Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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TSA: Illegals without ID can fly with ‘Notice to Appear

Gateway Pundit has the story:
TSA Misled: Letter Confirms Illegals Allowed to Fly without ID, Just ‘Notice to Appear’

TSA gave the public a false impression. What TSA is saying is that the Notice to Appear is accepted when verified by ICE. But the verification is that a slip of paper was issued by ICE to an illegal alien whose identity cannot be verified by ICE. The illegal alien can give any name they want to ICE and be given a Notice to Appear. They themselves can be an undocumented terrorist or they can give or sell the I-862 form to a drug cartel or terrorist group so that they can penetrate the country beyond the border area.

Breitbart has the letter:

TSA Doc

Click on letter to enlarge.

Despite the letter’s admissions, the TSA had previously insisted that Darby’s report–which detailed the acceptance of Notice to Appear forms at airports–was untrue.

And how unique is the letter?

Hector Garza, a spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) told [Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon] Darby that Notice to Appear forms can “easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.

Meanwhile, you try flying without ID.

Related:
Rick Perry: It’s possible ISIS has crossed southern border

Because the border is insecure, Perry said that “individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be” taking advantage of the situation.

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What do Rand Paul and Sunny have in common?

The TSA, of course!

By now you probably know that Rand Paul, Senator for Kentucky and son of Congressman Ron Paul (that wacky presidential candidate), was detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport for refusing a full-body pat-down.

Steve Watson wonders if that constitutes a Constitutional violation,

The Constitution specifically protects federal lawmakers from being detained while en route to Washington DC.

Article I, Section 6 states:

“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….”

Rand Paul was travelling from his home in Louisville to attend a session in the Senate today.

The White House’s Jay Carney wouldn’t even name Rand, and won’t call it detainment, either, saying instead, “The passenger was not detained. He was escorted out of the area by local law-enforcement.”

So it’s up to you to decide: Is the TSA a flight-inhibiting escort service, or your creepy uncle?

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Patdowns and searches now at bus stations

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

Radley Balko:

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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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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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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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”:

“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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The TSA singalong

The Great TSA “My Ding-a-Ling” Sing-Along!

Come on, everybody! Sing along with The Transportation Security Administration while you’re waiting in security lines this holiday season!

And look how much money you can save by submitting!
$11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs. Money quote,

“Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process,” says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

Via Instapundit,

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Krauthammer tells the truth about the TSA junk searches UPDATED with VIDEO

Don’t touch my junk

everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives – when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.

The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn’t need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning “I rely on God,” killing all on board.

But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety – 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling – when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

Scott Johnson writes about the revolt against the TSA,

The revolt against the TSA is a sign of the times. Popular frustration with the TSA dates back to its establishment during the Bush administration. It is another big government bureaucracy that performs ineptly and with gross inconvenience. It provides far more security theater than security.
…
In its absurd intrusiveness and glaring incompetence, the TSA has become a perfect metaphor for the Obama administration. Thus the revolt.

Yes, it’s all security theater, not real security measures. I disagree with Scott in one thing: it’s not a metaphor, it’s yet one more symptom of the incompetence of big government.

UPDATE,
Mr Bingley will never forgive Napolitano while Mary Katherine has the YouTube,

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