travel - Fausta's Blog

December 2, 2010 By Fausta

Patdowns and searches now at bus stations

You don’t believe me? Watch this report by a local TV station in Tampa, Fl:

A liberal blogger wrote to me in an email this week that libertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civil liberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties. It’s not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won’t happen overnight. It’ll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.

That’s exactly the plan.

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November 24, 2010 By Fausta

Coming up: TSA body scanners on public transportation

Jazz has a list of reasons why he doesn’t object to the body scanners. Now it looks like we’ll be getting scanners all over the place, including public transportation, trains and boats. Janet Napolitano:

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

Each body scanner costs $150,000.

Considering that the number of body scanners has tripled since last year, and that Napolitano is looking at placing them all over the place, the scanners makers got a great return on their lobbying investment.

Cross-posted at Hot Air

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November 23, 2010 By Fausta

In today’s security theater news

Security expert Bruce Schneier, who coined the trenchant term “security theater” to characterize most of what the Transportation Security Administration, talked to Popular Mechanics about how the TSA scans won’t catch anybody.

Hit and Run has the excerpt from the interview:

Q: The machines have shown up in the wake of the so-called underwear bomber, who tried to blow up a plane with chemicals stored in his briefs. Would this technology have stopped him?

A: The guys who make the machines have said, “We wouldn’t have caught that.”…

Q: Has there been a case since 9/11 of an attempted hijacker being thwarted by airport security?

A: None that we’ve heard of. The TSA will say, “Oh, we’re not allowed to talk about successes.” That’s actually bullsh*t. They talk about successes all the time. If they did catch someone, especially during the Bush years, you could be damned sure we’d know about it. And the fact that we didn’t means that there weren’t any. Because the threat was imaginary. It’s not much of a threat. As excess deaths go, it’s just way down in the noise. More than 40,000 people die each year in car crashes. It’s 9/11 every month. The threat is really overblown….

Q: Does it surprise you that at last, after several escalations in the TSA’s level of intrusiveness, the public seems to have finally rebelled?

A: Back in 2005, when this full-body scanner technology was first being proposed, I wrote that I thought this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, because it would unite conservatives and liberals. Nobody wants their daughter groped or shown naked….

Q: Have you had a pat-down?

A: Yes, actually, just a couple of days ago.

Q: Is this security theater?

A: 100 percent. It won’t catch anybody.

The lobbyists are hard at work, though:
Body scanner makers doubled lobbying cash over 5 years. Deepak Chopra even got to travel to India with Obama.

No, not the new-agey Deepak, the OSI Systems Deepak:
Body scanner CEO accompanied Obama to India

Deepak Chopra, chairman and CEO of OSI Systems and no relation to the New Age spiritualist, was one of a number of CEOs who traveled with the president on his three-day trip to India, which focused primarily on expanding business ties between the US and the emerging Asian power.

While you are standing there waiting for your pat-down and scan, contemplating the close ties of the Presidency and the scan manufacturers, Bill Jacobson suggests tungsten underwear to gird your loins and a number of other options, some very expensive.

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November 21, 2010 By Fausta

Obama: TSA patdowns frustrating but necessary

Obama: TSA pat-downs frustrating but necessary
President says enhanced airport security measures necessary to guard against new terrorist techniques

“I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive,” Obama said.

“But at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.”

What “counterterrorism experts” are those? The PC police? Because the procedures that are actually effective involve profiling, which neither GWB nor Obama want to consider.

Obama assumes the position of helplessness so he wants you to assume the submissive position,

“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

And he can’t do anything about it?
There you have it. “Frustrating but necessary”:

“Frustrating but necessary“:

You may have heard about Janet Napolitano’s blue shirts forcing a cancer-surviving flight attendant to remove her prosthetic breast, or the woman whose pants the TSA’s hand went down:

“I was shaking and crying when I left that room” Moroney says. “Under any other circumstance, if a person touched me like that without my permission, it would be considered criminal sexual assault.”

You may have also heard about the woman who was singled out because she was wearing a skirt:

“The female officer ran her hand up the inside of my leg to my groin and she did it so hard and so rough she lifted me off my heels,” she says. “I think I yelped. I was in pain for about an hour afterwards. It just felt excessive and unnecessary.”

You may have also heard about the cancer survivor who, due to an “enhanced” TSA pat-down breaking the seal on his urastomy bag, was left humiliated, in tears, and covered in his own urine.

“Frustrating but necessary”:

Once again…

Number of TSA Agents: 67,000
TSA’s FY 2010 budget: $7.8 billion
Number of terrorists caught by TSA: ZERO.

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November 16, 2010 By Fausta

Abolish the TSA!

Art Carden writes,
Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA

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.

Charles Peña calls the TSA the Theater Security Administration because of their

security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security

James Pethokoukis should add abolishing the TSA to his budget-balancing measures.

Meanwhile, the TSA is investigating John Tyner.

Tyner speaks,

But don’t worry. Janet Napolitano assures us this is for our own good.

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November 13, 2010 By Fausta

I should have worn a burka!

The other day I was saying I should have worn a burka to get through airport security without a hitch.

Well, look at this,
Muslim Group Advises Women Wearing Hijabs to Allow TSA ‘Enhanced Pat Downs’ Only on Head and Neck Area

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a travel warning to Muslim airline passengers on U.S. aircraft in response to the Transportation Safety Administration’s “enhanced pat down” policy that went into effect in late October.

CAIR said Muslims who object to full-body scans for religious reasons should know their rights if they are required to undergo a pat-down, including asking for the procedure to be done in a private place. In addition, CAIR offered a “special recommendation” for Muslim women who wear a hijab, telling them they should tell the TSA officer that they may be searched only around the head and neck.

In the “special recommendations for Muslim women who wear hijab,” it states: “Before you are patted down, you should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down.”

It also states: “Instead of the pat-down, you can always request to pat down your own scarf, including head and neck area, and have the officers perform a chemical swipe of your hands.”

CAIR says so.

And so it will be.

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November 10, 2010 By Fausta

Coming up at an airport near you: Strip-and-grope

I posted about the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scanners last year,

Now, in addition to not being able to leave your seat for 1 hour prior to takeoff or landing, not having access to any of your personal property for that period of time, getting a full pat-down and luggage search (new rules), plus having to remove your shoes, surrender any containers with more than 3.5 ounces of fluid – including breast milk for your baby – and enduring miles-long lines at the airport (old rules), the airport staff gets a nice look at your privates.

Now comes the next step, if you refuse the AIT scan: the cavity search. Scott Ott writes about it and urges, Don’t Let Strip-and-Grope Become the New Normal

Without regard for threat potential, airline passengers of all ages can now be forced to make the choice between baring their nakedness before a federal agent, or getting a full-body fingertip groping by another federal agent. The Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scanners — AKA strip-search machines — now stand watch in more than 65 airports nationwide, with their numbers set to grow by more than 40 percent at year’s end, thanks to your federal stimulus dollars.

The procedure is so humiliating and so invasive that even flight crews are rebelling. The 11,000-member American Pilots Association just received a letter from its leader decrying the humiliation, radiation danger and ineffectiveness at deterring terrorism, of this strip-and-grope regimen.

In order to board a plane last Sunday I had to remove my bracelet, empty my handbag and show my camera, take out the laptop out of the envelope and the tote bag, and remove my shoes. I then had to place the bracelet, handbag and camera on one tray, the shoes in another, and the tote and laptop in yet another tray. Then, before I went through the gate itself, I was told to remove my cardigan – heaven knows what one could possibly hide under a lightweight cardigan from WhiteHouse/Black Market. I should have worn a burka instead. It’s a wonder I was not asked if I had any lose dental work.

It gets worse, if you opt out,

What does all of this accomplish, as far as airline security goes?

Nothing.

Not a thing.

Instead, adopting security measures that Israel uses, plus training and issuing firearms to pilots and airline crews would actually be effective.

Here’s the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Notice how the Constitution does not say, “except when you travel.”

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November 10, 2010 By Fausta

A trip to Buenos Aires: 15 Minutes on Latin America

In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, a few notes on my trip.

Two articles in The Economist regarding Kirchner:
Back to a vacuum
The passing of kirchnerismo
Néstor Kirchner’s sudden death will hasten change in Argentina, and beyond

And, in today’s news,
Lawmaker proposes Argentina’s companies to distribute 10 per cent of profits

You can listen to the archived podcast here.

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