FTTUSA On TSA: "No More Criminal Touching Of Private Parts"
Freedom To Travel USA, in an email, calls for "a return to reasonable security," and says, "we recommend 2002 security screening which no one complained about." This includes:
Metal detectors only (no unconstitutional inch-by-inch nude body scanners)No Criminal touching of private parts
Shoes on
Reasonable liquids allowed
No plastic baggies
We are against unconstitutional inch-by-inch nude body scanners; at the end of every alarm, the scanners CAN'T IDENTIFY what they think they found, and a secondary search is always done. From the millions of alarms, there has never been found even one non-metallic bomb or non-metallic bomb part. Scanners waste an incredible amount of time in addition to being unconstitutional under the 4th amendment, yet the most intrusive government search ever under the largest "Stop and Frisk" program in the United States continues unchallenged by leaders (both parties) in Congress and the President who approved this travesty.
We are against CRIMINAL touching pat downs. Quite simply, the "secret" TSA procedures for so-called "pat downs" include required touching (through clothing) of genitals, female breasts, and buttocks. People in WHEELCHAIRS or those with other medical challenges are often profiled.
And no more special lines for affluent travelers. This isn't private business. Travel writer Christopher Elliott asks, "Should the TSA adopt a 'one line' policy?"
Gordon Moore is confused -- and angry.Just before he boarded a recent flight in Portland, Ore., he was met with a crowd of passengers queued up at the TSA screening area.
"I saw a separate security line for first and business class travelers, staffed by at least two TSA employees," he says. "They seemed to be doing nothing."
He adds, "The airlines can do whatever they want, but all of us pay for the TSA through our taxes. By what right do they provide priority service for affluent travelers?"
...One line would eliminate the Pre-Check boondoggle. The TSA should be running its background checks on all passengers before the flight and singling out the dangerous ones for an extra once-over -- not the other way around. And with the influx of cash the TSA is now collecting, we shouldn't have to pay an extra $85 for the agency to do its job.
Also, a one-line policy would eradicate a "special" class of passengers that don't really deserve special treatment. Elites, employees and flight crew members should stand in the same line and be subject to the same screening requirements as everyone else. Nothing would lead to common-sense reform faster than an unhappy pilot's union complaining that its members have to pass through the silly and unproven full-body scanner.
Alexandra Petri in the WaPo has some tips to help the TSA's repurposed mall food court workers, earning money for violating our bodies and rights, do their jobs a little better. A couple of those:
•All babies going through security must be stopped and muted.•Tell the TSA that D.C. licenses are real licenses from the United States of America. Otherwise they will both hold up the line and embarrass everyone.
The Blaze's Chris Peterson was surprised that the TSA let him fly with only his Costco card as ID. Silly Chris, the TSA isn't a security agency; it's a pretend security agency designed to teach Americans to be docile as their rights are yanked from them.
And whaddya know, Americans are complying, right, left, and center.
> The TSA should be running its background checks on all passengers before the flight
Why? The point of security on the flight is not to identify the people on the flight, but to prevent people from doing violence during the flight.
The only reason that plane tickets have names on them is that THE AIRLINES LIKE IT THAT WAY. They don't want people reselling tickets; they'd rather collect "change fees".
-- Some guy (who remembers when you didn't need ID to fly on an airline, or to give a name when you bought a ticket)
John Galt at August 4, 2014 10:36 PM
I don't agree with all the stuff they say and I'm guessing they don't, either, but they're looking at baby steps here.
Amy Alkon at August 5, 2014 5:48 AM
Next up: federal takeover of driver licensing. We have been receiving notices recently that there is a deadline this month for everyone born in 1964 or later to go get the new, super-duper, federal-government-approved "Star ID" driver's license, or you won't be able to board a flight anymore. Us old farts have three more years.
Cousin Dave at August 5, 2014 6:57 AM
But aren't people and corporations who can pay more, better? And shouldn't they be treated better?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 5, 2014 7:10 AM
I'm joking, but....
Why don't we make passengers who really ARE rude, even by passengers' standards, subject to strip-searches, so they won't hold up the line?
From Oct. 1992:
Dear Ann Landers: I am a security guard at a Detroit airport. I screen baggage and help people get through the metal detectors.
You would not believe how many airline passengers become rude and use profane language when security guards ask them to remove their belts, earrings, barrettes, keys and other items that set the buzzer off. How are we supposed to know that these people aren`t carrying a gun, a knife or even a bomb?
We must remove all metal from passengers in order to stop the alarm. It is amazing how many people walk through the detector six or seven times, removing one piece of metal at a time while 20 other people are waiting behind them. We have concluded that they do this merely to attract attention or annoy the security guards.
Then there are the clowns who say jokingly, ``I never get through these damn things without the alarm ringing.`` How come they haven`t figured out that if they took all the metal off before they reached the doors, it would save an awful lot of trouble. We just don`t have time to check each person with a hand wand, and it gets to be a real problem.
Ninety percent of the people we see are great, but the other 10 percent are a pain in the you-know-what-this includes a few pilots and flight attendants. Please pass the word, Ann.
Frustrated in Lincoln Park, Mich.
Dear Frus: As a frequent flier, I can attest to the fact that your complaint is a valid one. I hope the readers who see themselves today will be more considerate in the future.
_______________________
And here's a follow-up from March of 1993 (I don't know why it used to take them so long to process these letters, assuming the writer didn't write and send it very late)
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-03-16/features/9303160135_1_dear-ann-landers-scanners-detectors
Dear Ann Landers: You recently printed a letter about airport metal detectors. The writer complained that some people, just to be difficult, take off one metal item at a time, which requires them to go through the detectors over and over, holding up other passengers.
It is amazing what will trigger these detectors-rivets in blue jeans, hairpins, braces, surgical pins, metal shoe tips, underwire bras, etc. It is not reasonable after one's pockets have been emptied to ask people to disrobe or undo their hairstyles.
I am an executive who travels frequently, often overseas. All security stations have hand scanners. Too often, while traveling in the states, I have encountered security guards who are too lazy to use the scanner so they keep sending people back through the detectors again and again. Nowhere else in the world does this happen. The hand scanners are used routinely overseas, even in high-security airports.
Hand scanners solve the problem nicely. That's why they were invented. Please deal with this in your column.
Fortune 500 Executive in Rochester, N.Y.
lenona at August 5, 2014 8:10 AM
Where'd these people get the idea that only "nude" body scanners are unconstitutional? The fourth amendment applies everywhere, and so does the second.
Not only does terrorism kill fewer people outside the Middle East than falling coconuts, but any further airplane hijacking attempt, EVER, will end like Flight 93. The problem ended then, because now we know what hijackers would do if they could.
So let's continue to demand the complete abolition of the TSA, and banish from office everyone who helped create it. It's worse than needless; it's a declaration of war by our government against its own people, "justified" by nothing but yet another made-up fake emergency.
And the next time they demand emergency action, start by assuming the emergency is fake. Because it always is.
jdgalt at August 5, 2014 5:07 PM
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