Cartoon-image software poll

Newark just got the software upgrade on their naked scanners, so the local paper ran a poll:

Do you feel more comfortable going through the new body scanner at Newark's airport?

Yes  47.54%  (29 votes)  

 

No  52.46%  (32 votes)  

 

Total Votes: 61

TSA News Roundup

• We know the TSA doesn't really protect us from terrorists, but it can occasionally catch people who are smuggling live animals (including parrots, snakes and turtles). Aside from such smuggling having nothing to do with national security, I'm pretty sure that stewardesses and fellow passengers could similarly note a live animal on a plane.
• The TSA agent who had used her position of power to aid a drug smuggling ring had her day in court and pled guilty. But, of course, it's "unfair" to form an opinion of other TSA agents based on this one agent's actions. Unless you realize that corruption is bred by bureaucracy.
• What's worse than a regurgitation of a TSA press release about cartoon software upgrades? An editorial that is a regurgitation of said press release. It even ends by saying: "the TSA deserves credit for responding to customer concerns."
• Ineffective TSA lead to calls for draconian measures by some:

How long does body scanning take?

In yet another reprint of a TSA press release about the cartoon software upgrade coming to another airport, we get this factoid:

"It's probably a 12- to 15-second process," Joe Taney, deputy federal security director for the TSA in Minnesota, told the newspaper. "In the past it might have been 20 to 30 seconds. When you start piling up 10,000 people a day, it adds up."

I have no hard evidence, but I think these scanners were touted as being faster that regular screening when first introduced. Now we learn that it averaged 25 seconds per passenger.

I'm back...

My posts may still be infrequent, but there will be more regular posting once again.

One observation from my trip:

We drove a moving truck cross-country. As expected, we had to go through the California Department of Agriculture at the Arizona-California border. In the past, when I've been stopped crossing into Cali, I've been asked if I have any fruits in the car (or something along those lines). There was a lane for cars, one for RV's and one for trucks - we went into the the truck line. I don't know what happened in the other lines, but we were stopped in the truck line and asked to pull forward and sit tight. I suddenly remembered that we had some orchids in the car we were towing and thought that was the issue when they asked my husband for assistance with their search. While we were parked there, at least half a dozen commercial semis were waived through without being asked to stop, which seemed odd. When my husband returned to the truck, he said they saw some "saw dust" near the gate of the truck and asked him to open it so they could look inside. He complied and they saw pretty much everything we own in the back and let us move on through.

My guess is that the CA department of agriculture was doing Homeland Security work. We got to the border on the morning of Sept 13th and were driving a "box truck." That is, we fit the description of the supposed 9/11 anniversary terror threat that never happened, and only a couple of days after 9/11. Commercial truckers were not under suspicion, they didn't ask us about fruits and vegetables, and didn't care about our plants. I will say that if there was saw dust on our truck, it was there before we picked up the truck 14 days and 4000 miles (we took a circuitous route) earlier. In other words, the saw dust was imaginary. We weren't in the mood to put up a fight - we just wanted to get to our final destination as quickly as possible, so we didn't question their bogus claim.

Does the average person think it is right that the relatively narrow mandate of the state agriculture department and their border inspections is being repurposed as another arm of the police state?

Of course we're not safer

We do, however, feel the need to feel safer (or something like that). A Cleveland area reporter interviewed a current US Attorney who thinks that we're safer and all Homeland Security BS is necessary, but also interviewed a retired FBI counter-terrorism expert who thinks it's mostly theater. It's refreshing to see this kind of reporting.

I'll be traveling...

I will be posting infrequently, if at all, for the next couple of weeks. I promise to catch you up on all the news when I get back online!

Has the TSA made us safer?

A friend asked me the other day if I knew of any evidence to show that the TSA has not stopped any terrorist attacks despite their overzealous intrusions into the privacy of innocent travelers. Of course there is: if the TSA actually stopped an attack, they would issue a press release and the media would parrot the press release for days on end.

My proof is based on the behavior of the TSA and media in the past year. This month, the TSA finished its trial of the cartoon-image software upgrade for the naked scanners and started installing them at airports around the country. I get a Google News alert of all things related to naked scanners and I can say that daily - or more frequently - there is an article on a local news website touting the software upgrade that is forthcoming at a specific local airport. These articles are more or less verbatim, with changes to the airport location and passenger interviews (if any). Moreover, the software upgrade has been the top story on the TSA homepage.

Contrast this to things that may reflect badly on the TSA. For example, the media never has information in advance about the schedule for installation of new naked scanners at a particular local airport. There are only fuzzy details like (paraphrasing) "airport administrators do not know when the scanners will be installed," or "officials state that scanners will (or will not) be installed before the end of the year." Yet, somehow, magically, the media knows exactly which airports are getting the software upgrade and when. It is abundantly clear that the TSA is sending local media outlets press releases with this information.

So, do you really think that the TSA would keep a foiled terrorist plot under wraps? Of course not!

What we do know, however, is that the TSA has helped catch non-terrorist "criminals."  This presumably includes the arrest of Kurtis Blow, Montel Williams, and MeMpHiTz, all for minor drug or weapons charges.

We also know that virtually all of the terrorist plots since 9/11 have been hatched and encouraged by the FBI itself. And, yet, when they "catch" one of the poor saps that they entrap, it is all over the news. The media certainly does its job as favorite government mouthpiece!

The 'professional' TSA

Bureaucrats have been so proud of how "professional" the TSA is now. I'm not sure what this means, but, presumably, it's not a reference to low-life criminality. Bill Fisher writes to me to say:

Another TSA screener arrestedfor child molestation making this the 7th TSA screener arrested since December of 2010 for a sex related crime. This is what you get when the Government sanctions child molestation, sexual assault and strip searches in the guise of airport security.

DA charges Spring Creek TSA Screener with Lewdness & Child Molestation

The others include:

• TSA Agent Rapes 14 Year Old Girl  (youtube)
• PHL TSA Screener Charged with Child Pornography
• TSA agent arrested for molestation (Orlando, FL)
• TSO Arrested for Rape in Londonderry NH
• A TSO arrested for kidnappingand attempted rape in ATL.
• RIC TSA Officer Bob SeasholsAdmits Plot to Post Porn on Christian Site

This now makes 44 screeners arrested in the past nine months.

Administrative law: where the TSA gets its power

Becky Akers explains how administrative law has made the Constitution irrelevant:

Administrative law “allows for the creation of public regulatory agencies” — that’s “bureaucracies” to you and me — “and contains all the statutes, judicial decisions, and regulations that govern them. It is the body of law created by administrative agencies to implement their powers and duties in the form of rules, regulations, orders, and decisions,” says West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. And yes, you read that circular reasoning right. Agencies draft the laws that empower them to draft laws: They write the rules of the game they play against us.

...The TSA also demonstrates what happens when someone challenges a bureaucracy in court. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit to stop the TSA’s irradiating of passengers with its porno-scanners — but the bench found that forcing passengers to submit to naked examination is indeed constitutional.

If you don’t know about the Second Set of Books, that ruling is so absurd you can only assume the three justices deciding the case had savored the marijuana that barred one of them, Douglas Ginsburg, from the Supreme Court. But if you realize that virtually anything bureaucracies declare necessary to carry out their mandate from Congress is “constitutional,” you’ll understand how adults literate in English can possibly wring permission for government’s goons to ogle us from the Fourth Amendment’s clear prohibition of warrantless searches.

Private vs Federalized airport security

Walter Block explains in a Facebook post why it is not possible for the TSA to ever work the way we wish it might. An excerpt:

Idiocy in the private sector exists, but it is continually being pared away. No such fail-safe mechanism underlies and supports government enterprise. Imagine if safety protection at airports were run under the free market sector, and one firm, the ACME agency, paid great attention to nail clippers and black grandmothers, but ignored garbage cans and Arab males of a certain age. There is a name for such companies, and the name is "bankrupt." They would be eliminated, forthwith, through the competitive process.

It does not matter that our homeland security people wear uniforms. Or must pass civil service types of exams, where they answer theoretical questions theoretically. Or are forced to attend training sessions, where they see films of past events. There is simply no automatic mechanism that continuously improves quality, as occurs every day in the market place. We do not owe our reasonably good pizzas, shoes, and bicycles to geniuses. Rather, to this weeding-out system.

Free advertising for the TSA

Is there really any other explanation for this article. It gives Oregonians the "news" that full-body scanners (pre-installed with cartoon-image software) are coming. It only quotes airport and TSA spokesmen, which, amazingly, claim:

... that polls show the general public is overwhelmingly supportive of TSA security precautions, including full-body scans.

The article then continues to read as a job advertisement. However, it is interesting to note that: 

TSA expects to hire 10 to 15 part-time workers over the coming months to add to its current staff of 70 part- and full-time employees at the Eugene Airport, Irwin said. The hiring drive is necessary because the new imaging technology requires larger staffs to run.

Although the author is not trying to show how inefficient with taxpayer money is, he continues by stating that, "The part-time positions come with federal full-time medical benefits..." I guess it's their way of bribing people to do a job that they feel ashamed of.

Sensible passengers in Elmira, NY

Here's what passengers are quoted as saying when asked about the cartoon-image software scanner coming to Elmira, NY (which already has scanners):

Reinhard Dieg, of Elmira, says, "Obviously we need something, but i don't think Elmira is that big of a hurry to get body scans. I don't think we have to worry about terrorists right away."

Sharon Michaels, of Elmira, says, "I'm more concerned with the handicap people and how they're trying to get through after watching another lady have to struggle in and out and have a lady lift her."

The first passenger realizes that this is security theater, and the second passenger realizes that the disabled are harassed by TSA as a matter of course (but erroneously thinks abridging their rights in a more sugar-coated way is better).

Power, humiliation, and fear

These are the things that the TSA and the national security (police) state thrive on. This testamonial by a passenger who recently encountered all three makes it clear. The crew is operating on fear - a terrorist around every corner - and a possibly a bit of a power trip. The passenger, Vance Gilbert, was then humiliated by being singled out for no good reason. No doubt the cops and TSA agents enjoyed their power trip, too. At least the police officer involved eventually showed some common sense and realized the book Mr. Gilbert was reading did not make him a terrorist. But, shouldn't there have been some common sense much earlier? Reading a book never makes one a terrorist. Period!

The future of security: less rights, of course

This MSNBC article gets interesting below the jump, where it postulates some possible future directions of airport security (theater):

• In 5 years: "Criminal checks, fingerprinting and character references will be a standard process for all of us"
• In 30 years: "passports laced with computer chips. Your official travel document 'will not only have information as to who you are and where you have traveled, but it will also ... allow government officials to track your travel not only in the air, but your daily travels to work, grocery stores and social events.'" 

Don't like it? Too bad; a security consultant claims, “All these measures seem extreme. However, after we declared a war on terror, we must be more proactive than reactive when it comes to airport security.”

Granted!? Really?

When will people start thinking for themselves? Here is what one reporter wrote in a local Ohio paper:

Granted, flying is a privilege, not a right, and security concerns can trump privacy. But the full-body scanners that are being used in 40 airports in the United States are an affront to personal privacy.

Why is this granted?

Flying is not a privilege. It is one of many ways that people can travel within states, between states, and between countries. Freedom of movement is a right that has been central to individual rights in the US since the Articles of Confederation. While the courts have ruled that the federal government has no jurisdiction to protect this right, there is also a clear consensus that the federal and state governments can not infringe on this right. Furthermore, US law specifically states that air travel is part of our freedom of movement.

Where exactly is the proof that security concerns can trump privacy? There have been court rulings that make exceptions for limited trumping of privacy (until the recent EPIC v DHS case, which is much more broad), but this isn't settled law and it is certainly contrary to an originalist reading of the founding documents. Again, not "granted," so why this claim?

The author continues with his or her amazing logic:

So airline passengers have to be happy that starting this week, the scanners are being replaced by machines that show a generic outline of a body instead of what amounts to a photo of an actual body.

Why must I be happy? The TSA is literally searching under my clothes. The fact that a computer converts the image does not escape the fact that I am being viewed naked by the federal government without my explicit consent or any reasonable alternative.