Nov 17 2010
Years Of TSA Abuse Coming To A Head
Team Obama is completely in over their head. Latest example: the whole TSA groping issue as a classic example of how NOT to handle a crisis. Of course, we have yet to see Team Obama correctly handle ANY crisis. So, in response to their arrogant and heavy handed (pun intended) abuse of the traveling public, lawsuits are flying in from all directions as the nation gets an ear and eye full of personal stories of abuse:
“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,” the lawsuit said. “As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated.”
TSA workers continued to laugh and joke about the incident “for an extended period of time,” leaving the woman distraught and needing to be consoled. After the woman re-entered the boarding area, TSA workers continued to humiliate her over the incident.
“One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that ‘he would just have to watch the video,’” the suit said.
…
Another lawsuit against the TSA involves Ron Corbett, a businessman and frequent traveler who is so infuriated by the plethora of cases where TSA workers have sexually groped passengers, squeezing breasts and genitals, that he has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami requesting an injunction against the TSA to prevent them from touching private areas without reasonable suspicion.
TSA has clearly raised its hand as the first government agency to step up to the chopping block. And Janet Dearest should be penning her resignation if I were her. Her chickens have come home to roost.
Yup. I have to admit that it’s entertaining to watch.
You know what? I think this is about politics for a lot of people. I really do. It reminds of when Bush was in and the Democrats were going on and on about the Patriot Act, but then when they won…did they get rid of it? No, because they knew they needed it…now we have all sorts of people acting as if everyone working for the TSA were either nazis or perverts and it is all because of the Democrats. As if Republicans would get rid of pat downs and scans and take their chances with the terrorists.
I don’t doubt that there have been some incidents when some TSA employee did something stupid, but I honestly think some people are going completely overboard on this.
I flew a few weeks ago out of Indianapolis. They have scanners and pat downs. No one ripped my blouse and showed my boobs to the world..nor did I see anything like that happen to anyone else. The truth is I had more trouble a couple of years ago when I put something in my bag to bring back home as a gift for my step grandson. They did not like it one little bit. I almost missed my flight while they went through everything I had and they checked me out personally pretty close…and I am a 59 year old woman who has never even traveled out of the country.
So yes, I think common sense and common courtesy can go a long way to making it more palatable for people to travel by air…and I think that people who rip off people’s clothes should be fired..but I also think that getting hysterical and assuming that everyone who flies is being sexually assaulted is just kind of over the top.
I know some people want to do what the Israelis do, but they would not like that either. They do back ground searches and checks on everyone who flies, they interview you before they even let you go through security and if they don’t the answers they get…then you get the searches and if they don’t want you on the plane, you don’t fly. I don’t think Americans would like the third degree anymore than they like the body scan.
But AJ, for heavens sakes, treating everyone who works for the TSA like they were perverts is just not fair. I mean there is a 9.6% unemployment rate in this country, most of these people are just regular folks who went to work for TSA because they needed a job.
I don’t think that bad mouthing all of them because someone brought a lawsuit is fair at all.
Tipping points are reached for unknown reasons.
Now they want to stop random people on the bus and train, and I guess pat them down … hmmm.
BIG GOVERNMENT run a muck.
Remember with liberals they follow the tyrants foot steps … nudge, shove, shoot. Be careful out there.
tarpon:
Oh please. Yesterday we heard that Muslim women were not going to get scanned or searched, and today I read that is not true. No children under 12 will be searched at all.
I think that more common courtesy and common sense on the part of people working at TSA would go a long way to making people feel more comfortable when they fly…but the idea that they are all nazis or something is just hysterical and paranoid.
Conservatives say they like what the Israelis do…well they interrogate everyone who flies over there. It is not as if they don’t check people out. They do back ground checks, they do facial recognition scans, they scan your car and your license plate..it is not just about liberals going after people or something.
There was a time when we did not worry about terrorists on planes so much because most people could not afford to fly. Average Americans did not fly when I was kid. Average Americans took the bus. Now, flying is like the bus and there are all kinds of people going through these airports from all over the world.
Last March a woman they called Jihad Jane was arrested in PA. She was an American. She was in her 40’s. She did not fit any profile out there. She looked just like a white middle aged American woman. If you were profiling in airports, she would not be in your subject group.
Part of this is the government being too ham fisted, but a lot of the problems can be traced not to our government, but to the enemy we face.
These pat downs are a metaphor for the Obama administration……over-baring and intrusive. And they had the audacity to complain about Bush. I guess they are looking for bombs sewn in underpants. If they are in the body they won’t find them with a this kind of body pat down. My hunch, buy stock in telecommunication equipment.
[…] us in 50 years if we ignore global warming – hotair.com 11/17/2010 Kablooey. more… Years Of TSA Abuse Coming To A Head – strata-sphere.com 11/17/2010 Team Obama is completely in over their head. Latest example: […]
It’s incredible how politically inept the Obama administration continues to be. Once a situation has hit the boiling point like this one has, even a halfway decent politician would know that this is a crisis that *has* to be contained.
Instead, we are seeing headlines like “Obama’s hand in your crotch.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/15/obamas-hand-in-your-crotch/
Intended or not, this is the kiss of death for an administration’s credibility. If they had even the smallest bit of sense they would back off, but they’re stuck on that “WE KNOW BETTER THAN YOU AND CANNOT BE QUESTIONED!” line of thought.
and Terry, what you are missing is that *NONE* of this has anything at all to do with REAL security – this is nothing but Security Theater, done on the basis that if they oppress the serfs enough then we poor schlubs will at least think they’re doing they’re jobs, even when they’re not. THAT is what makes this so offensive – it’s all for show, and does NOTHING for real security.
As AJ alluded to, any halfway creative person who understands security can easily think of a dozen ways to defeat this. It’s not real security, it’s just an offensive show.
These are the same people who worked for the Bush administration, by and large. I don’t like Obama, I would not vote for him, did not vote for him…but come on, they did not fire all the good conservative TSA people when he got elected and then replace them with evil nazi sex pervert TSA agents.
There will always be people who do stupid things, but that is not the fault of the whole agency…and airport security people all over the world are boosting their security right now, there has been some kind of warning out there.
WWS:
I don’t know if it has anything to do with real security or not, but I do know that 81% of the people in the country did want the body scans in place. That might change in time, but most people do not just consider this to be theater.
So, any smart person can think of a half dozen way to defeat this? Then why is it even an issue? If it was that damn simple why wasn’t it done years ago? Is the answer to do what the Israelis do? Do you think most Americans want to be interrogated and have back ground checks done on them just to get on a plane?
I don’t think the average American would like the Israeli system one bit better than this and I don’t think this country as large as it is could even do what the Israelis do. Too many people.
So, now that we have decided it is all nonsense, let’s just go back to the good old days before 9/11 and while we are at it, let’s get rid of the Patriot Act too. After all, that is all theater too right?
An nobody has to fly. If you don’t want to fly, don’t. Vote with your feet. If the airlines start to lose money they will put pressure on the government to change the rules.
Soros & Chertoff Make a Killing On Controversial TSA Scanners
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/11/soros-makes-killing-on-controversial-tsa-scanners/
And,
TSA Unionization: A $30 Million Annual Gift to Union Bosses
http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2010/11/17/tsa-unionization-an-32-million-annual-gift-to-union-bosses/
MikeM gotta agree. Pass the popcorn please?
Terrye I have to agree as well. I do not mind the intrusion so much and a lot of this is politics. The TSA is for the most part very professional. I do not like the idea of my naked image being preserved for ever in the files of the TSA, but, that is the price I have to pay to do business and vacation. Still, the crisis is real and this administration is, as we have seen before, bungling it badly.
This whole problem goes away if someone does some profilling and prescreens passengers before even a ticket is issued. Biometrics and other authentication technologies can be employed to let most people acheive a “trusted traveller” status. Freedom to move about the country is a right under freedom of association. Getting on a plane to do it quickly is a priviledge.
Welcome to our first fascist government. It all heads downhill from here unless we as a people resist this gradual transformation of our society into a police state. To me the politics don’t matter – I didn’t like the TSA under the Republicans and like them even less under the Dems. What was wrong with the private security that we had before ??
Terry, don’t believe me. Believe Captain “Sully” Sullenberger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxFRPooLHLU&feature=player_embedded
and for the record, I’d say that we are actually better off doing nothing at all rather than wasting time and energy doing something stupid that makes people *think* we’re doing something even though we’re really not.
The entire program is just CYA expanded to a nationwide scope. It’s not about stopping an attack – it’s just about giving whoever’s in power “plausible deniability” when a successful attack happens.
The last time I was in the US I had to clear customs in Seattle. Part of the reason I was return to the US was to get a second medical opinion from a doctor there. I had torn ligaments in my right ankle and could barely walk. I had to have compression bandages on the foot a special shoe and was walking with a stick. The leg was swollen up past the knee and extremely painful. I couldn’t have the cain on the plane and after dragging my luggage from the bag return area to the domestic flight area and gotten it checked for the next leg of the flight. I had to then get into the domestic airport and find my gate. Because I walked so slowly with a pronounced limp it took me about 30 minuts longer than everybody else.
When I reached the security check point they asked me to take off my shoes and took off only the left boot. I explained the situation and simply said I’ve still got a 5 hour flight and I’ve got to walk to and from the gate. If I take that shoe off I will not be able to put it back on.
The screener had me sit down (welcome enough in its self) and brushed the boot with some sort of liquid and then swept it with a magic wand attatched to a box that looked like voltage meter. He then looked at my pass port and asked me to spell my last name.
So far so good. He then asked me to tell him the first and last name of my best friend and I told him. (Lucky I didn’t say Abdool Hashmi a Christian Pakistani I know)
Then he said something that was probably illegal. He asked “Are you a Muslim? I said no, I’m a librarian” and he said “Then you are probably not going to bomb a plane.” and let me through.
I didn’t complain
Several months ago I saw an excellent article on Fox News Channel, if I recall correctly; the article addressed Full Body Scanners. In that article two competing technologies: X-Ray based and infrared-based were compared. To me there was no comparison. The X-Ray was too revealing, involved radiation, and it was slower. The infrared unit simply and precisely detected and displayed hidden objects under the clothing of persons being scanned. The infrared scanner was so sensitive it could easily differentiate between a small block of plastic (simulated explosive) and the surrounding human skin. It did not define the skin in the background! Wow, I thought, a noninvasive, no radiation solution! Today, I would add–this is great, even a perverted Islamic terrorist plan to use a youngster as a flying child bomb can now be avoided by an infrared scan before boarding—with the added benefit of no child porn image being generated!
Now I am witnessing the rollout of the Chertoff/Soros/Homeland Security/TSA preferred X-Ray based technology and hear that this is the solution Americans will accept.
So…
Is the installation of Rapiscan’s radiation based Full Body Scanners in U.S. airports the con of the decade? I think so and here is why.
Here is Rapiscan’s announcement that it won the TSA contract to begin installing their scanners in U.S. airports. Note the date of October 1, 2009—about a year ago.
http://www.rapiscansystems.com/fullarticle.asp?newsid=171
Here is an article in Aviation News discussing the alternate infrared based technology being offered by Isconimaging in January 2010.
http://www.aviationnews.net/?do=headline&news_ID=175693
Given the huge public outcry against the X-Ray based Full Body Scanners, does it appear that Homeland Security and the TSA are getting ready to stop the rollout of the more expensive, more privacy invasive, dehumanizing Rapiscan X-Ray based technology? I don’t think so.
Here is a link to the Isconimaging website where you will find the best solution for airport security full body imaging scanners.
http://www.isconimaging.com/iscon1000D.htm
AJ please investigate the procurement issues and other incredibly obvious issues like biometrics addressed by isconimaging and do your thing!
America we can win this dehumanizing war against our privacy! Is it a con—isconimaging—yes pun intended.
P.S. Take a look at the portable infrared scanner that isconimaging makes for those hard to see locations. Wow.