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Today's Top News
TSA is Delivering Naked Insecurity
To airline passengers: Get ready for naked insecurity.
To the Department of Homeland Security: If you thought this week was bad, brace yourself for a tsunami of protests in the days ahead.
This month Homeland Security has implemented a new rule calling for extremely invasive pat-downs of commercial airline passengers who decline to use full-body, "backscatter technology" scanners that use low-level X-rays. Pregnant women, parents with young children, adherents of religions, amputees and people with wireless insulin pumps or embedded medical devices are increasingly saying, "No thanks." They do not believe they should be exposed to technology that could pose risks, may malfunction, and certainly invades their privacy. So Homeland Security has doubled its trouble by turning to the invasive pat-downs. What the department should do is reconsider its use of these scanners, but after reading Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's full-throated defense of the technology and procedures on this page this past Monday, I'm not hopeful.
Questions, and lawsuits
The technology has already been challenged by recognized academic specialists on both safety and efficacy grounds. After six months of testing at four major airports, Italy is likely to drop these scanners, finding them ineffective and slow. The European Commission has also raised "several serious fundamental rights and health concerns" and recommends less-intrusive alternatives.
Back in the USA, the legal volleys have begun. Two weeks ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Department of Homeland Security. The suit alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act and the Administrative Procedure Act (which calls for public hearings).
Immersed in its own bureaucratic bubble of secrecy and inaccessibility, Homeland Security cites "national security" as justifying its unresponsiveness to critics. Napolitano wrote in USA TODAY that our security depends on being "more creative" in adapting to evolving threats. Indiscriminate pat-downs are anything but creative. Yet the department listens to commercial lobbyists pushing scanner sales, including former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff.
Earlier corporate pitchmen sold the department on the notorious puffer machines. This $36 million boondoggle forced Homeland Security to remove these failed screeners from airports last year at considerable embarrassment and expense.
The department says full-body imaging is aimed at prevention. If so, why do passengers on the 15,000 U.S. registered business aircraft escape screening? Why, nine years after 9/11, is the department still way behind in the screening of air freight on passenger and cargo planes, where far more dangerous packages can bring down a plane?
For more than 40 years, public interest groups have been advocating for airline safety. After the numerous hijackings to Cuba in the late 1960s, we and air security experts pressed the Federal Aviation Administration to require airlines to strengthen cockpit doors and latches - to no avail. It took the 9/11 attacks before the FAA required the airlines to retrofit. Stonewalling, long a bureaucratic obsession in these areas, must end. A good start would be addressing these uncertainties:
- Radiation: Homeland Security should respond when physics professor Peter Rez of Arizona State University calculates the radiation dose to be 10 times higher than the department is asserting. Or when David J. Brenner of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research says that using these scanners - with up to 1 billion whole-body X-ray scans per year in the U.S. - "may profoundly change the potential public health consequences to the population."
- Malfunctions. John Sedat, one of four scientists at the University of California-San Francisco who is questioning the department's technical assertions, said these machines could stall, giving passengers "severe burns if not worse." He points out that "software fails often."
And then there are the emerging first-person experiences of travelers. The rough pat-downs experienced by New York Times business travel columnist Joe Sharkey and Atlantic author-writer Jeffrey Goldberg are generating more such passenger complaints. So much for the friendly skies.
Better paths to security
Changing this policy, or even backtracking, doesn't mean we'd suddenly be flying on a wing and a prayer. In fact, better use of available intelligence alone would have stopped last year's Christmas underwear bomber from flying to the USA. Indiscriminate and inefficient dragnet-type security checks of whole populations, if anything, make us less safe by focusing on the wrong things.
One area in which I agree with Secretary Napolitano: Cooperation of the public is key to averting attacks. So it seems counterintuitive to antagonize the very people you're counting on to help you get the bad guys. Meantime, Homeland Security is turning TSA agents, who are at some radiation risk themselves, into government gropers without either suspicion or probable cause. People want security, but they do not like irrational, ineffective, invasive and hazardous over-reach.
DHS continually refuses to hold thorough public hearings or to answer reasoned technical, economic and other policy challenges to its practices. Congress must assert its authority to end what one TSA risk analyst has called its "culture of stupidity."
Comments
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107 Comments so far
Show AllThe whole TSA starting with the shoe removal is OBEDIENCE TRAINING of ADULTS. In true fashion Americans choose cowardice, fears whether true but usually imagined.Isn't it curious that whenever the DHS/PENTAGRAM/SPY AGENCIES are asked about specific results that prevented attacks and saved lives, the chorus is "we can't divulge due to national security" and no names, specific incidents, places, when the standard procedure of who, what, when, where and why are requested, the USG reply "national security". Well we all know the USG operatives and politicians wouldn't lie to us, don't we?
Horrified
Speak only for yourself.
form perusing the web,and my high school physics book, certain facts stand out.
-X Rays do not reflect. hence any image they form are from rays that pass through the body. meaning that considerable radiation is absorbed by the body before an image is formed.
-certain levels of X Rays are acceptable. No level is completely safe. for the young and pregnant, acceptable exposure is even lower.
-to from an acceptable image, a 300 pound adult needs considerably different exposure than a 25 pound toddler. if the machine is set for an adult image, the child will be overexposed.
- surface tissues such as the thyroid and cornea are more susceptible to radiation effects.
- there is no quantitative information on the actual exposure. this should not be a secret.all that is offered is that the exposure is minimal and safe. publishing this information, and allowing independent radiation physicists to confirm this, would alleviate at least the exposure anxiety.
Yet, the government insists that these "backscatter" x-rays, and the "millimeter waves" of the alternative type machines do not penetrate beyond the skin. Even if that's true, and I do not believe it is true for the same reasons you just stated, I suspect that the rate of skin cancer will climb due to the use of these machines. Agreed, no level is safe. MONEY and PROFIT is the ONLY reason these Auschwitzian Radiation Shower Machines are being implemented.
Land of the Fear, Home of the Hate.
If we can't see each others pink bits at airports the terrorists have won. (:
Great!!!
If the next terrorist were to use a suppository bomb hidden in his anus, then we could all have an anal check at the airport. With a little extra training, the TSA officers could also screen for prostate enlargement at the same time, and it would be a win-win-win-win-win situation: 1) the terrorists would have succeeded in further frightening Americans into destroying more of their freedoms, 2) with more fear in the land, the Republicans would win more seats in Congress, 3) with the need for more TSA proctologists, more jobs would be created and the economy would improve, 4) more prostate cancers would be detected early and would get better treatment, and 5) Obama would have achieved the kinds of compromise solutions that he likes. There are probably some more wins that I cannot think of at the moment. But the benefits are so many, that maybe the CIA should perform another of its false-flag operations by creating and catching a suppository bomber. Oh yeah, that would be another win, 6) the government showing that TSA security operations DO catch terrorists.
Unfortunately, SeriousCitizen, there is a serious downside to the enhanced prostate cancer screening, that is that the masses, male ones especially, would start clamoring for affordable medical treatment and that's not a win situation for TPB. Additionally, those exposed to excessive radiation by these same scanners who consequently develop tumors might also join the ranks of those agitating for universal health care.
I am glad I got my visit back home to the states completed last month. I seem to be developing a strong disinclination to travel by air, so it might be a while before I see my family again. Given that I can't afford to retire on my social security, I have to keep working which rules out alternate means of transportation such as lengthy ocean voyages.
Beautiful.
There used to be some silly game in which you asked somebody: "Are you a Turtle?" A wrong answer got someone two whacks in the shoulder. I forget why we did this.
But we need some equivalent, say, a lemur. A Lemur would be someone who deliberately emptied his or her bladder on the hands and whatever else of a groper. These would be Freedom Flyers rather than freedom riders.
Trylon
omg hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!
Best this week!!!
You can bet it will happen involuntarily at some point, and there is no doubt that the poor individual it happens to will be accused of a deliberate action, arrested for assault and battery of a federal officer and do serious time in prison. It is just a matter of time.
When all else fails: dissection under general anesthesia.
Gee, if Washington would stop bombing, hijacking & bustin' up, other countries around the world (and taking their sh*t –like oil), perhaps we wouldn't have all these pissed-off people wanting to return the favor(s).
At last, an interjection of sanity into a thread at Common Dreams. How extraordinary, how unheeded.
BOYCOTT, NOW!
Mr. Nader says "congress must assert it's authority." Congress will assert it's authority when the airline industry 'instructs' congress to cease the use of these machines and stop the invasive pat downs, as soon as the public acts as one unit and boycotts all flights for a few days or a week.
Amen.
National Opt-Out Day is this Wednesday:
http://www.optoutday.com/
Related. See link below. This is direct blowback to the man in San Francisco who refused to be intimidated and assaulted, and who tried to leave when he was authorized *BY TSA PERSONNEL* to do so, who was then threatened with jail and a massive fine if he did try to leave, all in the name of finding 'terrists' who might be scoping out security procedures at major airports:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/travel/11-000-fine-arrest-possible-for-some-who-1059926.html
Don't fly.
It's the only possible answer.
Starve the Airlines of their profit. Drive them out of business, out of their legal fiction of being superior to living, breathing human beings.
Besides, if the airlines fold, you will be removing thousands of tons of carbon and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping the environment.
Strike a blow for your rights, for your home. Strike back at the corrupt Government.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
PS: If 'terrorists' really wanted to find out about security at airports, all they would have to do is use a commonly available 'Net search, which would give them more than enough information about how to get around the security, or how to bribe underpaid baggage handlers, or better yet, easier targets with little or no security or defenses!
The problem is, in my job (for the government - Mine Safety and Health Administration) I must travel 2-3 times a year to accident sites too far to go any other way but flying. I'd be fired if I refused to fly.
Change jobs.
This post gets to the crux of the matter. Many of us who purport to seek progressive change are submitting to the dictates of others when we do what we know in our hearts to be wrong.
And I'm not talking about some theoretical abstraction here. I was just told that my job of the last three years, which until yesterday involved no travel, will require me to travel to China and other Asian countries for weeks at a time, multiple times a year.
I have a choice. I choose to stay right where I am. I can get another job if need be. But I'm not doing what I know is wrong.
I'm actually surprised there isn't more backlash here against the idea of aircraft period. Do folks here not question the very assumption of the normalcy of aircraft travel?
Where do you want me to start?
Air travel was once the purview of the wealthy Elite. Why do you think in the heyday of classic air travel, if you could afford to fly you were called a member of 'The Jet Set'? Those who could afford to fly, did so. For the common man it was a choice of train or long distance highway bus.
Jets still have one of the worst records for catastrophic failure of the vehicle. When was the last time you heard about a car or train falling apart in day-to-day operation? Or an ocean liner sinking due to metal fatigue? How about a car that decides to crash on the public unveiling as it rolls off the assembly line, as happened to the Airbus A-320?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kHa3WNerjU
(Watch the video. Seriously. Watch it. Listen to the commentary.)
The average jet liner produces ONE TON of CO2 per passenger, not to mention the vast amount of natural resources consumed in the production of the aircraft.
These are just some of the arguments Jim Kuntsler uses for a return to continental rail traffic.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Galenwainwright
I'm with you. Don't fly.
Though poor old Sabo Cat would have a hard time changing jobs in the present climate...perhaps the best way to put it is fly only when absolutely needed.
And then raise hell about the absurd intrusion's. As if this kind of silliness will stop anyone that wants to harm people.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I also agree with much of what Kunstler talks about, but I notice that he talks much better than he walks. Perhaps he thinks his CO2 footprint is compensated for by the fact that he's making people aware that current modes of transportation are simply not sustainable. Still, this was one of the major complaints I heard about Al Gore when An Inconvenient Truth came out. It's hard for them to be effective as advocates when they don't practice what they preach.
It is wonderful that the Tea-partiers and the progressives are both behind the resistance to the TSA's gape-n-grope.
If we win this one, it'll be a powerful example of what Americans united can do, and at best could enhance some trust, understanding and dialogue between the opposite sides of a very fractured people.
But it's very important _ Ralph should dig this _ to keep track of a very crucial element that is involved in this situation. The Corporate powers are going to go full throttle on convincing the Right that privatization of the institutional handling of our private parts will make it okay. They'll make it seem an outrage if 'the Government' cups our balls, but cool if some bullet-head in wraparound shades and a Blackwater-type T-shirt does it in the name of Private Enterprise.
It needs to be made absolutely clear that privacy violation is violation, no matter who does it, who they work for, or how they get paid. If Private Enterprise carries out security due to a law that requires airports to do it, it's STILL the Government cupping your balls _ more in the name of showing that it can still squeeze 'em if and when it wants, than in the name of 'security.' It's not about the 'war on terror, but all about the war on pride. They don't want you to remember your junk is your own.
Get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
Richard Nixon
"in the name of Private Enterprise."
make that: "privates - enter & prise".
In another opinion piece on CD yesterday, some reader facts surfaced that still aren't being addressed in opinion pieces like this one.
Per Nader: "...This month Homeland Security has implemented a new rule calling for extremely invasive pat-downs..."
Why was this ruling implemented (and, BTW, these patdowns go back to at least September), and who ultimately ordered it? What is the REAL REASON--not the "reported" reason--for our invasion of privacy?
The TSA was formed under republican rule. republicans insisted that TSA employees be non-union.
This month, TSA employees, all 65,000+/- of them, are talking unionization.
Has nobody noticed how all republicans and libertarians are now screaming about the TSA outrages?
Has nobody noticed that what republicans and libertarians are calling for is PRIVATIZATION of airport security?
Do we feel we're being played yet?
Even Common Dreams put up a video produced by "reason.tv", to outrage us. Anybody bother to investigate facts about "reason.tv"?
And of course, the near-perfect timing and thoroughness of John Tyner's TSA outrage, all recorded. Was it just me, or did his reactions and responses strike all of us as, "Golly, this pheasant hunter really knows how to talk!"?
Sure smells like republican shock-and-awe to me, but we're all (including me) falling for the obvious...again.
I think we're being played like a fiddle.
BINGO!
Abolish the evil begotten Department of 'Homeland' Security NOW!
Exactly. This is just another one of those "spontaneous" grassroots uprisings designed for a purpose. It's not like Das Fatherland security is going to remove the scanners, regardless of the clamor against them.
And isn't it unusual that this episode was videotaped at all? If TSA is so worried about "terrorists" learning about their screening procedures, doesn't it follow that they would instantly detain anyone with a videocamera, unless the person doing the videotaping was someone the TSA couldn't touch? e.g. a homeland security official. I don't know the details of the whole affair, but it smells fishy to me. I've been to many protests where videotaping of police and other "authorities" seems to be justification for losing your videocamera. Meanwhile, they have their cameras recording all the protestors, so they can make a list and check it twice. That is to say, the only videos that surface are the ones the powers-that-be want us to see.
I've been boycotting the airlines for years, and this seems to me the most effective and direct method of withdrawing my support. I don't consent to these invasive searches, I don't buy any of the hyped security risk claims by Das Fatherland security, and in any event, it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify all that use of fossil fuels due to global warming. In my opinion, the larger question is: why is there even an aviation industry at all? A boycott is the only lever of change left to the people. I encourage people who fly to seriously consider the system they are supporting and enabling before buying that next ticket.
Well said.
Here's a thought; quit wasting fuel, stop flying.
MSNBC just told me that "81% polled" approved of being sexually assaulted by their government. Until they ask me MY opinion, adios Rachel Maddow. You can't trust ANYTHING these people tell you.
Our sick situation has entered the acute stage. It hurts really bad. 9 out of 10. Bad enough for me to want to abandon this nightmare. Like right now!
It's important to note that that was not 80% of regular fliers _ thus not of the people affected. A relatively small minority of Americans do routine air travel.
>>MSNBC just told me that "81% polled" approved of being sexually assaulted by their government.<<
I believe it was Mark Twain who said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
I'd like to know what percentage of those groped as punishment for their "OPT OUT, OPT OUT, OPT OUT OVER HERE, OPT OUT OVER HERE" approve of these procedures. 81% of WHOM polled? 81% of people who have never flown? Who knows? We're just told "81%".
No more flying for me. I always hated flying anyway.
Wear kilts, no undies. Don't do the scan and demand that the TSA guy "handle my baggage, fella."
"Wear kilts, no undies."
And maybe give them that Highland salute just like in the movie Braveheart?
The cowing of America. I remember reading, in the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", that lines of Poles quietly and orderly walked naked and laid themselves down on top of dead bodies in a trench to be shot in the back of the head one at a time. This was before the Nazis decided that it would be more efficient to get one year labor from prisoners before their bodies were gassed and incinerated. There was no fight left in these people. What happened to the fight in Americans?
What will it take America? Maybe Bristol Palin stealing Dancing with the Stars will be the final outrage. Obama caving on Bush tax cuts for the wealthy certainly will not be.
two of capitalism's basic tenets are increased consumption and decreased costs...
only airplanes... ships... and trucks can keep the goods produced by lower and lower waged workers going to the hands of higher and higher numbers of consumers...
low costs + high consumption = bigger profits. period.
terrorism = higher costs.
i think i read somewhere an old arab saying of something to the effect of "...death by a thousand cuts.."
unfortunately... a lot of these costs get passed off to "us"... even if we don't buy anything...
even if you never fly... tax dollars buy the machines... and fund the tsa...
and... never to be disappointed... they're already discussing on how to funnel these tax dollars right back into private interests... i.e., privatizing the pat downs...
sure... there's a role for government in healthy commerce... but... another sorry chapter in government doing the the bidding of the free marketeers...
we have ships patrolling the world's shipping lanes... we have military and private contractors actively engaged in two wars of aggression... we have military bases in 170+ of the world's approx. 192 countries...
it's "privateers gone wild"... the entire industrial age...
let's face it... we humans like to have fun... a lot of it... and have it often...
but... find a balance of responsible growth...
"get your gov'mnt hands off my medicare"...
and of course... dubbya... hyup hyup the world's safer now with saddam gone... damn... wish i had better intelligence... (he could have ended the sentence right there) better intelligence... on those wmd's...
Jesse Ventura says he will not fly domestically anymore as he states this is an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Well, me too! Not until the Chertoff Scammers are shut down along with the illegal search and violation of my rights as an American citizen.
"Napolitano wrote in USA TODAY that our security depends on being "more creative" in adapting to evolving threats."
Asserting our rights depends on being "more creative" in adapting to evolving threats:
Travel with a partner and grope one another in the screening line.
Travel with a large group of nudists, and everyone strip to nude at an opportune moment. Wear tear-away strippers' pants to facilitate. If you don't want to go nude, just laugh and support them in spirit. Photo/video TSA employees being embarrassed, harassing and molesting people, and making stupid mistakes (they will).
Watch and Photo/Video TSA and law enforcement. Work in broad distributed teams, covering for one another. You are pretty much guaranteed to get important and interesting data.
Send out a large group of strippers (male and female) who are comfortable to grope one another before, during and after stripping. They can do the choreography, but logistic support may be useful. Include a large group of "supporters" (preferably in the security line) to photo/video the demonstration and help facilitate. Photographers: Don't forget to photograph the TSA agents and pigs.
I would way rather face the 1 in a million (whatever) odds of having a terrorist blow up the plane I'm on than getting scanned/groped/harassed/humiliated every time i need to get on a flight.
Same for the Electronic Police State measures and all the other 'civil liberty' gutting measures the guv-ment is unilaterally taking to provide me with 'be happy, shop more' zero risk life - supposedly.
Live free or die - screw the security nanny state.
Of course if the US called all their troops and evil corporations home - you could have security and freedom - what a concept.
Home of the free, land of the brave...you're joking, aren't you?
It's "land of the free, home of the brave."
But I agree with you, typical USAns are incredibly fearful of even the most minor risks - or even just discomfort, and inconvenience - and are willing to sacrifice their freedom in a second for a bit of perceived security - no questions asked.
I always like the looks people give me when I tell them I use a motor scooter (plug-in electric) for all my local transportation from April to December. Most USans seem to harbor this incredibly exaggerated perception of the danger of two-wheeled transportation. Nothing less than a big SUV for them!
I don't dare tell them I also fly hang gliders.
And invariably, the response to my objections to the assault on a person's dignity (not to mention the 4th amendment rights) of these x-rays and pat-downs has been: "So would you prefer to be blown up by a crazy terrorist?" - as if there is one trying to get on every flight.
USan are, overall, a contemptible, whimpering, cowardly lot.
This story is mostly just a diversion from the real story that is
'Amerika still spends about half of its discretionary budget on killing innocent people.
Again The number one Terrorist in the whole world is President OBOMBER.
Does he get 'Patted Down' on Air Force One? Ha Ha
Well, yeah, I guess it's funny in a way, but really...
I'm disappointed, Ralph, that you don't seem to question any of the key events in recent years (9/11, liquid bombers, shoe bombers, underwear bombers) that have led to the present absurdities. I mean, are you telling me you haven't even researched the underwear bomber? Everything points to fraud. So, when I have to go through indignities in the airport it's not so much the groping that bothers me as the fact that I'm being groped while the true authors of these incidents sit back and laugh at how stupid we all are.