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Dump Dept. of Homeland Security too.
http://blogs.forbes.com/artcarden/20...olish-the-tsa/
The Republicans control the House of Representatives and are bracing for a long battle over the President’s health care proposal. In the spirit of bipartisanship and sanity, I propose that the first thing on the chopping block should be an ineffective organization that wastes money, violates our rights, and encourages us to make decisions that imperil our safety. I’m talking about the Transportation Security Administration.
Bipartisan support should be immediate. For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA. For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.
But won’t that compromise safety? I doubt it. The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility. This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal.
The odds of dying from a terrorist attack are much lower than the odds of dying from doing any of a number of incredibly mundane things we do every day. You are almost certainly more likely to die or be injured driving to the airport than you are to be injured by a terrorist once you’re in the air, even without a TSA. Indeed, once you have successfully made it to the airport, the most dangerous part of your trip is over. Until it’s time to drive home, that is.
Last week, I picked up a “TSA Customer Comment Card.” First, it’s important that we get one thing straight: I am not the TSA’s “customer.” The term “customer” denotes an honorable relationship in which I and a seller voluntarily trade value for value. There’s nothing voluntary about my relationship with the TSA.
A much more appropriate term for our relationship is “subject.” The TSA stands between me and those with whom I would like to trade, and I am not allowed to without their blessing.
Second, the TSA doesn’t provide security. It provides security theater, as Jeffrey Goldberg argues. The kid with the slushie in Tucson before the three-ounce-rule? The little girl in the princess costume at an airport I don’t remember? The countless grandmothers? I’m more likely to be killed tripping over my own two feet while I’m distracted by the lunacy of it all than I am to be killed by one of them in a terrorist attack. The moral cost of all this is considerable, as James Otteson and Bradley Birzer argue.
For even more theater of the absurd, consider that the TSA screens pilots. If a pilot wants to bring a plane down, he or she can probably do it with bare hands, and certainly without weapons. It’s also not entirely crazy to think that an airline will take measures to keep their pilots from turning their multi-million dollar planes into flying bombs. Through the index funds in my retirement portfolio, I’m pretty sure I own stock in at least one airline, and I’m pretty sure airline managers know that cutting corners on security isn’t in my best interests as a shareholder.
And the items being confiscated? Are nailclippers and aftershave the tools of terrorists? What about the plastic cup of water I was told to dispose of because “it could be acid” (I quote the TSA screener) in New Orleans before the three-ounce rule? What about the can of Coke I was relieved of after a flight from Copenhagen to Atlanta a few months ago? I would be more scared of someone giving a can of Coke to a child and contributing to the onset of juvenile diabetes than of using it to hide something that could compromise the safety of an aircraft.
And finally, most screening devices are ineffective because anyone who is serious about getting contraband on an airplane can smuggle it in a body cavity or a surgical implant. The scanners the TSA uses aren’t going to stop them.
Over the next few years, we’re headed for a bitter, partisan clash over legislative priorities. Before the battle starts, let’s reach for that low-hanging, bipartisan fruit. Let’s abolish the TSA.
Dump Dept. of Homeland Security too.
So you don't buy into the whole "No attacks since 9/11 because of all the money we've spent/DHS/etc" argument?
And TSA security IS theater. One person tries to use a shoe as a bomb, and now everyone has to get their shoes screened? Ridiculous.
Which president formed that, DarrinS?
I'm in favor of allowing the Airlines to screen their passengers. They own the planes and their employees fly them. I think it would be in their best interest to make sure the passengers boarding their planes were not a security risk.
Airlines that do that poorly would, ultimately, go out of business. Those that did it well -- without too much discomfort for their customers -- would profit.
Free enterprise and Homeland Security all in one neat package.
Metal detectors and secure pits.
Because chemical explosives don't work under those conditions, right?
The threat of chemical explosion on an airplane is insignificant.
I tried to make sense of it but I can't. I can only assume you're just trying to incite a response from the liberals.
The only problem with the commercial-only solution is that poor airline security can potentially affect anyone, and not just the airline.
Yes, we need security. Just not as invasive, costly, or time consuming as it has become.
I guess at some point I used to believe that. It's gotten completely out of control.
Sad, but true.
Are dogs incapable of sniffing this stuff out?
Just curious.
No...
We should keep the TSA.
It's a good source of comedy!
Sincerely,
Richard Reid (Shoe Bomber) and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (Underwear Bomber)
are they enemy combatants, yoni?
And government-provided security is stellar?
C'mon, corporate survival and profit are much bigger motivators than a Walmart-Greeter-turned-TSA-Security-Officer will ever feel.
Two failed attempts out of the hundreds of thousands of airline passengers since 9/11 is statistically insignificant. Both attempts were discovered and stopped by means that did not require the kind of security measures passengers see today.
Look at how many campus shootings we've had since 9/11. Why haven't we installed TSA-level security checkpoints on college campuses yet?
Wake up peoples. The value of these machines is not protecting the masses, but herding them.
1. They desensitize the public to increased invasive security
2. they have tremendous value to govt intelligence, by saving and cataloging joe schmoe's biometrics ( size is the best identifier, evidently)...http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-11/t...s?_s=PM:TRAVEL
Never fly without a (metal) Bill of Rights...
I got one at Penn & Teller's Show in Vegas earlier this year. Great fun going through security!
Big Sis Caught Lying To American People
Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano, now forever known as Big Sis – a reference to George Orwell’s 1984 – has been caught telling some big lies in an attempt to quell an enormous public backlash against the full body scanning technology and invasive pat-down procedures that have been implemented by the TSA in airports nationwide.
In a blatant propaganda piece published by USA Today, Napolitano describes the scanning machines as safe and the pat-downs as “discreet”, in the face of a flood of complaints from scientists, pilots, flight attendants, privacy groups, parents, Muslim groups and everyday passengers, all rebelling against over the top security.
“AIT machines are safe, efficient, and protect passenger privacy.” Napolitano writes in an article in which every single claim she makes can be easily disproved and revealed to be outright lies.
Lie: The scanners are safe
“They have been independently evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, the National Ins ute of Standards and Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who have all affirmed their safety.” Napolitano claims, expecting the public to simply swallow the claim that NIST and the FDA are somehow “independent” of the federal government.
As for Johns Hopkins University declaring the scanners safe, tell it to Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins school of medicine. Love told AFP two days ago that “statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays”.
“…we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner,” he added.
So, unless you count skin cancer as safe, Napolitano is lying to you.
According to other numerous real “independent” scientists who continue to speak out over the health hazards associated with the x-ray technology, the body scanners are far from safe.
John Sedat, a University of California at San Francisco professor of biochemistry and biophysics and member of the National Academy of Sciences tells CNet that the machines have “mutagenic effects” and will increase the risk of cancer. Sedat previously sent a letter to the White House science Czar John P. Holdren, identifying the specific risk the machines pose to children and the elderly.
The letter stated:
“it appears that real independent safety data do not exist… There has not been sufficient review of the intermediate and long-term effects of radiation exposure associated with airport scanners. There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.”
The TSA has repeatedly stated that going through the machines is equal to the radiation encountered during just two minutes of a flight. However, this does not take into account that the scanning machines specifically target only the skin and the muscle tissue immediately beneath.
The scanners are similar to C-Scans and fire ionizing radiation at those inside which penetrates a few centimeters into the flesh and reflects off the skin to form a naked body image.
The firing of ionizing radiation at the body effectively “unzips” DNA, according to scientific research by the Massachusetts Ins ute of Technology.
The research shows that even very low doses of X-ray can delay or prevent cellular repair of damaged DNA, yet pregnant women and children will be subjected to the process as new guidelines including scanners are adopted.
The Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety concluded in their report on the matter that governments must justify the use of the scanners and that a more accurate assessment of the health risks is needed.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, according to the report, adding that governments should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”
“The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” reported Bloomberg.
Scientists at Columbia University also entered the debate recently, warning that the dose emitted by the naked x-ray devices could be up to 20 times higher than originally estimated, likely contributing to an increase in a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma which affects the head and neck.
“If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant,” said Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research.
Lie: The scanners are effective
“…the weapons and other dangerous and prohibited items we’ve found during AIT screenings have illustrated their security value time and again.” Napolitano claims in her propaganda piece.
In reality, the machines would not have prevented the Christmas Day bomber from boarding Flight 253, according to their designers, and other security experts who have dismissed the devices as “useless”.
The imaging machines cannot even detect explosive material, so claiming, as Napolitano does, that they are “our best defense against such threats” is misleading at best and at worst a complete lie.
If the machines had detected “dangerous items” “time and again”, rest assured that the DHS and the TSA would make sure it was all over the news – such success stories have been decidedly absent from the media, unless you count “dangerous items” as baby milk, tubes of toothpaste or contact lens fluid.
The idea that the machines are effective flies in the face of the viewpoint of surveillance experts who note that the scanners will do nothing to make air travel safer.
Lie: The scanners cannot store/print/transmit images
At first we were asked to believe that the imaging machines did not produce crisp images of naked bodies.
In an effort to downplay the intrusion of privacy they really represent, the TSA routinely claimed that the images produced by the scanners are “ghostly” or “skeletal”.
The passenger’s face is blurred and the image as a whole “resembles a fuzzy negative,” the TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee told the media last year, prior to the underwear bombing attempt.
After months of researchers, reporters and everyday travelers outing this as a complete lie, the DHS/TSA abandoned that approach and instead claimed that, although they were detailed naked images, it’s fine and dandy because they cannot be saved or transmitted.
“The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images.” Napolitano claims in her latest propaganda piece.
Again not true. As we have previously detailed, the images that show in detail the naked genitals of men, women and children that have passed through the scanners can be transmitted and printed.
As reported by Declan McCullagh of CNET earlier this year, “The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surrep iously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.”
The proof comes in the form of a letter (PDF), obtained by The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), in which William Bordley, an associate general counsel with the Marshals Service, admits that “approximately 35,314 images…have been stored on the Brijot Gen2 machine” used in the Orlando, Fla. federal courthouse.
EPIC says it has also obtained more than 100 images of electronically stripped individuals from the scanning devices used at federal courthouses. The disclosures come as part of a settlement of an EPIC Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Marshals Service.
Brijot, the manufacturer of the body scanning equipment in question, also admits that its machine can store up to 40,000 images and records.
EPIC, has filed two further lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security over the scanners, claiming that the DHS has refused to release at least 2,000 images it has stored from scanners currently in use in U.S. airports.
EPIC’s lawsuit argues that the body scanners violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches, as well as the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, referencing religious laws about modesty.
The group points to a further do ent (PDF) it has obtained from DHS showing that the machines used by the department’s TSA are not only able to record and store naked body images, but that they are mandated to do so.
The TSA has admitted that this is the case, but claims that it is for training and testing purposes only, maintaining that the body scanners used at airports cannot “store, print or transmit images”.
“In complying with our Freedom of Information Act request, the Marshals Service has helped the public more fully understand the capabilities of these devices,” EPIC President Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. “But the DHS continues to conceal the truth from American air travelers who could be subject to similar intrusive recorded searches in U.S. airports.”
As if it was needed, further evidence also points to the fact that the images are actively being transmitted and printed in airports.
Lie: Pat-downs are “discreet”
In her headline, Napolitano calls the pat-down procedure offered as an alternative to the naked body scanners, or used in addition to them, as “discreet”.
“Pat-downs have long been one of the many security measures used by the U.S. and countries across the world to make air travel as secure as possible.” she writes.
What she does not explain is that the new pat down procedure, which now allows TSA agents to forcefully feel around breasts and genitalia, is currently conducted in full view of queuing passengers and has been described by many, including New York Times reporter Joe Sharkey, as a deliberate form of humiliation to discourage others from refusing the full body scans.
The TSA also claims that the pat-downs are discreet, yet multiple accounts and reports prove otherwise.
Flight attendants and pilots unions in particular have taken up issue with the pat-downs, with one union declaring “We don’t want them in uniform going through this enhanced screening where their private areas are being touched in public… They actually make contact with the genital area.”
As reported by Reuters, parents are now demanding that the procedures be changed for children, after witnesses have described their children’s genitals being touched by men and women working for the TSA.
“I didn’t think it was going to be as horrible as he was describing,” one father noted after an agent told him what he was going to do to the child before conducting the full body search.
“At some point the terrorists have won.” the father added. The TSA says it is currently “reviewing” the procedure for children. Perhaps it should first review it’s policy on background checking its own employees, which by all accounts is woefully inadequate.
Lie: “Risk based” security procedure
Napolitano calls the TSA’s system “risk-based,” another total fallacy given the fact that the primary targets of airport oppression have been women, children, the elderly, and the physically disabled, all the categories of people who characteristically would pose the least risk in terms of terrorism.
The procedure is completely random, emphasizing the fact that everyone is categorized as a potential terrorist.
Lie: The scanners are popular with the public
“These machines are now in use at airports nationwide, and the vast majority of travelers say they prefer this technology to alternative screening measures.” Napolitano writes.
Another unsubstantiated claim, particularly given that a new Reuters poll shows that over 95% of Americans are now less likely to fly due to the crackdown in the wake of the dubious toner cartridge and underpants bombing scares.
Furthermore, do ents released under the Freedom of Information Act before the issue recently hit headlines again, and before the majority of airports even had the machines installed, have revealed that there were more than 600 formal complaints about the devices last year.
Hardly a shining example of how popular the machines are.
Lies Lies Lies
Napolitano and the TSA have consistently lied to the American people about the open implementation of tyranny in our airports. They will continue to do so in an effort to make it appear that those who are revolting against their procedures are just a small minority, when in reality the the vast majority of sick and tired of being treated like slaves and having their fundamental freedoms trashed.
On November 24th, ‘national opt-out day’, the world will see thousands and thousands standing up against measures that are not only set to become commonplace in airports everywhere, but are also scheduled to be implemented on our streets if we do not resist.
OptOutDay.com declares:
It’s the day ordinary citizens stand up for their rights, stand up for liberty, and protest the federal government’s desire to virtually strip us naked or submit to an “enhanced pat down” that touches people’s breasts and genitals. You should never have to explain to your children, “Remember that no stranger can touch or see your private area, unless it’s a government employee, then it’s OK.”Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
The goal of National Opt Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change. No naked body scanners, no government-approved groping. We have a right to privacy and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we’re guilty until proven innocent.
We urge our readers to join forces with these groups and organise peaceful protests at the nearest airport to you that has implemented body scanners and enhanced TSA pat downs.
The issue has garnered such massive attention, largely due to coverage via The Drudge Report, that the federal government has been forced to declare it is considering scrapping the enhanced security procedures for pilots and flight attendants. The unified statements from pilots and flight attendants unions highlights the fact that coming together and declaring a mass refusal to submit to this can be effective, it is vital that it not be overlooked.
http://www.infowars.com/big-sis-caug...merican-people
Nope, government security is pretty shoddy too. But if you give security over wholly to commercial en ies, there is bound to be an airline that cuts costs by eschewing security. And if they could drop the price of a ticket by $50 more than their compe or, they'd probably be successful.
Then, of course, other airlines will start feeling the heat, and also feel the need to drop prices. (Look at the way that other banks started piggybacking on the stupid CDS thing.)
As an IT guy, I can tell you that security is often overlooked, as it's a money drain and doesn't produce very "tangible" results. The big corps have them because they could get sued for a lot, but smaller companies tend to do as little as possible.
I'm just shocked people are figuring this out now... this was old news two years ago.
I'm certainly willing to try an approach where you can book two different types of flights:
1) The one with all the security bells and whistles like we have now
2) Another one where the fare costs half or less, and I sign a full release making the airline not responsible in case I die during an attack on the plane (and only that, if it's a malfunction or such, then no go. I don't wan to give them a pass for not doing maintenance on planes).
Let the people choose and see what they want. Free market at work!
DHS is harder to dump, since they basically absorbed a few other facilities, like Immigration.
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