The TSA: Giving Terrorists Exactly What They Wanted
Ned Levi writes at Consumer Traveler that it takes only examining the TSA's budget -- of which 79 percent is spent for airport screening and only 4 percent is spent for intelligence -- to see their security priorities are upside down.

Yes, only 4 percent for intelligence. The rest goes for repurposed mall food court workers who will, among other things, feel your hoohoo for plastic explosives. Even if you are a 79-year-old grandma from Peoria and your most suspicious act is frequently leaving your bifocals on top of your car as you drive away from church.:

The priorities shown in TSA's budget make no sense. Setting aside so much of their budget to screen law abiding citizen travelers tells me fear and mistrust of the American people seem to be the guiding principles of TSA.

It appears TSA doesn't understand the terrorists' goal. Simply put, terrorists aim to terrorize, to coerce or intimidate people by causing fear. Their goal isn't to kill individual people, but make them afraid, very afraid. They might use explosives to blow up or crash planes as tactics, but their goal is terror, and to make us react so radically that we give up on who we are and what we stand for as a nation. TSA is playing directly into terrorist hands by adopting the terrorists' own strategy of fear, humiliation and dehumanization, and applying it to the American traveling public.

...At TSA airport checkpoints we see TSA humiliation and dehumanization of passengers. There continues to be a documented disregard for air traveler health at TSA checkpoints. TSA treats air travelers as if they are idiots, with absurd, arbitrary regulations which do nothing to increase security. TSA suspends our Constitutional freedoms every time we go through a TSA checkpoint. Much of what occurs at TSA checkpoints may actually make us more vulnerable than ever before while we're aloft.

...• The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects US citizens, in part, by prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures. It requires a warrant for searches and seizures and "probable cause" is required to obtain the warrant, yet every day air travelers are subjected to TSA agents performing enhanced pat-downs, including rubbing passengers' genital areas, without probable cause, nor the lessor standard of reasonable suspicion, or a warrant.

TSA needs to get a grip on itself and stop letting the terrorists win. They must eliminate their tactic of traveler humiliation and dehumanization. TSA's fear tactics do nothing to protect us from dedicated, professional, trained terrorists.

Let's get back to pre-9/11 security, which was effective in stopping the odd amateur terrorist. Let's treat our citizens traveling by air with dignity, and keep their Constitutional rights intact.

He gives some great examples of the absurdity that passes for security in his piece, like how a gun decoration on the side of the purse is supposedly a threat to the lives of all of those on a plane, or:

• TSA states a 13-ounce bottle of any liquid brought into a plane's cabin is dangerous and prohibits it, but that bringing four 3.4-ounce containers of the same liquid into the cabin is somehow magically safe.

Yes, this is what happens when we have "security," which, as I wrote when I tried to get American women to be civilly disobedient at TSA "checkpoints" in airports, in no way takes the place of meaningful security:

Meaningful measures to thwart terrorist acts require highly trained law enforcement officers using targeted intelligence to identify suspects long before they launch their plots.

The TSA's main accomplishment seems to be obedience training for the American public - priming us to be docile (and even polite) about giving up our civil liberties. The TSA not only violates our Fourth Amendment rights but also has posted signs effectively eradicating our First Amendment right to speak out about it. One such sign, in Denver International Airport, offers the vague warning that "verbal abuse" of agents will "not be tolerated." Travelers are left to wonder whether it's "verbal abuse" to inform the TSA agent probing their testicles that this isn't making us safer, or are they only in trouble if they throw in an obscenity? Not surprisingly, few seem willing to speak out and risk arrest.