Last June, the House of Representatives, in dramatic fashion voted down using whole-body scanners as primary screening devices at airports. The voice vote was inconclusive and an actual vote count was ordered. The final tally was 310 for the amendment and 118 against. Now, TSA is merrily on its way to defying the will of the House.
This 310 to 118 June 4th vote was taken on the amendment offered by Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., to the TSA authorization bill. Evidently, TSA can’t count. Or, they just don’t give a darn about what our representatives think.
TSA feels that the choice of being strip-searched or groped is as American as apple pie. I’m sorry, but I was joking back in the early 2000s when I said that soon we we will be walking onto our planes naked. The last time I checked, there was a law about “reasonable suspicion” before subjecting someone to a strip search. Is simply the act of getting on a plane now considered “reasonable suspicion”?
Unfortunately, even these $100,000 strip-search machines won’t stop a dedicated terrorist who might find ways to hide explosives inside his body, like this jihadist who hid explosives in his anus. I’m afraid to imagine the operation of TSA’s next “in-body scanner” that is surely being designed as I protest the less-irritating current iteration of search.
Fellow blogger, Jason Barger noted:
So, the naked truth for air travel in the future just may come down to this choice for each passenger – pass through the peep hole or let the wandering hands get frisky? Either way, air travel may just become X-Rated.
I better get a tan.
TSA is using undirected stimulus money to buy these x-rated, x-ray machines, ironically bypassing the House of Representatives, the very place where such funding is normally initiated. In fact, the House has clearly directed that they don’t want money spent on these contraptions as primary scanning gizmos.
Hopefully, Sen. Lieberman, who controls the Senate side of Homeland Security and TSA, will see his way to allowing the Senate to vote on a version of the TSA Authorization Act that has already been debated and passed by the House of Representatives.
If there was ever an agency that needed control, it is TSA. This behemoth has been virtually strip-searching us, collecting travel data, making us walk in socks, confiscating toothpaste and shampoo, rummaging through our luggage and more without any Congressional oversight since its inception.
Someone needs to wallop TSA and Homeland Security with a dose of common sense and a bit of respect for our elected representatives, and remind them who is paying their salaries.
(Photo: Quasimondo/Flickr Creative Commons)
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The TSA is operating with a blank check made out to “FEAR.” That gives them a special status in government, with the unlimited ability to do whatever they want in strict secrecy with no accountability to anyone but themselves. The only thing that can stop the juggernaut is a Congress that has the courage to stop the stupidity and hold them accountable to standards at least similar to those of other government agencies.
Unfortunately, you won’t find much courage in Congress. I can confidently predict that the TSA authorization bill that finally emerges from behind the locked doors of the conference committee will impose no constraints on the use of virtual strip searches or anything else. Someone from the TSA will merely have to remind the committee members that whoever votes to limit strip search scanners will be personally responsible for whatever harm occurs in the next attack. They’ll have to explain to all the grieving widows and orphans why they helped the terrorists kill their loved ones by depriving the TSA of a vital weapon in the War on Terror. And that’s all it will take. Politicians care only about re-election, and there isn’t anyone in Congress who would do anything that lets their opponents brand them “soft on terrorism.” So no way will they vote to constrain the TSA.
The TSA has made an art of exploiting fear as both a sword and shield that allows them to run “open loop,” escaping sort of oversight or accountability. That, folks, is what “democracy” means in 21st century America.
(And bureaucrats work the same way. That’s why the TSA will continually ADD hassles to checkpoints, always in bone-headed inconsistent reaction to yesterday’s threats. Even when some procedure or hassle proves worthless or absurd, no TSA official would risk being blamed for removing a “layer” should another attack occur. Thanks to the deadly combination of fear, arrogance, and bureaucratic inertia, we can count on airport “security” continually getting more intrusive, more difficult, more absurd– and probably less effective. Regrettably, the only thing we can do about it is to avoid flying.)
You’re missing the best chance here to mix the two biggest forms of idiocity at the airport. TSA and airline fees.
Option 1. Check all baggage (at $50 a bag, cause you have no choice), and fly naked with a translucent bag over your head for the illusion of privacy. You don’t have to worry about cell phone cameras, because everyone’s checked everything. Insurance for valuable items previously carried on the plane like laptops, cameras, and cellphones will be available. Premiums to be equal to the replacement value of the item.
Option 2. TSA approved spandex suits will be available for rent, at $100/leg, which prevent you from having any hidden items on your body, but again provide the illusion of modesty. They will be free to business and first class passengers. In this case, you may have carry-on luggage at the current 1/1 rule.
Now, since I’ve managed to spew some absolute crapola, I think I have passed the interview for Airline CEO. Or HMO administrator. Hmm, do you suppose that we could lump airline management in with Obamacare? Health care and airlines have equivalent levels of cluefulness in management.
What happens if I give my wallet to the nice TSA agent -who holds it out of my sight for the 45 seconds or so it takes to get through this machine – and when I get it back, Oops! Looky there! That $500 I had in there is mysteriously gone! Don’t tell me that they’re gonna make me prove that I had $500 in my wallet. I can see all kinds of opportunity for abuse here.
The prosepect of losing money or other valuables already exists without benefit of the full body scanners. On several occasions I have been ordered to accompany one of the TSA agents for additional searching while some of my belongings were still inside the x-ray machine. The agent’s assurance that they would be OK was not reassuring and his stern order that I come immediately did not put me in the most favorable mood for having one bag hand searched while I tried to keep looking over my shoulder at my other belongings that were lying at the end of the x-ray conveyer some distance away.
The TSA seems to have its own extremely narrow definition of “security.” To them, “security” refers only to protecting aircraft and passengers from terrorists (and particularly to quick reaction after yesterday’s failure). So they don’t care at all if their questionable and inconsistent attempts to protect aircraft and passengers from the very rare threat of terrorist attack create increased vulnerability to the very common threat of theft (along with the threat of infection from failure to change gloves between “bag checks”) As far as the TSA are concerned, passengers bear complete responsibility and liability for ensuring the security of their belongings, even when screening procedures specifically prevent passengers from doing that. Those threats are entirely outside their “mission” and jurisdiction, and thus can be disregarded when designing screening procedures and training screeners to implement them inconsistently.
I guess we’ll have to wait until someone actually becomes a victim of identity theft during the virtual strip search and makes an appropriately big stink about it before the TSA’s leadership takes notice of the problem. And when they do, they’ll probably blame the passenger and exonerate the TSA.
Those of us who have to use some form of individual search procedures (in my case because of metal in my spine and hips) have had to confront the problem of leaving luggage for up to 15 minutes while first, an agent of the the appropriate sex is located, second, the agent moans and groans about having to come over and search me, and third,the search takes place.
I’ve solved this by befriending total strangers in the security line and asking them to wait with my luggage. (But I suppose they too could be thieves.)
That said, I like the whole body scanner at Denver. At least I don’t have some TSA agent pulling at my underwire bra. . .
As FDR said in the 1930’s “All we have to fear is fear itself”. TSA was brought into existence in the Bush/Cheney era and was totally based on Fear. Additionally, if anyone in any part of the government or the rest of the US made comments as to the absolutely stupidity of some of the “rules” or did not agree with certain persons in the Bush/Cheney administration, you were branded as a “traitor”, “unAmerican” and any other title they could bestow on you.
TSA AND Homeland Security both need to be dismantled and rethought before bringing either back on line and this time do it properly with reasonably thought out rules and regulations. PLUS, as an added comment, I was always under the impression that The National Guard was our homeland security as that has always been their role from the beginning of our Nation. So WHY did we create an entirely new “monster” of an agency?