without assistance.  Numerous other similar examples can be found.

Rand Paul's airport run-in raises alarm over scanner accuracy.  A growing number of high-profile cases — two in Nashville — are calling into question both the accuracy of the millimeter wave scanning machines and the appropriateness of the pat-downs used when the machines go off or when travelers refuse the body scans.  Most recently, Paul was stopped here when the machines apparently detected something on his knee — something he said should have been dismissed once he pulled up his pant leg.

10 of the Most Outrageous TSA Horror Stories:  The people employed by the Transportation Security Administration, commonly referred to as "agents," as though they were educated professionals such as the men and women deployed by the FBI, are all-too-often little more than minimum-wage thugs.  They frequently harass innocent travelers, leaving them feeling insulted, molested, humiliated and degraded past the point that any law-abiding citizen should have to endure.

Neither liberty nor safety.  Consider the list of Obama's assaults on liberty.  Any one of these done by a Republican President would bring down the wrath of the Left.  Done by Obama, the action is noted in the Obama reelect media for a single news cycle and then dropped.  Obama's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is more arrogantly intrusive than ever.  The Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable" searches and seizures has been repealed at your local airport.  Rep. John Mica, who authored the TSA legislation, observes that the unionized TSA now strip-searching grannies and detaining Senators bears little resemblance to his original idea.

The TSA: Ruining Lives Over Forgetfulness.  You probably don't consider these folks terrorists or anything close.  No rational person would.  For that we need the TSA. ... Our Rulers incarcerate the innocent solely because they can.

A Grope A Day Keeps Osama Away.  Compare this with a traffic stop.  A motorist has the name and badge number of the officer and local number to call if there's a complaint.  If worse comes to worst, often you have the video from the dashboard camera to review.  TSA has none of this.  TSA employees have assumed the trappings of law enforcement without any of the training or responsibility.  Consider the evolution of TSA uniforms.  From the original white shirt with no badge we now have a blue uniform with a shiny gold badge, indistinguishable from that of a real police officer.  Yet TSA guards lack the training of even a rural policeman.

TSA wastes $1.2 billion a year and causes 1,200 unnecessary deaths annually.  The TSA is rapidly becoming the #2 most hated government agency in the world, behind the IRS. ... They randomly call travelers out of line and insist they go through the full-body scanners.  It is clear that TSA is pushing the X-ray machines to test the American willingness to comply.  The TSA is gradually shifting to the full-body scanners (X-ray machines), where travelers symbolically raise his hands in compliance, as if they are saying, "I surrender to the TSA."  I'm always amazed how the vast majority of Americans simply comply.

Rand Paul stopped by TSA after body scan anomaly.  Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was blocked from boarding a flight Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.  "I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely," Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said.  "The image scan went off; he refused patdown."

TSA agents put bull's-eye on U.S. senator.  The controversy over the Transportation Security Administration's invasive scanned images and pat-downs of travelers was reignited today when screeners in Nashville detained Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., while he was en route to Washington.  Local television stations reported that Nashville International Airport authorities detained the U.S. senator when he refused to submit to a pat-down.

TSA's intrusions undermine security.  Today [1/23/2012], while en route to Washington to speak to hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Life, I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan.  Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity.  I refused. ... Let me be clear:  I neither asked for nor expect any special treatment for being a U.S. senator.  In fact, this case is not about me at all.  This is about every single one of us and how we are sick of the intrusive nature of our government.  While sitting in the cubicle, I thought to myself, have the terrorists won?  Have we sacrificed our liberty and our dignity for security?

They knew who Rand Paul was.
 Rand Paul's Stand Against the TSA.  The TSA didn't just "detain" Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Monday:  it showed us another of the agency's many uses to Our Rulers.  Not only does it teach the serfs their place in the police-state — utter submission, even to sexual assault and irradiation — it's also a ready weapon against political enemies.

Sorry about that: TSA apologises for strip-searching TWO grandmothers at JFK.  The TSA has finally apologised to two grandmothers who were strip-searched at JFK airport.  Wheelchair-bound Ruth Sherman, 89, was asked to pull down her trousers to show her colostomy bag as she prepared to fly out of the New York airport over the Thanksgiving holidays.  This incident came a week after Lenore Zimmerman, 85, says she was strip-searched after telling agents she didn't want to go through a metal detector because she has a defibrillator.

It's bully government, not nanny.  President Obama may be the Nanny King, but he took the crown from the Man Who Gave Us TSA.  George Walker Bush was the president who green-lighted making people walk through those body scanners — or else!  TSA is not about protecting us.  If it were, TSA would be stealth about it.  TSA would target terrorist suspects, follow them and nail them to the wall when the terrorist acted.  That is good police work.  But the purpose of TSA is to dissuade the middle class from flying.  The TSA exists now to limit freedom of movement.  The price of an airline ticket now includes standing in line for an hour to be humiliated.  Everything is now for security reasons.

For 2012, TSA expands to train stations, ferry docks, subways.  The Transportation Security Administration had quite a year of free publicity in 2011, including headline-grabbing news of agents groping grandmas, fondling supermodels, joking about passengers' "junk" while virtually disrobing them and pilfering possessions from luggage.  In 2012, the agency is planning to expand its operations at train stations, subway stations, ferry docks and other transportation hubs.

Smacking down TSA.  Frequent travelers know better than anyone that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) needs serious reform.  The agency spends $7.7 billion in taxpayer money every year, and it hasn't nabbed a single terrorist.  With no track record of success, TSA Administrator John S. Pistole and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assure us that groping grandma and photographing young children in the nude is somehow going to discourage terrorism.  Many experts have raised concerns regarding the wisdom of funneling millions of innocent passengers through unregulated and untested X-ray devices, but no TSA technology can be questioned without Mr. Pistole and Big Sis falling back on the "it's classified" dodge.  Their message is, "Trust us, we know what we're doing."

Obama vs. The Constitution:  [Scroll down]  Of course, anyone flying on a commercial airline knows what has happened to the Fourth Amendment.  For months, Americans have been groped, prodded, harassed and photographed through their clothing by agents of the TSA.  Despite protests by average Americans, the intrusive searches continue.  To be fair, this practice did not start under Obama, but they are continuing, and are only getting worse.  Now, the TSA is considering the same practices for boats, trains, and other forms of public transportation.

New FBI Rape Definition Could Aid in Fight Against TSA Groping.  Opponents of the Transportation Security Administration's invasive pat-downs of airline passengers may be on the verge of obtaining a new weapon for their fight.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation is considering changing its definition of rape in a way that could criminalize TSA agents' groping of passengers' private parts.

Ending the TSA Tyranny.  Every other day, it seems, there's a new story about some fresh outrage perpetrated by the TSA, the "Transportation Security Administration," i.e., the government busybodies who get their kicks patting down grandma while pretending to keep the skies safe from terrorists.  Just today, Instapundit reports that a teenager was stopped at the security gate in Norfolk because her purse sported the design of a gun on its side.  "By the time security wrapped up the inspection," we read, "the pregnant teen missed her flight, and Southwest Airlines sent her to Orlando instead, worrying her mother, who was already waiting for her to arrive at JIA."

85-year-old woman may sue TSA after being strip searched at JFK Airport.  An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday [11/29/2011] by agents at JFK Airport.  Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.  "I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist," she said sarcastically.

Ruth Sherman, 88, says she was strip-searched at JFK Airport just like Lenore Zimmerman, 85.  A second elderly woman claims she was humiliated in a strip-search by Transportation Security Administration agents at Kennedy Airport.  Ruth Sherman, 88, told the Daily News on Monday that she felt "degraded" after screeners at the JetBlue terminal took her to a private area to check the bulge from her colostomy bag.  "They made me pulled [sic] down my sweatpants and my underwear," the Sunrise, Fla., widow said.

2nd elderly woman objects to TSA search at JFK.  Two women in their 80s put the Transportation Security Administration on the defensive this week by going public about their embarrassment during screenings in a private room at Kennedy Airport.

3rd woman claims TSA strip search.  A third woman has complained that she faced an intrusive security search at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.  Linda Kallish, of Boynton Beach, Fla., has diabetes and had her glucose monitor and insulin pump attached when she went through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at New York's JFK Airport over Thanksgiving.  She told WSVN-TV, Miami, she was strip searched in a manner similar to what allegedly occurred to 85-year-old Lenore Zimmerman and 88-year-old Ruth Sherman.

Now Three Grandmas Say They Were Strip-Searched at JFK.  Two more elderly women with medical conditions have come forward claiming they were strip-searched by Transportation Security Administration [TSA] agents at JFK Airport on Nov. 29, bringing to three the number of senior passengers who allege they were forced to remove their clothes at the New York airport last Tuesday [11/29/2011].

Nobody will be fired, of course, but the TSA is terribly sorry.
 TSA admits wrongdoing in JFK granny searches.  In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.  Federal officials had initially insisted that all "screening procedures were followed" after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.

Autumn Adventures through Airport Security.  With Thanksgiving and other holiday travel on the horizon, get ready once again for a groping good time going through airport security.  Flying to New York City from Pittsburgh a couple of Mondays back, I was subjected to a truly hands-on experience from a TSA agent.  Ahead of me in two separate lines — one for first-class passengers, the other for those of us in steerage — were two different screening devices.  For first class, the passengers were directed through that metal detector cleverly disguised as a doorframe; for the rest of us, there was the dreaded full-body scanner.

Jesse Ventura's latest anti-TSA tirade not helpful.  For more than a year now, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been using invasive methods to search airline passengers as part of the so-called "war on terrorism."  To many Americans, such tactics constitute a clear assault on our civil liberties, and some have decided not to sit by idly.  Not surprisingly, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is among this group.

Officials From Terror-Sponsoring State 'Exempted From Enhanced Screening' by TSA.  While six-year-old girls and retired school teachers with bladder cancer were subjected to intrusive pat-downs by Transportation Security Administration officials at U.S. airports after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate his underwear on a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas 2009, officials from Sudan — one of just four countries the State Department lists as a state sponsor of terrorism — were "exempted from enhanced screening" at airports, according to a State Department cable obtained by CNSNews.com.

Final Implementation Phase of Obama Formal Dictatorship has Begun.  After extensive testing to see how far employees of Obama's perverse TSA (Transportation Security Administration) would go with their sexual groping of even small children, Obama has now seen that they will do virtually anything they are tasked to do and "The One" has judged them worthy of the questionable honor of checking for US citizens' papers on US highways, buses, trains and wherever else the now official dictator-in-chief decides he wants to exhibit his power and control over the American people.

You Can Leave Any Time You Want.  [Scroll down]  I speak of the decision by the Obama administration to purchase from former members of the Bush administration so-called back-scanner X-ray machines for use at airports.  These devices, which cannot detect small amounts of plastic explosive on the skin or anything, plastic or metal, hidden in a body cavity, nevertheless give the false impression of enhancing the safety of the flying public because of the lurid, graphic, even pornographic nature of the digital images they produce.  The government, in order to induce the public into a sheep-like, dazed-infused, knee-jerk acceptance of the porn scanners, offered an alternative even more invasive, unconstitutional, and odious:  a public zipper-opening, blouse-removing, groping-your-private-parts alternative.

TSA employee charged with 'lewdness with a child'.  A city officer arrested a Spring Creek man Wednesday morning at the Elko Area Regional Airport, where he works for the Transportation Security Administration, on a warrant charging six counts of lewdness with a child.  The Elko County Sheriff's Office was notified in July of possible sexual contact between David Ralph Anderson, 61, and a girl younger than 14.

It's Time to Dismantle the TSA.  On a recent flight from Aspen to Denver, a long-time local woman with a very obvious disability was greeted by a large number of people in the security line.  She was so popular it turned out that one of the TSA employees recognized her as well.  But that didn't stop them from putting her through the most horrific ordeal of a full-body search and pat-down.  You couldn't help but feel both distress for this person and contempt for the whole airport security process.

Judge allows flier to sue two TSA screeners.  A federal judge in Richmond ruled Tuesday that a lawsuit could move forward against two airport security screeners who had a college student arrested after he stripped to a pair of running shorts to protest what he felt were unconstitutionally intrusive search procedures.  The student, Aaron Tobey, had used a black marker to display a portion of the Fourth Amendment on his bare chest.

Ten TSA Outrages.  Since its creation in 2001, the Transport Security Administration has repeatedly walked a fine line between vital vigilance and gratuitous intrusion. Security expert Bruce Schneier famously referred to the current system as bordering on "security theater," in which the measures taken are more officious than efficient.  This tendency toward such blunt theatrics has only been magnified by the "enhanced screening procedures" introduced in November 2010.  Ron Paul, ever the champion of the individual, described the new system as "appalling" and "abusive."  There is no doubt that many of those who have fallen afoul of its excesses would agree.

Assault by TSA.  [Scroll down]  A couple of burka-clad passengers were waved through from the line behind me; nobody touched them or x-rayed them.  Here I was, waiting to be sexually touched and violated in front of dozens of people.  I did not want to go to a private room, I was afraid for my safety.  I did not wear loose clothing, just Capri pants and a fitted shirt.  There was obviously nothing that I was hiding beneath my clothes.  As I clearly recall, most of the recent terrorist acts and failed attempts involving aviation were committed by Muslims or converts to Islam, not middle-aged women in modern clothes.

TSA apologizes after screeners confiscate diabetic pregnant woman's insulin: report.  The Transportation Security Administration apologized to a diabetic pregnant woman after she claimed she wasn't able to bring her insulin and ice packs through a security checkpoint at Denver International airport.

TSA to put Hub fliers on the spot.  Boston's TSA screeners — part of a security force whose competency has come under fire nationwide — soon will be carrying out sophisticated behavioral inspections under a first-in-the-nation program that's already raising concerns of racial profiling, harassment of innocent travelers and longer lines.

TSA readying new behavior detection plan for airport checkpoints.  The federal government is planning to introduce new behavior detection techniques at airport checkpoints as soon as next month, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole said Thursday [7/28/2011].  TSA already has "behavior detection officers" at 161 airports nationwide looking for travelers exhibiting physiological or psychological signs that a traveler might be a terrorist.

TSA agent 'squeezed' my urostomy bag, got urine all over me.  A bladder cancer survivor says he was left drenched by his own urine after he was manhandled by an arrogant airport screener at the Detroit Metro Airport.  Even more galling for 62-year-old Thomas Sawyer is that it's the second time in less than a year that this has happened to him — and he's not settling for another apology from the Transportation Security Administration.

Government pornography ring.  Travelers across the country are being forced into contraptions that use a form of radiation to peer beneath the clothing of passengers.  Currently, TSA agents ogle these snapshots from the privacy of a secluded location.  Under the new scheme, the machine will still perform the electronic strip search, but only a computer algorithm will be allowed to enjoy the peep show.  In theory, software will examine the pictures and flag areas of potential interest.  It's up to the flying public to trust that the devices will not save the underlying pornographic images that will still be taken.  Given the agency's history of deceiving the public, such trust would be misplaced.

The right to take pictures at security checkpoint is debated.  Mind your camera when you're traveling this summer.  Taking an innocent snapshot in a public area may get you in trouble, even if photography is allowed.  It almost landed Ryan Miklus behind bars when he flew from Phoenix to Reno, Nev., with his parents recently.  When Miklus tried to videotape an altercation between his mother and a TSA agent, another officer tried to stop him.  "You are not allowed to film," the officer says on the video.  "You need to go.  You cannot film us."

More about videotaping the police.

Donald Rumsfeld gets a TSA pat down.  They have subjected babies and the elderly to controversial full body searches at airport security.  And now the TSA has shown that no one is immune to the probing hands of its agents including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

TSA's Body Scanners Are Constitutional, Federal Appeals Court Rules.  The public should have had the chance to raise concerns about full body scanners before the government put them in airports around the country, a federal appeals court said Friday [7/15/2011].  But now that the machines are there, the government doesn't have to stop using them.

Top 10 Most Egregious Government Regulations.  [#4]  TSA abuse:  Whoever is writing the regulations for the Transportation Security Administration needs to lighten up.  TSA officials think they are making the skies safe by patting down infants and grandmothers in wheelchairs, while giving travelers the option of being subjected to harmful radiation or on the receiving end of sexual abuse.  There are plenty of other ways to ensure safety, like profiling young to middle-age male travelers from the Middle East.

Woman Gropes TSA Agent's Breast at Security Checkpoint.  We hear a lot of complaints about security screeners groping airline passengers.  But now, a Colorado woman is accused of putting her hands on a TSA agent at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.

Prosecutor says no charges filed in groping case.  The Maricopa County Attorney's Office says that no charges have been filed against a Colorado woman arrested on suspicion of groping a female Transportation Security Administration agent in Phoenix.

94-year-old upset by TSA pat down.  A 94-year-old wheelchair-bound Florida woman says a search she went through at Raleigh/Durham International Airport went too far.  Marian Peterson said it happened July 6 as she went through a TSA security checkpoint before boarding a flight home.

Mom jailed for raging on TSA agents over daughter's pat down.  An overprotective mom's trip from Nashville to Baltimore took a brief detour to the slammer.  Andrea Fornella Abbott, 41, was arrested at Nashville airport after she went wild on Transportation Security Administration agents for trying to give her daughter a pat down search.

New Port Richey couple says TSA search went too far.  "It was extremely thorough, almost a violation, "says Jason Steitler as he describes how a TSA official searched him at the Greater Rochester International Airport July 6th.  Steitler's disability requires he uses a wheelchair.

Police charge mother in Nashville airport altercation.  A 41-year-old Clarksville woman was arrested after Nashville airport authorities say she was belligerent and verbally abusive to security officers, refusing for her daughter to be patted down at a security checkpoint.

Surrendering our freedoms one grope at a time.  Sadly, our government, which was founded on liberty and tasked with "providing for the common defense," is slowly being taken down by deluded notions of political correctness while it bestows equal rights on our enemies.  Common sense — and our safety — are being sacrificed.

The TSA's tentacles spread.  It's eight months now since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) abandoned its last pretence of respect for America's constitutional principles, by mandating no traveller may fly in American airspace unless TSA agents first see and/or feel said traveller's genitalia.  That's not hyperbole, just a straightforward description of American law playing out in airports every day.  And given America's vast size, lack of mass transit and Americans' generally short vacations from work, flying is often the only feasible way US citizens can travel from points A to B.  Yet our government has decreed every such flyer submit to search procedures previously associated with playground-haunting paedophiles and prison rapists.

TSA Continues To Harass Tots and Seniors.  Clearly, President Obama is not inclined to step up and rein in the TSA or its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.  And thus far, TSA has resisted efforts by the Congress — especially the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, headed by California Republican Darrell Issa — to consider any reasonable limitations on the agency's vast power over law-abiding citizens.  Whether citizens of this country will arise from their fear-based stupor to declare that "enough is enough," and demand they stop being treated like common criminals simply because they need to travel by air, remains to be seen.  Thus far, despite occasional public revulsion at individual incidents, the fear mongerers are winning.

TSA still lacks common sense.  Each time one of these embarrassing incidents happens, the TSA insists it was only following "rules and procedures."  But since the TSA devises the rules and procedures, that's no explanation at all.  The problem with this security overkill against passengers is that it brings the whole screening process into disrepute.

Does your laptop have rights?  For many airline passengers, carrying a laptop or smartphone through security is as familiar a part of the travel ritual as removing their shoes.  But for travelers arriving in the United States from other countries, the process is not always so simple; thousands have had their electronic devices not just screened but confiscated, and sometimes not returned for months.

Texas lawmakers pass airport groping bill.  Texas lawmakers gave their initial backing Monday [6/27/2011] to legislation that would criminalize intentional, inappropriate touching during airport security pat-downs, but it was so watered down it provoked angry outbursts from conservative activists, who decried it as toothless.

Texas lawmakers let pat-down ban die.  Texas lawmakers adjourned their special session Wednesday without passing a ban on Transportation Security Administration pat-downs, to the dismay of staunch conservative critics of the agency.

Bias alert:
 "Staunch" is an adjective obviously chosen to imply extremism.

Rage against the TSA machine.  [Scroll down]  "TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability."  That's apparently why Drew Mandy, a 29-year-old disabled man with the mental capacity of a 2-year-old, had his 6-inch plastic toy hammer yanked from him by TSA on his way to Disney World.  Mandy used the hammer as a security blanket of sorts.  But the TSA agents insisted it could be used as a weapon.  "It just killed me to have to throw it away because he's been carrying this, like, for 20 years," Mandy's father told WJBK in Detroit.  What his dad doesn't understand is that if Islamic terrorists can't have plastic toy hammers, no one can.

How many Muslims waltzed onto their planes while this was going on?
 TSA Forces 95-year-old Woman to Remove Diaper.  The Transportation Security Administration stood by its security officers Sunday [6/26/2011] after a Florida woman complained that her cancer-stricken, 95-year-old mother was patted down and forced to remove her adult diaper while going through security.

TSA defends decision to make 95-year-old cancer patient remove adult diaper.  The Transportation Security Administration doesn't think its agents did anything wrong in asking an elderly woman with cancer to remove her adult diaper during an aiport security screening.  The agency came under fire after Florida woman Jean Weber claimed her 95-year-old mother was forced to take off her diaper for a pat down at the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport last weekend.

TSA Obergropinfuhrer of the Day.  There is a term for regimes that submit law-abiding wheelchair-bound dying nonagenarians to public humiliations without probable cause and it isn't "republic of limited government."  Given everybody's touchiness over Kathryn's North Korean comparisons, I'll say only this:  George III wouldn't have done this to you.  Amy Alkon posts a response from a bureaucratic bozo to her own experience at the airport.  Caution for sensitive types:  The word "labia" is included.  But that's because in 21st century America the anatomical feature "labia" are included in a trip to the airport and that's what should concern you.

Someone Should Be Pistole-Whipped.  I always refuse to put my wallet through the x-ray machine.  When they ask me to, I say no I won't, then whip out a news clipping of the latest arrest of TSA thieves, and tell them they can't be trusted.  Then I let them do a manual inspection in front of me.  Etc.  A couple weeks ago the head of the TSA, John Pistole, told a congressional oversight hearing that the TSA sometimes goes "too far," and that they'd try to use a little more common sense.  So is making a 95-year old, cancer-stricken woman remove her adult diaper using more "common sense"?

TSA policies need makeover.  In the most stunning of the recent incidents, a sick 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair had to remove her adult diaper to get through airport screening.  It is but the latest shameful example of the Transportation Security Administration's wrong-headed approach to safety.  The TSA's lame response to the incident boiled down to an assessment that officials acted within protocol. ... And officials contend she didn't have to remove the undergarment, neglecting to add that if she hadn't she would not have gotten on the plane.  That's some choice.

Sen. Rand Paul tells TSA to end random pat-downs.  Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul told the Transportation Security Administration today [6/22/2011] that it should end what he called the "universality of insult" of random pat-downs of passengers.  In a meeting of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Paul grilled TSA Administrator John Pistole over the recent pat-down of a six-year-old Kentucky girl, a video of which went viral over the Internet.

Perry to TSA: Don't mess with Texas' junk.  [Governor] Perry announced today [6/21/2011] that he will reintroduce a bill in the state legislature that would make TSA's "enhanced pat-downs" illegal in Texas.

TSA Now Storming Public Places 8,000 Times a Year.  Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags.  And they better decide quickly.  Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

Dude, Where's My Freedom?  The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is already a national joke for groping grandmothers and babies.  Yet when tested with fake bombs and real guns, they've failed miserably.  Indeed, it was the passengers who stopped the would-be bomber in Detroit of Northwest Airlines flight 253, not the TSA — a classic example of what blogger Glenn Reynolds calls "An Army of Davids."  Americans have surrendered their freedoms (and their dignity) to the TSA for a sham "security theater" rather than genuine security.  Yet politicians like Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) want to extend such controls from air travel to train travel.

Rick Perry vs. TSA.  It's now up to Texas Gov. Rick Perry to rescue the nation's travelers from the indignity of x-rated airport screening at the hands of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  On Tuesday [6/14/2011, a state House of Representatives committee is scheduled to consider revised legislation holding blue-gloved bureaucrats criminally liable for grabbing the private parts of passengers without probable cause or consent.

TSA Admits 'Bad Judgment' After Disabled Man Subjected to Airport Pat-Down.  A Detroit father said agents with the Transportation Security Administration singled out his special-needs son for a pat-down while the family was headed to Disney World, MyFoxDetroit.com reported, an incident that the TSA admitted was a "case of bad judgment."

A Glimmer Of Hope For The Texas Anti-TSA-Groping Bill?  It looked like Texas legislators' fight to ban "groping" by Transportation Security Administration personnel had been lost, but there's a glimmer of hope for the bill now.  The Texas legislative term was supposed to end last month, killing the bill for the year, but budget fights in the Lone Star State led to a 30-day special session.  And there's a big push to revisit the bill that would make intrusive TSA patdowns a misdemeanor resulting in a $4,000 fine and up to a year of jail time for "offenders," a.k.a. federal government employees doing their jobs.

Woman screams for help during airport security pat down.  A woman screamed frantically for help in an airport terminal after claiming she was 'molested' by officials during a security pat down procedure.  The unidentified passenger yells hysterically that she has been molested after a female security staff member touched her breast during the screening process at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.

TSA says it is 'trying to strike a balance' for amputees.  Because of his prosthetic leg, Bill Brannan is used to getting scrutiny at airport checkpoints.  But on his trip from St. Louis to Kansas City this week, that scrutiny — including a patdown by a security officer — got too intense for comfort.  "I was felt on both sides of my crotch," the 77-year-old St. Charles resident said.  "It felt like he was touching everything."

Texas TSA pat down ban may be back.  Texas lawmakers may reconsider a bill to outlaw controversial airport pat-downs, the sponsor of legislation that was shelved recently said this week.  Texas state Rep. David Simpson (R) said that Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst reportedly asked Gov. Rick Perry to include the measure in a special session of the Texas legislature.  Dewhurst reported asked lawmakers to withdraw the bill when federal officials threatened to cancel flights to Texas if it passed.  But he has since had a change of heart, Simpson told fans on his Facebook page.

GOP lawmaker: I saw TSA pat down 'little old lady,' child, but not Arab man.  The Transportation Security Administration is too worried about "political correctness," according to a Republican lawmaker.  Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said TSA is too politically correct when it chooses which passengers to search at airport security checkpoints.

TSA Threatens To Cancel All Flights Out Of Texas If 'Groping Bill' Passed.  Upset about invasive screening techniques at the airport, the Lone Star State was considering a bill that would make a TSA patdown that involves touching "the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through the clothing" a misdemeanor, allowing Texas law enforcement to arrest TSA officials and charge them with sexual harassment.  It would have meant that TSA officials could be fined $4,000 and spend up to a year in jail for doing their jobs of feeling up prospective fliers.

Touching Texas' Junk.  Once leaders such as Patrick Henry proudly proclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death!"  Now our government offers us the choice of scanning our bodies in an arguably unsafe manner or submitting to an enhanced "pat down" usually reserved for law enforcement officers apprehending criminals.

A People's Approach to National Security.  Two recent incidents, a tweeted photo of TSA agents examining a baby and a man shouting pounding on a cockpit door while shouting "Allah Akbar" being subdued by passengers, remind us of the absurd fictions of airline security.  The biggest fiction of airline security is that it is secure.  The second biggest fiction is that it is even meant to be secure.  The TSA and its naked scanners don't exist to provide security, but to provide plausible deniability when an attack does happen.

GOP denies TSA money to buy more body scanners.  The Transportation Security Administration's request to expand its controversial body scanner program was rebuffed this week by a Republican-led House committee.  The $40.6 billion Department of Homeland Security 2012 budget released this week by the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee denies the request from President Obama to provide TSA with $76 million to buy 275 more scanners.

TSA Tot-Screening is a Bad Civics Lesson.  Anonymous once said, "If you can't explain it to a child, you really don't understand it."  I don't envy parents who have to explain TSA's airport screening policy to their children.  "Less than 3%" of travelers are selected for pat-downs, and images of children being counted among them continue to jump from social networking sites to the news.  Last month it was a six-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy.  This week, TSA agents in Kansas City stooped so low as to search an infant's diaper.  They are far from the first kids to be frisked on the way to Disneyland or grandma's, and they will be far from the last to receive an early lesson in not only airline safety but also American civics.

Texas House Bans Offensive Security Pat-Downs.  The Texas House passed a bill that would make it a criminal offense for public servants to inappropriately touch travelers during airport security pat-downs.

Sex, Lies & the TSA.  [Scroll down]  We need to look no further than the TSA for illustrations of just how out of control the abuse of power is today.  Unsurprisingly, the liberal watchdogs that have historically fought against such abuses are silent, while the conservative right permits the advances of such powers without objection as well.  It is this unification and continuity of agenda that should be ringing alarm bells across the nation.

Texas bill would make invasive pat-downs a felony.  A former Miss USA's tearful claim that she was groped during a pat-down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport could be a criminal matter under a bill gaining momentum in the Texas Legislature.

Baby receives pat-down at Kansas City airport.  A photo posted on Twitter of a baby receiving a pat-down at Kansas City International Airport is the latest in a number of recent highly publicized incidents of airport security screenings involving young children.

Backscatter X-ray vs. Groping: one woman's perspective on the new TSA procedures.  I've been thinking a lot about the new backscatter x-rays that the TSA has implemented at many airports across the nation.  For those who haven't heard of these, they're full-body x-rays that allow a TSA agent to basically see you naked.  They can see your breasts, your genitalia, etc.  All passengers have to go through it.  They have the option to opt-out, but if you do that, the TSA gives you a thorough pat-down.  I'm talking groping:  groping your breasts, your testicles, etc.  The idea is that the majority of passengers are not going to opt for this extensive pat-down and will go through the x-ray.  Neither option is good, frankly, and both are horribly invasive of a person's privacy.

Doctors sound TSA germ alert.  Syphilis, lice, gonorrhea, ringworm, chlamydia, staph, strep, noro and papilloma viruses all are part of the possible fringe benefits when airline passengers next go through a full hands-on pat-down by agents of the federal government's Transportation Security Administration, according to doctors.

Spreadin' the glove: TSA infecting U.S.?  Those latex gloves Transportation Security Administration agents wear while giving airline passengers those infamous full-body pat-downs apparently aren't there for the safety and security of passengers -- only the TSA agents.  That's the word being discussed on dozens of online forums and postings after it was noted that the agents wear the same gloves to pat down dozens, perhaps hundreds, of passengers, not changing them even though the Centers for Disease Control in its online writings has emphasized the important of clean hands to prevent the exchange of loathsome afflictions.

TSA's Blue Meanies Strike Again.  The suspected terrorist who was the object of their pat down?  A six-year-old little girl who cried after her humiliating and frightening ordeal.

Parents of 6-Year-Old Girl Pat Down at Airport Want Procedures Changed.  The family of the 6-year-old girl who received a pat down at airport security in New Orleans said today [4/13/2011] there needs to be a different screening process for children.

Molesting kids won't win war on terror.  Our government has become a serial groper.  There's no part of our lives it won't touch.  It insists on putting its insatiable hands on everything from our health care to the gas in our cars, from our light bulbs to our mortgages.  Recently it has developed an alarming appetite for our children's affairs, fondling everything from elementary school bake sales to Happy Meal toys.  And now it has declared that the only thing standing between you and a fiery death is its hands all over your kids.

Napolitano backs 6-year old's pat-down.  The shock of a video of a Transportation Security Administration screener patting down a 6-year-old child has drawn anger and even a subsequent potential legislative response.  But the TSA's actions were not improper, says Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Oversight rep. demands answers on TSA pat-down of 6-year old.  A leading Republican on the House oversight committee is demanding answers from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on why a 6-year-old girl was given an "enhanced" pat-down at an airport by TSA agents, an incident Napolitano defended as conducted "professionally and according to the protocols."

Hawaii, Other States, Form Caucus to Oppose TSA Intrusions.  Believing that the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has gone too far in an assault on individual and states rights, a new, national, bipartisan legislative caucus is emerging to take action.

Just what this country needs:  More thought crimes.
 TSA security looks at people who complain about ... TSA security.  Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job?  You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.  Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively.  And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

Groping for a TSA solution.  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) hoped it could avoid a public revolt over its intrusive airport security measures by dialing back operations while scrutiny was at its peak over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  That didn't stop more than a dozen federal lawsuits that have since been filed against the agency by airline pilots and a former governor, among others.  State lawmakers also are looking for change.

Another win for suffocating stupidity.  At Thanksgiving, I thought millions of people getting scoped or groped at our nations' airports in order to prevent rational profiling akin to what the Israelis do, was the proverbial camel's back-breaker.  But sad to say, the typical trifecta of Constitutionally-dubious, but intransigent government officials, a thoroughly compromised, see-no-progressive-evil media, and just enough clueless "it's for our own good" Americans — that the media could parade before the cameras — notched another win for suffocating stupidity.

Senate Votes to Make Misuse of TSA Scanner Images a Felony.  When you walk through one of those new hi-tech full body scanners at TSA checkpoints at the airport, screeners can still see your private parts, but the Senate wants to make sure no one else does.

The Editor says...
 At first, the TSA said there was no way the images could leave the scanning machine and be used for any unofficial purpose. The Senate obviously does not believe that, since they are making provisions for felony charges when — not if — that happens.

Ventura Sues DHS, TSA Over Body Scans, Pat-Downs.  Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is suing the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, saying full-body scans and pat-downs at airport checkpoints are violating his rights.

GOP joins campaign against TSA scanners.  Members of the Travis, Texas, County Republican Party have joined a campaign against the federal Transportation Security Administration's new invasive airport pat-down procedures and nude-imaging scanners at airports.  "These scanners are a very personal invasion of privacy, exposing anatomically detailed images of airline passengers to strangers," said chairman Rosemary Edwards.  "These graphic scans and the intimate physical searches which are offered as the only alternative, are completely inappropriate and a violation of our Constitutionally protected right to privacy."

The Perils of a Siege Mentality.  What bothers me endlessly about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is that they operate on the policy that defeat by our enemies is implicitly conceded. ... What bothers me just as much is also the willingness of Americans to tolerate and endure the airport terminal as a police state. ... Obey, or suffer the consequences.  So, let us suggest here that, for example, the omnipotent IRS, as one controlling agency, has conditioned Americans to that kind of treatment, to sanction the hostage-taking of their values and to concede that they are but the wards of a guardian government.

TSA Pays Off In Breast Exposure Suit.  The woman who sued the Transportation Security Administration after her breasts were exposed during a frisking at a Texas airport will receive a "nominal" payment from the government as part of a legal settlement, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Woman, 82, endures nightmare search at Calgary airport.  The Calgary Airport Authority wants answers after an 82-year-old woman complained of a nightmarish security check at the Calgary International Airport.  Elizabeth Strecker, who lost a breast to cancer, said she was asked by security last week if she was carrying any banned liquids, but didn't think she had to reveal she'd had a mastectomy.

Rutherford Institute Sues DHS and TSA over Scanners, Virtual Strip Searches.  Insisting that Americans do not shed their privacy rights when entering an airport or boarding a plane, The Rutherford Institute has filed a Fourth Amendment lawsuit in federal court against Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and John Pistole, administrator of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), on behalf of three airline passengers who were subjected to invasive body searches by TSA agents under the agency's enhanced screening and pat-down procedures.

Charge against Virginia Airport Protester Dropped.  A man who stripped to his underwear at a Richmond International Airport checkpoint to protest security procedures won't face a criminal charge.

PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron.  Freedom doesn't die all at once.  It gets chipped away, piece by piece, until what we once had becomes unrecognizable.  On December 22nd in Austin, Texas, 56-year-old Claire Hirschkind suffered the kind of indignity that is only possible in a society that is morally confused and, as a result, Constitutionally uninformed.  When she refused to have her breasts groped by a TSA agent at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, she was arrested.

TSA, Youth Corps Now Officially part of Obama Gestapo.  Claire Hirschfield was planning to fly out of Austin, TX airport to visit family at Christmas.  Hirschfield has a pacemaker device in her chest for epileptic seizures and had asked for a pat-down rather than going through the X-ray scanner. ... A rape survivor, Hirschfield asked not to have her breasts squeezed and told the female agent "I'm not going to have my breasts felt" to which the agent replied "Yes you are!"  Hirschfield asked to speak with Security Director Scott and was denied.

Napolitano: Invasive scans, pat-downs unlikely to change.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday [11/26/2010] that controversial new airport security procedures are likely to remain in place since they have been effective.  Some airline passengers and lawmakers have objected to the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) policy, which includes full-body scans and pat-downs.

TSA Whole Body Scanners.  In a case involving the continuing encroachment of modern technology upon personal privacy, The Rutherford Institute has come to the defense of an airline pilot who refused to submit to airport security screening that exposes intimate details of a person's body to government agents.  Despite passing through a metal detector without triggering an alert, pilot Michael Roberts was required by Transportation Security Agency personnel at Memphis International Airport to submit to Whole Body Imaging scanning or be subjected to a full pat-down frisk of his person.  Upon his refusal, Roberts was prevented from passing through a security checkpoint and unable to report to work.

Terrorizing Our Own.  Airline travelers flying the unfriendly skies are presented with two options, that are actually only a single option, to have themselves and their children degraded in public in order to spare Muslim feelings.  That we have a ban on profiling travelers, but no ban on molesting or humiliating them, tells us everything we need to know about why we have the current system that we do.

Another Victory for Islamic Jihad Courtesy of the TSA.  As far as the TSA and its meat-inspectors are concerned, you the traveler are nothing but a bundle of junk to fondle, probe, grope, examine, and scan at their leisure.  Yet, you must respect TSA's empowered fondlers and be kind to them.  They are only doing their job, and do not establish policies.  This, however, was a plea heard often during the Nuremberg trials.

The TSA's "Protection" Racket.  There is a scene in Schindler's List in which all the inmates of the concentration camp are forced to strip naked en masse and run through a gauntlet of outdoor medical checks. ... Too eerily a parallel with the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA's) new "enhanced" security policies at American airports, which include full-body scans that show every detail of one's person beneath clothing and/or intimate "pat-downs" by manqués wearing blue surgeon's gloves, who are authorized to probe and grope infants, school children, adults, nuns, businessmen, well, everyone for combustibles or explosive materials.  Passengers are allowed to "opt out" for the pat-down, should they object to being seen naked, or if they're susceptible to involuntary radiation treatments.  Some choice.  No pressure at all, your choice — unless you choose to stop flying the unfriendly skies.

TSA: a profile in cowardice.  I'm sure this has already been pointed out by wiser pundits than yours truly, but wouldn't it make sense to look for terrorists, rather than contraband?  While it does to most sentient human beings, the bureaubots at the TSA disagree.  That's why we get stories about terrified, screaming three year-olds being groped by TSA goons or veterans well into their dotage being detained for a secondary search because an artificial joint caused the scanner to beep.  Here's some advice for the TSA:  if you really want to nab terrorists, look for them, don't look for their potential weapons.

It's 'Unclear' If Airport Body Scanners Will Detect Underwear Bombs.  Even though TSA has put these so-called Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scanners through both laboratory and operational testing, Congress's own auditing agency says it "remains unclear" that they can actually do the primary job they are intended to do.

Leading Scientists Say Airport Full Body Scanners Easily Duped.  Two respected scientists say they have discovered a flaw in airport full body scanners that could potentially allow terrorists to outsmart the machines.  In research published in the Journal of Transportation Security, physicists Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson of the University of California San Francisco say body scanner machines can easily be duped.

Beyond the Nanny State.  If there is any good that might come from the Transportation Safety Administration's heavy-handed move to full-body scanners, complete with refusers being forced to endure aggressive pat-downs that all too often fit the dictionary definition of sexual assault, it's that it may shake enough Americans out of their presumptive, too-comfortable complacency about our government's benign intentions.  The TSA mostly had my backing until several weeks ago.

Show Me Your Papers!!  With the introduction of the new body scanners that show what is essentially a nude image of the person being scanned, the American public is getting a taste of what it is like to live in a police state.

Chuck Schumer pushes TSA scanner bill.  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to make it illegal to distribute or record images produced by the Transportation Security Administration's full-body airport scanners.  There's no penalty now for misuse of TSA images, but Schumer would like to change that.

Power Corrupts.  From the passage of ObamaCare to the offensive TSA screenings, this country's citizens have seen the Constitution trampled upon with little to no acknowledgment that such actions would have caused our forefathers to board a ship to a far-off land in search of liberty and freedom.

TSA Collateral Damage.  You've read a hundred stories about the horrors at airports these days, but reading can't hold a candle to an actual flight.  In early November, I was invited to a friend's farm in California for the annual olive harvest.  The harvest went well enough; the horror was traveling to the West Coast and back.

This is all pointless anyway because...
 TSA's nude scans would miss taped-on bombs.  A new peer-reviewed scientific study says the backscatter full-body imaging X-ray machines being used by the federal Transportation Security Administration could be fooled by terrorists who simply would mold explosives to conform to their bodies.  WND obtained an advance copy of the report, titled "An evaluation of airport X-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics," in which University of California scientists Leon Kaufman and Joseph Carlson demonstrated that packages of explosives contoured to the body or worn along the sides likely would not be detected by TSA X-ray units built to "see" hard edges and anatomical features, and used primarily to image the front and back of the body.

The Illusion of Safety and the Illustration of Political Correctness.  The implementation of the new TSA passenger screening policy is indicative of just how politically correct and moronic our society is becoming.  When Americans fly, we can now choose between being photographed in the nude and being fondled.  Yet since 9/11, America has been attacked in the air only by radical Muslim males.  Therefore, Homeland Security has concluded that we should search 80-year-old grandma's bra lines.  What kind of country are we becoming when our citizens are forced to endure such invasive searches without due process in an effort to appease the very group of people who are seeking to destroy our country?

DHS & TSA:  Making a list, checking it twice.  Following the publication of my article titled "Gate Rape of America," I was contacted by a source within the DHS who is troubled by the terminology and content of an internal memo reportedly issued yesterday [11/22/2010] at the hand of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.  Indeed, both the terminology and content contained in the document are troubling.  The dissemination of the document itself is restricted by virtue of its classification, which prohibits any manner of public release.

Bombs Don't Kill People; Terrorists Do.  [Scroll down]  The only way remove enough of the "things" which threaten air travel would be to strip-search every passenger, issue official garb (like inmates in prison or in a mental institution), and haul these passengers in an environment as sterile and as stark as the suicide watch cell of a county jail.  We know, of course, the sane, humane, and easy way to make us safe:  profile and research passengers.

Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional.  In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 32 percent of respondents said they objected to the full-body scans, although 50 percent were opposed to the pat-downs offered as an alternative.  That means opponents of the new measures will have to shift their efforts from the airports to the courts.  One advocacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has already filed a lawsuit, calling the body scanners unconstitutional.  Could this challenge succeed?

TSA Circus Reveals Dangers of Marxist PC Security Rules.  Enormous problems exist in TSA airline screening resulting from the nonsensical mixing of Political Correctness into safety procedures.  Specifically, the problem is doctrines of progressive social engineering have become so powerful a centerpiece in minds of the elites that our very safety is threatened by this misbegotten ideology.  Unsurprisingly, Political Correctness (PC) is not a randomly occurring phenomenon.  Yet many will be shocked to discover PC is a product of social Marxism directed by expatriate German intellectuals in America after WWI.

Americans Learning to Submit.  In the George Orwell classic Animal Farm, there lived a horse named Boxer. ... On Animal Farm, appeals to necessity, subtle changes to established rules, and revisionist history were the tools used to control Boxer and his comrades.  Boxer willingly accepted his marching orders until his fate was sealed.  The tactics that led to his demise and the enslavement of his friends are now deployed at airport security checkpoints across America.  I can't help but wonder if we've become a nation of "Boxers."

Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself.  Having been taught by nuns in grade school and later going through military boot camp, I have always disliked uniformed authorities shouting at me.  So I was unhappy last week when some security screeners at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago started yelling.  "Opt out!  We got an opt out!" one bellowed about me in a tone that people in my desert neighborhood in Tucson usually reserve for declaring, "Rattlesnake!"

Eight Air-Security Myths.  [Myth #3]  Each method terrorists use requires a targeted response.  Because terrorists have hidden stuff in their underwear, we must pat them down.  So when terrorists use body cavities to conceal things, as surely they will, will TSA attempt to search everyone's orifices?  Not a chance:  Americans will not stand for anything like this.  Which is why the excuses for today's patdown molestations are so infuriating and phony.  We need to catch people before they bring down planes.  But we do not do this by making flying, already a grim business since 9/11, a humiliating ordeal.  Making travelers cringe gives terrorists a victory even without bringing a plane down.


This issue is spreading beyond the airport.

America: Closed Due to Terrorism.  [Scroll down]  I asked a friendly Capitol Police officer where I was allowed to go and if I could take pictures.  The fact that I felt it necessary to ask speaks volumes to the extent that the Muslim terrorists have driven America into adopting extreme security measures to combat fear.  I was told I could take pictures, but could only enter the Capitol through an underground visitor's center after being subjected to security measures similar to an airport.  America's government buildings are closed off from the populace in an effort to combat terrorism, resulting in America's government officials being increasingly closed off from ordinary Americans.

Next step for tight security could be trains, boats, metro.  The next step in tightened security could be on U.S. public transportation, trains and boats.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for U.S. vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary.  "[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through," Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night [11/22/2010] on "Charlie Rose."

Routine items not allowed at Cowboys Stadium on Sunday.  As part of the increased security surrounding the Super Bowl, NFL and federal authorities are limiting what fans can bring to Cowboys Stadium.  Everyone entering the stadium must pass through a magnatometer [sic], such as those used at airports, and get a patdown as part of the screening process.

NFL wants pat-downs from ankles up at all stadiums.  The NFL wants all fans patted down from the ankles up this season to improve fan safety.  Under the new "enhanced" pat-down procedures, the NFL wants all 32 clubs to search fans from the ankles to the knees as well as the waist up.


God and Those Intrusive TSA Screenings.  How Christians should think about the increasing invasiveness of TSA screenings is a very good question. ... Privacy and dignity are unquestionably of concern, as are the issues of profiling and the extent to which our government can order us to submit to procedures that affect us so deeply.  Very little discussed, however, has been the philosophical question of whether we are fighting terrorism on offense or defense, and how that affects our quality of life.

TSA Groping and Obama's Black Revenge Narrative.  The growing TSA groping scandal is another Obama political fiasco, almost a comical way for an American president to commit political suicide.  TSA's groping of little kids and their moms instead of going for the bad guys who blew up the Twin Towers fits the narrative of radical black revenge.  Now all the rich white folks are treated as police suspects.  Let's see how they like it!

Obama's police state.  President Obama is engaging in a relentless assault on our freedoms and constitutional government. ... If anyone else did what TSA agents do regularly, they rightly would be charged with sexual assault.  Mr. Obama has done the unthinkable:  He has extended the federal government's reach into our most private, intimate body parts.  Big Brother not only watches us in the nude, he can routinely molest us at will.  The administration is not restricting its unprecedented power grab to airports.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently said that trains, boats and subways also may implement the same screening procedures.  If the White House has its way, Americans will be getting felt up on the Metro and Amtrak every day — morning, afternoon and night.

Pat-Down Dispute Shows Mistrust of Government.  The latest controversy to envelop the Obama administration is only partly about the specific rules governing body scanners and pat-downs.  It has to do, too, with the federal agency Congress created to deal with airline security and the tension that has been building for years between its latex-gloved employees and the traveling public.

Santorum: Government is giving into terrorists with TSA screenings.  Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says the government is giving terrorists just what they want by implementing the new — and revealing — Transportation Security Administration enhanced screenings on airline passengers.  "In many respects, I've seen some of the headlines, 'terrorists win,'" Santorum said to a group of college Republicans at American University Thursday night.  "I think it's a pretty good subtitle to what we're seeing.  I think TSA has gone overboard."

Just Don't Fly: Where Might the TSA Take Us Next?  "Don't fly."  That's Janet Napolitano's answer to those who oppose the regime of poke and grope that is today's Transportation Safety Agency.  America is, after all, a land of choices.  When you arrive at the airport, you can allow some complete stranger to irradiate you with a device that allows the operator to see you naked.  Or you can allow some friendly security agent to put hands in places where they have no business.  Or you can drive.  Before you jump out of line and into your car, however, be warned that you can be fined up to $11,000 for changing your mind at the airport.

Analyst: TSA methods 'will kill more Americans on highway'.  The recent public ire toward the TSA's new pat-down and body imaging screening methods is likely to cause more people to drive automobiles and forego airline travel, say two transportation economists who have studied the issue.  As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

Fliers Claim TSA Have Deactivated Body Scanners.  According to tweeting travelers, many backscatter and millimeter-wave AIT scanning machines at airports are not in use at all, making opting out impossible.

Schneier: TSA Scans "Won't Catch Anybody".  Since 9/11, cryptology expert and security consultant Bruce Schneier has been one of the most pointed critics of the government's anti-terrorism security programs.  In his 2003 book "Beyond Fear," he coined the phrase "security theater" to refer to measures which are undertaken not because they will be effective at thwarting attacks, but because the agencies carrying them out need to appear to be doing something useful.

Woman: TSA Agents Singled Me Out For My Breasts.  The head of the Transportation Security Administration said the agency will look further into allegations that two male TSA workers picked a woman for additional screening because of her breasts.  Eliana Sutherland recently flew from Orlando International Airport and told Local 6 she felt the two male TSA workers were staring at her breasts and chose her for additional screening because of their size.

Who's exempt from airport searches, who's not.  Exempt:  Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.

TSA Is Terrible.  People in prison are subject to highly intrusive searches; they have no expectation of privacy.  To be sure, the government is given more latitude — relieved of the need to show probable cause for the search — because it is promoting safety, not trying to develop a prosecutable case.  But what makes the search appropriate is the record of the people involved, not the abstract possibility of violence.  A savage act is always possible.  If that is all it took to justify gross infringements of liberty, such infringements would always and everywhere be justified.  An intrusive search is reasonable, or not, based on what the people involved have done to prompt it, not simply because life is fraught with peril.

TSA, 2 ; America, 0.  The article referenced the "enhanced pat-down by TSA officers."  This was a frisk the way a loan shark's beating is a "tune-up."  Come off the euphemistic palliatives, Ms. Baskas.  Or at least make sure you use "so-called" to characterize the "pat-down."  Pat-downs are quick external sweeps that look for things like ankle-holstered guns, shivs, and knucks.  And box-cutters and nail files.  Making a non-threatening, middle-aged, non-suspect, post-op, disfigured cancer survivor take off his clothes and then roughing him up and rupturing his medical device is kidnapping, assault, and battery.

Airport Scanners and Marxist Criminology.  The new TSA airport scanners have justifiably garnered a lot of attention and criticism.  Frankly, the entire scheme is nothing more than a cheap contrivance to give the impression that Democrats care deeply about national security.  Insofar as Democrats actually care about national security, it could not be more obvious that it is a mere afterthought to their main agenda of turning America into a tawdry imitation of socialist Europe.  It is only an uninterested administration that views national security as a perfunctory and unserious task that, as a response to radical Islamic plane hijackers, would conceive of fondling every flyer — including little Caucasian toddlers — to look for bombs.

TSA Scans — All Part of Obama's Plan.  The aggressive airport searches and scans conducted by an out-of-control TSA do not occur in a psychological vacuum and directly reflect the Obama Administration's contempt for individual autonomy and callousness when it comes to balancing liberty and government authority to maintain public safety.  Before the public outcry, TSA had grown to tens of thousands of government "security" personnel who were empowered by rules and regulations to touch travelers' genitals, confiscate their belongings (on slim evidence that they posed any real danger) and demand that they assume the posture of criminals to be scanned head to foot.  If that sounds like a dry run for totalitarianism, it is, at least psychologically.

Grope and Change.  Perhaps I am overly prudish, but the thought of a complete stranger groping my genitalia as a prerequisite for boarding an airplane is a bridge too far.  Of course one can opt for a full body scan instead, which is essentially a digitized version of a strip search accompanied by a healthy enough dose of radiation that pilots and flight attendants are refusing to submit to it.  Just before the busiest travel season of the year, these are the two, and only two options our government offers us if we intend to use air travel as our transportation choice.

My TSA Encounter.  As I got off my flight, I did all of the things that are normally requested from U.S. citizens returning from abroad. ... My passport was stamped, and I moved through customs a happy citizen returning home.  But wait — here was a second line to wait in.  This new line led to a TSA security checkpoint.  You see, it is official TSA policy that people (both citizens and non-citizens alike) from international flights are screened as they enter the airport, despite the fact that they have already flown.
[Emphasis added.]

TSA: Some gov't officials to skip airport security.  Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.

U.S. Airports a "Constitutional Twilight Zone".  Much of the opposition to airport body scanners invokes the Constitution; one company is even selling pasties emblazoned with the Fourth Amendment to protect passengers' dignity while passing through scanners.  But the Fourth Amendment, along with most of the Constitution, does not apply in the airport the same way it does in most public spaces.  U.S. airports are a Constitutional "twilight zone" — the rights you have in the outside morph once you step inside the terminal, and it has been this way long before September 11.

Obama and Holder and Their Massive Failure to Think.  [Scroll down]  The latest shot at the bubble of Obama supremacy — the failed civilian trial of Ahmed Ghailani — comes at a time when real American citizens are voluntarily giving up their own right to fly upon their own airplanes due to overzealous, most likely unconstitutional searches.  Tempers are flaring daily at security checkpoints.  Lawsuits are being filed.  Petitions are being mounted.  The citizenry is quite nearly so distraught over this disgusting double standard that it'll be a wonder if the airline industry can survive this latest Obama failure to think.

TSA Hit With Lawsuits As Revolt Explodes.  The TSA has been hit with a number of lawsuits as the revolt against Big Sis, naked body scanners, and invasive groping measures explodes, with one case involving a woman who had her blouse pulled down in full public view by TSA goons who then proceeded to laugh and joke about her exposed breasts.

DA Now Sending Deputies to SF Airport to Investigate Felony Groping.  Appearing on the Alex Jones Show today [11/18/2010], current chief deputy DA and incoming DA of San Mateo County Steve Wagstaffe said his office will prosecute TSA employees who engage in lewd and lascivious behavior while conducting Homeland Security mandated patdowns at the San Francisco International Airport in San Mateo County.

TSA Searches:  Are Trains and Subways Next?  "I understand people's frustrations," said president Obama from Lisbon over the weekend.  Obama said at present naked body scanners and pat down searches bordering on sexual molestation are the best way to prevent Muslims in caves from attacking the American people.  Secretary of State Clinton told Meet the Press on Sunday [11/21/2010] that "everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public" and that "striking the right balance is what this is about."  For now, that "balance" means a near minimum wage TSA worker will fondle your testicles and there is nothing you can do about it.  Protesting will only slow down traffic and prevent people from visiting their family and friends.

Passenger Chooses Strip-Down Over Pat-Down.  When a San Diego man opted out of security screening using the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) at Lindbergh Field Friday [11/19/2010], he stripped down to his underwear in an attempt to avoid the pat-down procedures. ... Wolanyk's attorney said that TSA requested his client put his clothes on so he could be patted down properly but his client refused to put his clothes back on.  He never refused a pat down, according to his attorney.

"Gate Rape" of America.  [Scroll down]  The current TSA measures have very little to do with security.  It is becoming much more apparent that the Department of Homeland Security itself, at its uppermost levels, has little to do with actual security. ... The American people are being carefully and deliberately conditioned to accept the stripping away of our Constitutional rights, a process in the making for nearly a century.  To see how far this conditioning has progressed, just look at how many people are willing to be groped, fondled, nuked, and subjected to other forms of degrading tactics by agents of the federal government for the mere illusion of security.

Keep Your Hands Off My Constitution.  For the past two years, Americans have been subjected to outright thuggery masquerading as representative government, as progressives have rammed their agenda through a Congress whose contempt for the wishes of a majority of Americans has been undeniable.  A lot of Americans thought the 2010 election was a watershed moment in this country's fight against those who would rule us with impunity.  It was not.  My fellow Americans, this airport insanity and the government's steadfast refusal to back down is the one fight we must not lose, for the simplest of reasons:  if bureaucrats can grope us against our will, government of, by and for the people is over.

Big Sister's police state.  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has crossed the line.  As if subjecting millions of Americans to X-rated x-ray scans and public groping sessions weren't bad enough, the agency now threatens $11,000 in fines against anyone refusing to submit to humiliation at the airport.

Don't touch my junk.  Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter.  Don't touch my junk, Obamacare — get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back.  Don't touch my junk, Google — Street View is cool, but get off my street.  Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon...

Opposing viewpoint:
 Don't Shoot the Groper.  Krauthammer's "Don't Touch My Junk" column is outstanding and I think he's right that Americans' tolerance for indignity to avoid the unthinkable prospect of profiling is exhausted.  But I'm afraid some people are directing their anger at the wrong target.  Ron Paul, for instance, has introduced legislation to remove TSA employees' immunity from prosecution and arrest them for assault.  Kick the Bureaucrat is a game conservatives love to play, and sometimes it's justified, but this time it isn't.  The problem is the policy that the White House and its minions have instructed their subordinates in the civil service to carry out.

$11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs.  If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season.

President Obama:  TSA Pat-Downs "An Inconvenience For All Of Us," Except Me.  With all the "junk-touching" and pat-downs required by new TSA rules that arrived just in time for the holidays, it was inevitable that at the first possible opportunity some intrepid reporter would bring the subject up to President Obama.  Taking questions at a NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the President attempted to explain the logic behind the pat-downs, but prefaced his reasoning with a disclaimer that he has never and will likely never experience such a thing.

The degradation must stop.  The TSA literally put their blue-gloved hands down my pants Sunday.  I was patted, pawed and squeezed as if I were a high school homecoming queen on her third date with the star quarterback.  It was a humiliating, degrading and an unacceptable invasion by this government into my private affairs.  This was after government x-ray machines poured unwanted x-rays though my body.  No warning, no explanation, no alternatives offered.  All just to board a plane to come home. ... The American government is no longer acting as guardian of our freedoms; rather they have become our jailers.  This Administration's perverted behavior toward its own citizens has been purposely allowed to flourish, all in the name of preserving political correctness in enemy identification.

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine.  A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.  "I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn't even speak," said Thomas D. "Tom" Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.  Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach.

GOP lawmaker:  Full body scanners violate fourth amendment.  A GOP lawmaker said Tuesday [11/16/2010] the full-body scanners now employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures."  During a one-minute speech on the House floor, Rep. Ted Poe (Texas) also blasted former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff as a "political hack" and accused him of profiting from the proliferation of the devices.

Airport security firestorm ignored by President, cabinet.  Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the rest of President Barack Obama's cabinet are either evasive or silent about their latest public relations fiasco:  invasive security measures at U.S. airports.  It appears that in an effort to protect traveling Americans, while at the same time adhering to the liberal-left orthodoxy, on domestic and international commercial airline flights, new state-of-the-art body-scanners are now in use at airports throughout the nation.

Two pilots sue to block body scanning at airport.  Two commercial airline pilots filed suit against the federal government Tuesday [11/16/2010] claiming new airport screening procedures violate their constitutional rights.  Michael  S. Roberts of Memphis, a pilot with ExpressJet, and Ann Poe of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a Continental pilot, sued the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration in federal court in Washington.  Roberts and Poe have been grounded since separate incidents in which they refused to submit to full body scans or the alternative, enhanced pat-downs by TSA officers.

The path to safer air travel.  The national "opt out" day next Wednesday [11/24/2010] was created to protest body scanners and enhanced TSA pat downs at airports.  While it illustrates passenger dissatisfaction about the intrusive and humiliating security procedures and constitutional issues, it does nothing to fix the gaping security holes we have at our airports.  Amid the outcries and protests, it is rarely pointed out that there has never been a instance where the Transportation Security Administration has ever stopped or thwarted a potential terror attack against our airlines.  Not one.

The Frogs Finally Notice the Water is Boiling.  Maybe it really did need to come to this.  Maybe Americans had to literally have their privates groped by a government bureaucrat to finally realize that they have been the proverbial frogs sitting in a pot of water, unaware that they are being incrementally boiled to death.  For those of you who still don't get it, let me make it clear:  The ultimate destination of Political Correctness is totalitarianism.

To Let the Government Touch, or Not to Let the Government Touch.  It's not quite the Gadsden Flag, but this image is fast becoming the symbol of the new "Don't touch my junk" movement.  Whether to let government agents touch us where the sun don't shine or not is no longer an academic question.  It's happening to more and more fliers every day, among other things altering the meaning of "frequent flier" in some unpleasant ways.

Yep, I've got my hand in your crotch. What are you gonna do about it?

Funk & Wagnall's, 1949
In 1949, this definition of "terrorism" could be found on page 1346 of
Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language.


"If someone had done that to me at a nightclub I'd call the cops."
 What Happens if You Decline a Full Body Scan?  When you ask a friend to join you for a nice weekend cruise from Miami, you don't expect the friend to be hauled away by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents into a private room where she says she was practically strip-searched.  But that's what happened at Logan International Airport in Boston.

TSA 'Strip and Grope': Meet the Fourth Amendment.  [Scroll down]  Do these sorts of things violate our rights to be secure in our persons against unreasonable searches?  No act of Congress gave TSA agents the power to do these things; the Congress delegated various powers to the TSA and the TSA developed the procedures, evidently with no little or no adult supervision and even less consideration given to the Fourth Amendment.  It appears that substantial discretion is left to low-level TSA employees in deciding what is "reasonable" — substantially more than is left to more "ordinary" and often better-trained law enforcement officers in deciding whether there is reasonable cause to think that a crime has been or is being committed.

Why Air Security is the Issue.  I submit that if we don't beat back the TSA's assault on innocent travelers, we might lose our nation for good.  Or perhaps it would mean we have already lost it.  The reality is that the TSA is no more about airline security than ObamaCare was about affordable health care.  Both the organization and the bill are about the dehumanization — and control — of theoretically free Americans.  Thus, it is critical that Americans win push back efforts against both, because if we lose on these two fronts, we have effectively lost most of our freedom.

Cancer surviving flight attendant asked to remove prosthetic breast during pat-down.  A Charlotte-area flight attendant and cancer survivor contacted WBTV after she says she was forced to show her prosthetic breast during a pat-down.  Cathy Bossi lives in south Charlotte and has been a flight attendant for the past 32 years, working the past 28 for U.S. Airways.

Pilots to be exempt from airport scanners, intrusive pat-downs.  Faced with widespread resistance to what some passengers see as personally intrusive air travel security measures, US officials are looking for ways to ease the demands on those who fly on commercial airliners.  That starts with those flying the aircraft.  Beginning in 2011, airline pilots will no longer have to go through scanners or be subject to full-body pat-downs, just as ticketed passengers now do.

Woman says her Lambert security screening was sexual assault.  More Americans are growing angrier, over what the Transportation Security Administration, admits are more intrusive security put downs at airports.  One woman is comparing her experience at Lambert Airport to a sexual assault.

My Very Own TSA Nightmare.  I went through the process on Monday and got both the scan and the pat-down — and more.  I was traveling from D.C. to Maine via the Baltimore airport.  The line was moving very slowly thanks to a woman who refused to be scanned or groped.  This confused the TSA officers to the point that they began chatting about what to do with her.

What's Wrong With The TSA?  The Transportation Safety Administration has three main areas of failure, of which employees fondling women and children is just the most obvious sign.  The worst part, or at least equally as bad as violating the personal privacy of innocent, law-abiding travelers, is that what they're doing has no effect on the actual security of the airways, let alone the country.  They're tormenting us just for show — and to soak up tax dollars.

Napolitano's Police State: TSA Retaliates Against Tyner for Asserting His Rights.  So, let's get this straight:  It's okay for the TSA to grope nuns, but Muslim women are exempt (nothing beyond the head and neck).  We cannot profile potential terrorists, but it's okay to molest three-year olds (except we won't call it molest because it's the government doing it).  Muslim men won't go through body imaging machines, but it's okay to grope non-Muslims' genitals.

No union for Transportation Security workers.  If you've flown lately, the odds are good that you had a rubber-gloved Transportation Security Administration agent touch you in places that would otherwise result in the issuance of an arrest warrant for unwanted groping.  Even so, despite years of imposing increasingly invasive new security procedures, the TSA has yet to catch one terrorist.  By contrast, the Washington Post reported in May that "at least 23" TSA agents have been fired since 2007 for stealing from passengers.  There were also "at least eight unrelated incidents involving practical jokes played on air passengers, drug use, leaving a security post and falling asleep on the job."

Ron Paul:  'We have been too submissive'.  In case you missed it, here is Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., speaking on his airport security bill.

Big Brother Is Scanning You.  There seems to be a growing revolt among the traveling populace against the new TSA full-body scanners -- which examine the naked figure for contraband -- and the invasive "pat-downs" administered to those bold, or foolhardy, enough to decline the scanner.  I am in full sympathy with people who are horrified by either prospect, and am intrigued by the extent to which discontent and civil disobedience is spreading across the landscape.

Government At Work: Groping Children Is Preferable to Perceived Profiling.  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently implemented new supposed security measures, which include a mandated trip through a full body scanner that shows you in all your naked glory, or lack thereof.  It's all cool, though, because if you don't wish to have your naked body ogled, you can always get felt up instead via the new "enhanced pat-down" option.  It's all about choice, baby! Whichever you prefer:  leering or groping.

Did You Know Your Airport Can Opt Out of TSA Molestations?  Your local airport can opt out of having the Transportation Safety Administration handle security at your local airport.  Instead, you can contract out to the private sector.  It was one of the ingenious and little noticed provisions the Republicans dropped in the post-9/11 legislation creating the TSA.  With a move to unionize the TSA and the TSA groping 3 year olds and nuns in nutty security theater, opt-ing out in favor of free market competence sounds like a great idea.  Oh, and Congress will cover the payments to the TSA replacement.

Airport Security Screening Protests Mount.  With the start of the busiest air travel season just a little more than a week away, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been under scrutiny following complaints that the federal government has taken airport security too far, from new intrusive body scans to intensified pat-downs.  Even pilot unions have protested against airport security body-scanner technology — said to be intrusive with radiation-based health concerns — and called the alternative pat-down method too invasive.

DA promises to prosecute overly touchy pat downs.  The San Mateo district attorney's office has a warning for all TSA personnel at SFO — anyone inappropriately touching a passenger during a security pat down will be prosecuted.

Are TSA pat-downs and full-body scans unconstitutional?  As the debate about the Transportation Security Administration's screening procedures pings across the Internet, a growing chorus of critics is asserting that electronic imaging scans and "enhanced pat-downs" both represent an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.

Man Arrested After Punching TSA Screener In Indy.  A Connecticut man has been arrested after exchanging words and punching a TSA screener at a security checkpoint at Indianapolis International Airport.  According to a report from airport police, John A. Christina, 51, Simsbury, Conn., was charged with battery as a misdemeanor in connection with the incident about 2:50 p.m. Tuesday [11/16/2010] at the Concourse B checkpoint.

Don't Touch My Junk" Flier Unlikely to Face Fine.  Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole doubts the "don't touch my junk" traveler, John Tyner, will face the $10,000 fine allowed by law.  "I don't anticipate anything coming from that," Pistole said.

Senators and TSA Defend "Love Pats" at Airports.  Transportation Safety Administration chief John Pistole and several senators from both parties defended the new, enhanced airport security screening procedures as necessary in the face of a persistent and evolving terrorist threat in a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Duncan Blasts TSA Pat-Downs, Body Scanners.  Congressman John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.) blasted the Transportation Security Administration Wednesday [11/17/2010] during a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives for invasive "pat-downs" of U.S. citizens and the role lucrative government contracts played in the use of body scanning machines at airport checkpoints.

Forget Body Scans and Pat Downs — Let's Get Busy Profiling.  Why don't we start profiling for terrorists and stop trying to put everyone from toddlers to granny through the same security procedures at airports?  We're wasting money, time and the people's patience in an effort to be politically correct.  In the end, it's not keeping us any safer; if anything it's making us less safe since it's diverting resources that could otherwise be used on better intelligence gathering, or developing screening devices for cargo on commercial and civilian aircraft, or checking containers before they enter U.S. ports.

The TSA Debacle.  Anyone with doubts concerning the Transportation Security Authority's ability to handle airport security needs to take a look at the way they're dealing with the public-relations debacle surrounding the launch of their new "security procedures".  The nature of these "procedures" — an intrusive passenger scanner system along with gang-rape style pat-down searches — required at the very least a delicate touch during their introduction.  The TSA's touch has been as delicate as Godzilla crushing a police car.

Obama's hand in your crotch.  The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals.  While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.  El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach.

Pilots Dismayed at Airport Scanners, Pat-Downs.  Annoyance at U.S. security hassles has been on the rise among airline crews and passengers for years, but the widespread use of full-body image detectors this year and the simultaneous introduction of more intrusive pat-downs seems to have ramped up the frustration.  As passengers have simmered over being forced to choose scans by full-body image detectors or rigorous pat-downs inspections, some airline pilots are pushing back. Much of the criticism is directed at the Transportation Security Administration.

TSA to investigate body scan resister.  The Transportation Security Administration has opened an investigation targeting John Tyner, the Oceanside man who left Lindbergh Field under duress on Saturday morning [11/13/2010] after refusing to undertake a full body scan.  Tyner recorded the half-hour long encounter on his cell phone and later posted it to his personal blog, along with an extensive account of the incident.  The blog went viral, attracting hundreds of thousands of readers and thousands of comments.

TSA head in for grilling on security measures.  Lawmakers are expected to grill the head of TSA on Tuesday [11/16/2010] over increased security measures at U.S. airports that have sparked public fury.  John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, is expected to be hit with questions about new pat-down techniques that air passengers have complained are invasive.

Is TSA Security Patdown Sexual Molestation?  From pilots' unions to viral online protests, Americans are telling the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that the government has gone too far in the name of security, equating the new searches to "sexual molestation" or "sexual assault."

Anderson Cooper Describes 'Rigorous' TSA Pat Down.  Junk-touching TSA gropers have claimed their first celebrity news victim.  In an airport security debate at the top of his 360 show on CNN Monday night [11/15/2010], Anderson Cooper revealed his own experience with glove-wearing TSA agents.

Amid airport anger, GOP takes aim at screening.  Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints?  The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period.  Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.

Why is scanner picking up people in line?  Fortunately, this was the lesser intrusive scanner, being used at a courthouse, that jumbles up the photo so as to hide your genitals, etc.  But I did notice something weird.  Why does the scanner seem to be scanning people who aren't even in it?  Note how the device is recording the image of people standing in line to get into the scanner in the photos below.  They're not in the scanner, but it's picking them up.  It even picked up the security guy with his wand.

Opt Out Day:  Wednesday, November 24, 2010 is National Opt-Out Day!

We Won't Fly.  If you absolutely, positively must fly, opt out of the scanners.  Do it to protect your health and privacy.  If you can avoid flying, don't fly.  Hit the airlines in the pocketbook until the scanners and gropers are gone.  Make the airlines work for us.

TSA Investigating 'Don't Touch My Junk' Passenger.  The TSA has launched an investigation of a passenger in San Diego who left the airport after opting out of an invasive body scan and criticizing the proposed alternative pat-down.  John Tyner, a 31-year-old software programmer, recorded the encounter on his mobile phone and posted it to his blog.  From there, it quickly went viral, tapping a groundswell of frustration over TSA's procedures.

TSA Backlash Grows Over Leaked Body Scans, Many Other Scandals.  It's difficult to catalog all of the myriad controversies besieging the Transportation Security Administration this week, but the biggest seems to be the new policy forcing select passengers to choose between an open-palm, very invasive pat-down or a full-body scan that produces a very detailed image of your most private regions.  There's also the 35,000 full-body-scan images that some officials in Florida kept despite rules requiring the images be immediately deleted, the threatened $11,000 lawsuit against a man who refused to have his groin patted down, the insistence on applying both the basically-nude scans and the invasive pat-downs to children, and the call for boycotting TSA body-scans by the 11,000-strong pilots union.  In other words, it's bad.

TSA pats down a screaming toddler.  You might think a 3-year-old would whiz through security.  A child is non-threatening, wears slip-on shoes, and carries little luggage.  Not the case for Mandy Simon who was passing through security with her dad at the airport in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Why doesn't Obama subject his family to airport security procedures?  Two weeks ago, my wife flew alone out to Colorado with our two young children.  Unaware that the TSA had instituted new and incredibly invasive new security procedures, my wife called me distressed after getting frisked by the TSA.  Or as my wife put it, "in some cultures I would be married to my screener by now."  She was joking, but make no mistake — my wife was incredibly disturbed by how intimate a security pat down she received.

One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans.  At the heart of the controversy over "body scanners" is a promise:  The images of our naked bodies will never be public.  U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. ... That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future.  If you're lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.

Full Frontal Nudity Doesn't Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA.  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.

Get the Government Out of Our Pants.  The war on terrorism is going to get personal.  Very personal.  Americans have long resented the hassles that go with air travel ever since 9/11 -- long security lines, limits on liquids, forced removal of footwear, and so on.  But if the Transportation Security Administration has its way, we will look back to 2009 as the good old days.  The agency is rolling out new full-body scanners, which eventually will replace metal detectors at all checkpoints.  These machines replicate the experience of taking off your clothes, but without the fun.  They enable agents to get a view of your body that leaves nothing to the imagination.  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.

Government gropers at airports a ruse for body scanners coming to schools and malls.  [Scroll down]  First, there has been heightened awareness of the possible radiological dangers posed to the TSA agents operating the scanners as well as to the passengers being screened.  Although there have been numerous official assurances to the public that the scanners pose no health risks, several scientists and radiologists have concluded otherwise.  Secondly, there are the images themselves.  It is important for the public to understand that the images of scanned passengers shown to the public have passed through filters to "tone down" their graphic nature.  In reality, the images that are visible to TSA officials are much more revealing.  Having seen actual images of a full body scan on a TSA computer for the purpose of completing my investigation, I can tell you that the images are extremely graphic and leave very little to the imagination.  To be sure, they do not resemble the images that are being shown to the public.

California Man Tells TSA, Don't 'Touch My Junk'.  A California man got thrown out of San Diego's airport when he refused a revealing full-body scan and then an alternative pat-down, telling a Transportation Security Agent, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."  John Tyner, 31, said he was told he could face a civil lawsuit and a $10,000 fine for leaving the screening area before the security check was complete, according to news reports and his blog.

Man Films Airport TSA Encounter, Says It Borders on Sexual Assault.  In one of the more unusual cases of airport security gone overboard, a man trying to board a flight at San Diego International Airport refused a patdown when he felt it was bordering on sexual assault.  From there, he was told he could not board his flight, was interrogated by several different TSA agents, escorted out of the airport, and then in a turn of events, told that if he left the airport without completing the security screening he could face a civil suit and find of up to $10,000.  But because this is 2010, he filmed the entire encounter using his mobile phone, posted the videos to YouTube, and blogged about the entire ordeal.

Flight attendants union upset over new pat-down procedures.  A Washington, D.C. resident has formed a website critical of TSA pat-down procedures, calling on people to "opt out" on one of the busiest travel days of the nation.  Brian Sodergren designed optoutday.com in an effort to get people to experience the new TSA pat-down procedures.

TSA To Passengers: Here's Looking At You, Kid.  If you have taken a commercial flight lately, you've probably noticed security has been tightened yet again.  The latest instrument to be installed in the security checkpoint dungeons is the full body scanner, which Fox News says was funded by $73 million in stimulus money.  (More jobs saved or created!)  These devices are similar to the X-ray wall that Arnold Schwarzenegger walked behind in Total Recall, but much less awesome.  Unfortunately, they also bathe travelers in low doses of radiation, and make their naked bodies visible to Transportation Security Administration employees who are not always paragons of virtue.

T&A at the TSA.  There is no bigger threat to America's aviation industry than the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  In less than a decade, the bureaucratic agency has heightened the hassle involved in taking to the skies.  One can only imagine how much longer it will be before the majority of Americans decide they'd be better off hitting the highways.

TSA is hijacking our freedom.  The scanner booths, which bear a resemblance to that mythical "transporter" in the TV series, weren't in use that day.  But when I called Transportation Security Administration spokesperson Ann Davis on Friday [11/12/2010], she informed me that the plan is for all passengers to be required to go through what amounts to a nude photo shoot before boarding an airplane.  That's unless, of course, that passenger wants to have his or her genitals groped by an angry federal employee.  Davis didn't say that.  But a lot of the TSA's critics are.

Growing backlash against TSA body scanners, pat-downs.  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.

Whole-body scans begin at Philadelphia airport.  The full-body scanner has arrived at Philadelphia International Airport.  Passengers going through the Terminal F security checkpoint now have an option of using the new technology, or sticking with a walk-through metal detector — followed by a pat-down.  Travelers' reaction, as they lined up to go through security Thursday [10/28/2010]:  It's no big deal.

For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance.  The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence.  Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging.  Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision.  One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, "Get new gloves, man, you're going to need them where you're going."

Body Scanners:  Irradiating JFK.  In its zeal to peel every last shred of dignity from passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) foisted its strip-search scanners on New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport this weekend. ... These are the carcinogenic contraptions the TSA insists are perfectly safe as they X-ray us through our clothing.  We appear naked on monitors the TSA claims show only a "chalk etching" or a "fuzzy photo negative," and we do so in such detail that British airports won't scan children lest they violate their government's anti-smut laws.  These gizmos also notoriously store and transmit their naughty negatives despite the agency's vehement denials.  And yet, after all its lies, the TSA expects us to believe its Orwellian promise to "protect passenger [sic] privacy" as it strips us naked.

I'm fed up with the TSA.  [Scroll down]  When I finally reached the security station, I discovered the source of the delay.  In addition to TSA incompetence, the lines were backed up going through a new security machine ironically called a "Rapid Scan."  The "Rapid Scan" is one of the new x-ray machines recently employed by the TSA to perform full-body scans on airline passengers.  It is truly a testament to the adaptability of the American spirit that not only does an hour-long wait at security barely raise eye-brows, but passengers are willing to submit to a virtual strip-search with nary a whimper as well.  Perhaps it is ambivalence.  I suspect, however, that after the abuse of waiting in lines for everything from parking to security, stripping down to one's BVDs is a small price to pay to be allowed to sit down.

Full-body scanners to debut at Lindbergh Field.  Just in time for the Labor Day rush, the Transportation Security Agency Tuesday at Lindbergh Field plans to debuts its controversial full-body scanner, which generates a primitive image of an air traveler's body on a computer screen.

You didn't complain when they did this at the airport, and now they're taking it on the road.
 Scanner Vans Allow Drive-By Snooping.  Privacy-conscious travelers may cringe to think of the full-body scanners finding their way into dozens of airport checkpoints around the country.  Most likely aren't aware that the same technology, capable of seeing through walls and clothes, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.  American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Mass., has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter X-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles or cargo containers to snoop into their contents.

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans.  As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it's worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren't the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed.  The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

The Editor says...
 I hope you can see where this is headed:  If you put up with invasive searches at the airport, before long you will have to endure the same invasion at the post office, or when you serve on a jury, or when you enter any federal building.

TSA tests frisky frisking policy.  Logan airport security just got more up close and personal as federal screeners launched a more aggressive palms-first, slide-down body search technique that has renewed the debate over privacy vs. safety.  The new procedure — already being questioned by the ACLU — replaces the Transportation Security Administration's former back-of-the-hand patdown.  Boston is one of only two cities in which the new touchy-feely frisking is being implemented as a test before a planned national rollout.  The other is Las Vegas.

Misperceptions and Media Bungles.  Few want to face the truth — most Americans resent that they have to undergo the third degree when boarding airplanes, even though they don't remotely resemble the profile of successful modern-day terrorists.  That, while those who do fit the profile seem to get waived past security.  This is not my opinion, but a well-researched fact that also is underreported.

TSA to download your iTunes?  Federal security workers are now free to snoop through more than just your undergarments and luggage at the airport.  Thanks to a recent series of federal court decisions, the digital belongings of international fliers are now open for inspection.  This includes reading the saved e-mails on your laptop, scanning the address book on your iPhone or BlackBerry and closely scrutinizing your digital vacation snapshots.

TSA to swab airline passengers' hands in search for explosives.  To the list of instructions you hear at airport checkpoints, add this:  "Put your palms forward, please."  The Transportation Security Administration soon will begin randomly swabbing passengers' hands at checkpoints and airport gates to test them for traces of explosives.

What Can Israel Teach the U.S. About Airport Security?  Airport security in Israel is not about what's on your feet, or in your pockets, or — god forbid — in your underwear.  It's about what's in your head.  While the Israeli security system is certainly not perfect, it is unlikely that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could have successfully boarded a plane without being detained, questioned in-depth, and hopefully caught — even if his risk level hadn't been so clearly documented.  The secret of Israeli airport security doesn't just lie in super-sophisticated technology.  Simply put, in Israel's airport, there are simply far more opportunities to get caught.

Are planned airport scanners just a scam?  [Scroll down]  The Government is looking at millimetre-wave scanners for widespread use in British airports as part of Mr Brown's review.  They are safer to use than X-ray scanners because they do not emit radiation and do not require passengers' consent.  Pregnant women cannot go through X-ray scanners but there are no such health risks with millimetre-wave technology.

The Editor says...
 No known health risks, that is.  How many years were xrays and fluoroscopes in use before the long-term health risks were discovered?

TSA Worker Jailed for Aggravated Battery.  Perhaps the new airport body scanners are a bit too revealing.  A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after police say he attacked a colleague who'd made fun of his small genitalia after he walked through one of the new high-tech security scanners during a recent training session.

Muslim woman refuses body scan at airport.  A Muslim woman was barred from boarding a flight after she refused to undergo a full body scan for religious reasons.  The passenger was passing through security at Manchester Airport when she was selected at random for a full-body scanner.

The Editor says...
 The most unfortunate part of this story is that the Muslim was selected at random for closer scrutiny.

TSA Fatwa Watch:  Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a "fatwa" — a religious ruling — that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports.  The Fiqh Council of North America — a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan — issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty.

Islamic scholars issue fatwa forbidding Muslim-Americans from using full-body airport scanners.  Add Muslim-American groups to the chorus of voices slamming full-body airport scanners.  A body of North American Islamic scholars has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, forbidding Muslims from passing through the devices, the Detroit Free Press reports, saying they violate the faith's teachings on modesty.

US 'stopped Dutch installation of full body scanners'.  The United States prevented Dutch authorities from installing full body scanners before the suspected Christmas Day bomb plotter passed through security at Amsterdam's airport, the Dutch government claimed today [12/30/2009].  The Dutch claimed that they had been trying to install the machines for flights to the US since 2008 but had been blocked by US officials who wanted passengers to all destinations screened.

The Editor, quoting "Devvy", asks...
 "How is it that the U.S. government can dictate to another foreign government what they can and cannot install at their own airports?"*

Full-Body Scanners to Fry Travelers With Radiation.  TSA Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell recently announced the agency's intent to use back-scatter X-ray machines for passenger surveillance.  These hugely expensive, closet-sized zappers can find the plastic bombs hidden in grandma's underpants, while delivering a smacking dose of ionizing radiation to her breasts and thyroid gland.  Snooper X-rays penetrate a few centimeters into the flesh and reflect off the skin to form a naked body image for TSA security personnel to inspect.  These machines are already being field tested at several U.S. airports, including JFK, LAX and Orlando.

The Body Scanner Scam.  All males have a body cavity.  Females have two body cavities.  In prisons, these body cavities are habitually used to smuggle drugs and improvised weapons past body searches, including complete nudity strip searches.  Given the power of widely available explosives, the amount that can be carried inside a body cavity — let alone two — is sufficient to destroy ordinary pressurized airliners at normal flight altitudes.

TSA lies exposed:  Full-body scanner machines do save and transmit images.  The TSA has been lying to the American people about full-body scanners.  The agency has insisted that these "digital strip search" machines are incapable of saving, storing or transmitting the images they take.  This, we are told, makes it okay for people to be digitally strip-searched.

The Editor says...
 Obviously the machine has to be capable of storing images in order to preserve evidence against someone who is caught, for example, with a bomb in his pants.  This would be the evidence of probable cause for further searches of such an individual, without which evidence the suspect would probably not be convicted.

Senators demand answers on saved body scans and privacy protections.  Senators said they were "disturbed" by reports U.S. Marshals have saved more than 35,000 body scan images from a Florida courthouse, according to a letter sent Friday [8/20/2010].

Airport Body Scanners Violate the Teachings of Islam, Says Muslim Group.  A group of Muslim scholars says it supports airline safety, but it is "deeply concerned" about the use of airport scanners that show nude images of the human body.

The Editor says...
 I have a question for the so-called scholars:  Who do you suppose is ultimately to blame for invasive searches at airports?  If you Muslims object to scanners, take the bus!

Blaming the Messenger for Watchlist Problems.  [Scroll down]  Our security policymaking tends to lurch around, often with little regard for what is effective — or constitutional — and driven by the particular circumstances of the latest plot.  This happened with the so-called Christmas Day bomber, when the government rushed to deploy full-body scanners, without much deliberation as to how effective they might be.

Another case of TSA overkill.  Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn't allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?  Unfortunately, it's no joke.

Target the terrorists, not the public.  There comes a moment in life, private and public, when what is grudgingly tolerated becomes intolerable.  When life has reached such a tipping point, then, at any instance, the most insignificant annoyance or the least provocation can undo the carefully arranged order of living and uncork a cascade of fury in those indignant of being abused for no fault of their own.

TSA worker plants white powder baggie on traveller as a joke.  These days, joking about anything illegal while in an airport security line will likely land you in a holding cell, and might even result in criminal charges.  But this column from the Philadelphia Inquirer has some wondering whether that rule applies to TSA employees themselves.

It was no joke at security gate.  In the tense new world of air travel, we're stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile.  The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener — particularly one this stupid.

Stupid TSA prank should remind everyone:  good thing they're not unionized.  You may have read about the Philadelphia TSA worker who scared ... an unsuspecting 22-year-old passenger by planting a bag of white powder in her carry-on bag.  Luckily, he's already been fired.  But if TSA was unionized...

TSA Security a Mixture of the Serious and the Silly.  On one side they have the nation as a whole, demanding 100% efficacy in stopping violent attacks on civilian flights.  On the other side we find all of the individuals who make up that nation who wish to be inconvenienced as little as possible while flying grandma's annual fruitcake to her during the holidays.  If they are too trusting and complacent you wind up with some maniac getting on board with explosives tucked into his shoes, underpants, or fringed bonnet.  Err in the other direction and you get an overzealous agent slapping handcuffs on journalist Michael Yon for failing to provide his W-2s for the last ten years during screening.

Satire:  Anti-Terrorism Honor System.  (Video)

Bombs Don't Take Down Airliners — People Take Down Airliners.  Anyone who has flown since 9/11 knows the effects of airline terrorism on airport security — remove the shoes and belt, laptops in the bin, no liquids, and on and on.  Everyone is subjected to these protocols.  Businessmen, mothers of toddlers, toddlers themselves, grandmothers, foreigners, citizens — we all endure the same drill.  Most amusing are the "reaction checks."  After 9/11, sharp blades were the rage (the rage of airport screeners' scrutiny, that is).  After the shoe bomber it was shoes, then it was the 3 oz. limit on liquids — as if 2.5 oz. of liquid is safe, but 3.5 oz. is a threat.

Calls for Full-Body Scanners Re-Ignite Privacy Concerns.  The calls for airports to expand the use of full-body scanners in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight have re-ignited privacy concerns from groups and lawmakers who have long said the scanners produce graphic images that could make their way onto the Internet.

'Fleshmob' strips off to protest body scans.  German protesters have demonstrated against the planned introduction of body scanners at airports by stripping down to their underwear and, in some cases, beyond.

What Has Happened to the Billions of Dollars Spent on Aviation Security?  Nearly 10 years after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, questions continue to be raised on security:  How should Americans feel about the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent to beef up aviation security?  And what about all those hours we've spent waiting on lines, taking off our shoes and surrendering our liquids and gels — have they been worth it?

Ivana Trump Escorted Off Plane:  Napolitano Declares 'The System Worked'.  For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags — folding sandwich bags are verboten — among other indignities.  This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes.  The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.

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, 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.

Back to the Airline Insanity Page.
Back to the Home page

 Bookmark and Share

Custom counter developed in-house

Document location http://www.akdart.com/airline3.html
Updated February 2, 2012.

Page design by Andrew K. Dart  ©2012