When I call and email politicians, you know I’m pissed. The intertubes have been alight with posts about TSA abuses this week, which is all fine and good, but that does NOTHING to actually stop the abuse. This is the main issue, I think, with Americans. Posting on the internet does NOT send a message to the politicians, contacting them directly is the only way to let them know that they have gone too far.
The stories of abusive, invasive and demeaning pat downs by untrained, low paid TSA staff are numerous. The video of a little girl being groped and crying “Stop touching me!” have been expunged from every source that posted it, which tells you that it is just more damning evidence of a[nother] government agency run amok. Here is the FlyerTalk forum for stories about abuse (sadly, many of the posters have no idea that this abuse is ILLEGAL).
Here is a round up of the various articles I’ve been reading the last few days:
Wear a Kilt on Nov 24!
Johnny Isakson is on the committee over the TSA.
Don’t think contacting them works? Here’s a TED discussion about writing your politicians.
Israelis don’t take shit from anyone – not even airport security!
And to top it all off, our illustrious president wants TSA workers to unionize. What a moron. I try to be nice about the man, but he’s really clueless about most everything. All he sees are workers who want to unionize (always a far left fave). He doesn’t have to deal with the abuse from those assholes, so what does he care? Letting them unionize will make airports even less safe and will allow any and all abuses of the public to go unaddressed.
Yes, it’s a fine mess. And those perfectly safe (LIE) virtual strip search scanners? Yah, the promise that “scans will NEVER be saved”? You can forget that, too. Here’s the first 100 pix that have been “leaked”. Fortunately for those whose naked bodies were published, the asshats that saved the scans also didn’t have the scanner set up right, so the scans are not clear.
If all this evidence isn’t damning enough for you, may I suggest that you, too, are a moron? Anyone who’d put up with this blatant abuse of power by our government should have their voter card revoked. There is neither reason or justification for our government to treat its citizens like common criminals. Nor is there reason or justification for our government employees to unionize to further insulate them from being held accountable for abuses of power.
These TSA employees are semi-literate, untrained, low paid government employees. I know personally from a source who worked with the hiring company for TSA that they dumbed down the application tests THREE TIMES so they could find enough people to fill the positions. There are cursory at best background checks. The training for the full monty pat downs was one class.
These people want to unionize to insulate themselves from citizens’ complaints. Once they are a government union, there will be absolutely nothing for a citizen to do when abused by these low level employees with unlimited power. Just think about it: a person who may not have graduated high school and has had minimal training has the power to grope you, demean you and ultimately detain you.
Does that make sense to you? Well, it must make sense to the majority of the flying public since they have allowed the TSA to keep escalating their “security”. It’s not security, it’s security theatre. And it must work, since sheeple believe it’s really helping. Read more of Goldberg’s excellent posts, like this one with a better idea than kilts and the related posts that are listed within the article. They are worth your time.
Then get your lazy ass to contacting your politicians and bitching about this abuse of your rights. Suggest the TSA be dismantled and that money put to intelligence efforts where it will be USEFUL. Don’t be nice. These assholes are the ones pushing for the war on terror in the first place. And they’re doing it wrong.
As the article says:
“There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States,” Sela said. “Absolutely none.” -Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. From Cathal Kelly’s report in the Star, Dec. 2009.
It’s your duty as a citizen to jerk an knot in the collective ass of our out of control nanny government. DO IT. And remember this shit at the polls.
That video about killed me. It still brings my blood pressure up just thinking about it.
I have a hard time being coherent about it. Children, adults, EVERYBODY has the right to privacy. The right to not be touched by people, especially intrusively. We teach our children this. We teach women this. We teach and we say to say “stop!” and to tell. To get an adult, a police officer, an authority figure, because they legally have this right.
Then to legitimize it with a uniform, with a government seal of approval, and tell the mother to hold her child while her child is screaming to make it stop. Tell the rape or harassment victim to hold still while someone fondles their penis or labia, squeezes their breasts. Tell the previously unharassed to stand still and take this groping, this invasion of a person’s one and only true possession: their own body.
All for what? To ensure that the person instead goes through the backscatter? The MMWs aren’t bad, and I don’t have a lot of medical concerns about them, but the backscatter is actually medically dangerous. All of this is aside from the fact that I have rational mental concerns about any supposed right that any organization has to force you to undress so they can judge whether you are “safe” or not.
These security measures do nothing but provide a wonderful target of hundreds and hundreds of people waiting in line at slow moving “security” checkpoints. Why get on a plane when you have an even bigger target right there on the ground? Before anyone even half-assedly violates you? Shit. Close down an airport and you have effected a much bigger problem than a single plane.
It’s ugly. It’s sad. And, in the end, all I can hear and see is that 3 year old girl, slapping away the hands of the TSA agent feeling her, uninvited, and shouting at the top of her lungs, “Stop touching me!”
I missed the video. As I said, it’s been removed from the internet from what I can tell. :(
It is very ugly and very sad. And still, people have no idea that it’s WRONG. I just read some of the forum Marja posted about on FB and people are saying things like, “well, I thought they could do that” or “is it wrong for them to grab my genitals and pull?”. It’s pathetic to me that an American citizen would a)not complain about such treatment and b)not know enough about basic civil rights to know it’s wrong.
I fear for our Republic.
See anything to document the rumors that Muslim women will be exempted from the scanners or “pat downs” because that would violate Sharia Law? Havent found anything to confirm or deny that myself yet?