TSA abuse, compiled

Via Popehat, we learn of the TSA Abuse Blog, which is compiling stories and articles related to the TSA abuses ongoing across the nation.

Also, Reason Magazine has compiled some of the "mainstream" media's editorial positions on government-approved sexual assault, aka TSA's "enhanced pat downs": Editorial Boards to the Little People Complaining About the TSA: Bend Over and Take it Like a Man!

Finally, definitely go read Popehat's post on the matter here: The TSA’s Junk Gets Fluffed, which juxtaposes Passengers' Stories of Recent Travel collected by the ACLU, with some op-ed quotes from the Left-wing extremist, aka "mainstream", media.

The ACLU's take on the over 900 passenger complaints it has received:

Recurring themes in these reports include:
• The searches are extremely invasive
• Many travelers are reporting intense feelings of violation and humiliation
• Some report being physically hurt by the searches
• Some feel their searches are punitive
• Reports of gawking by agents
• Reports of seemingly unnecessary repeated touching of intimate areas
• Many vow not to fly any more
• Any traveler may be forced to undergo one of these searches

The TSA: Keeping you "safe", one scrotum and vagina at a time.

TSA - The tip of the Police State spear

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Ben Franklin.

The stories of the TSA sexual assault gropings / perv-scanners continue apace. From Karl Denninger comes this list (with sources):

The following are 22 quotes about enhanced pat downs and TSA groping.  They are presented without commentary because they speak for themselves.  Please share these quotes as widely as possible.  If Americans do not wake up now, when will they ever wake up?….


#1 Blogger Erin Chase:
I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.


#2 ABC News producer Carolyn Durand:
“The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around.”


#3 Wendy James Gigliotti:
“She said ’spread your legs.’ And then she took her full palms and started at my neck and ran all the way down my body, full palms, constant contact. And when she got down to my feet, she was in constant contact from my ankles all the way up to my groin, across my groin, and down the other leg. And she did that twice.”


#4 Female air traveler Ella Swift:
“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.”


#5 Flight attendant Cathy Bossi:
“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’.  And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”
...

Please read the full list (22 items, all with linked sources) here. Also available here.

These are nothing less than assaults and batteries on peaceful citizens. Naturally, members of the ruling class such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller thinks TSA head John Pistole is doing "a terrific job".

At some point, red-blooded Americans may decide to implement their own, uh, kinetic response to such travesties. And if that happens, the bloodbath the ruling class seems to keep pushing for will be on. Heaven help us.

Here's Congressman Ron Paul on the TSA [via Karl Denninger's Market Ticker]:



Some of the machines even seem to require that you assume the surrender / "I give up" position:

How appropriate, no?

The new voyeur channel at the airport

Your tax dollars hard at work, making the skies "safer", and government voyeurs, uh, harder:




Those with young kids will especially appreciate that some FedGov flunkie will be able to see your child's naked body in full (and easily converted full color) glory.

And remember, the Feds says they don't store the images, except, apparently, when they do.

Your government, "hard" at work. Now, it seems, literally.

The feds like the nudies

Today's another-reason-to-not-trust-the-government. The FedGov said, "Hey, what are you worried about? Those virtual-strip-search machines can't store or record images of the scanned persons." Not true, it turns out:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded."

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers. ...

Read the rest here. It's probably only a matter of time before body scans of the traveling public turn up on the Internet. Give up your privacy, mere subjects. After all, it's "for your own good."

The future of air travel

Tonight's airport security preview, coming to a TSA checkpoint near you:

Notes from the underground

Via UPI, here's an amusing anecdote:

WASHINGTON, April 3 (UPI) -- A spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Transportation Security Administration employees slipped an encouraging note into an Ensign staffer's luggage.

Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola said a staffer flying into Washington discovered a note in his suitcase that was signed by six TSA employees and thanked the senator for his efforts to lift the gun ban in the nation's capital, Politico reported Friday.

"To Senator Ensign: Please continue to defend our conservative values with all your vigor, particularly our Second Amendment! Thank you," the note read.

Mazzola said it was the first time someone had used that method to contact the senator. ...

Article here. TSA government employees supporting the Second Amendment? That's probably a firing offense in the new Hope and Chains employee manual.

Conflicting reports on demise of armed pilots program

According to this Fox News article, federal officials are denying that Obama is seeking to end the armed pilots program:

Federal officials are denying a report that the Obama administration is seeking to end a program that allows trained airline pilots to carry guns.

In an editorial published Tuesday in The Washington Times, the newspaper wrote that "President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology."

Sterling Payne, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, denied the report and said the program that oversees a reported 12,000 federal flight deck officers (FFDO) is actually expanding.

"It's inaccurate, this program continues to grow," Payne told FOXNews.com of the editorial. "TSA continues to recruit and put new FFDOs on planes, and we continue to train them and do recurring training."

Payne said TSA officials have recently opened a training center for FFDOs in Atlantic City, N.J., with others planned to open in Texas and other states. She declined, citing security concerns, to say how many federal flight deck officers are authorized by the agency, citing security concerns.

"We have thousands of FFDOs right now and we add thousands each year," Payne said.
Representatives from The Washington Times did not return a request for comment. A White House spokesman declined to speak on the matter, saying it was being handled by TSA officials

In a statement issued Tuesday, the Airlines Pilots Association International -- the world's largest airline pilot union, representing nearly 52,250 pilots in the U.S. and Canada -- said the Times editorial "couldn't be further from the truth."

"ALPA representatives met with TSA executives this afternoon and were told in no uncertain terms that TSA embraces the FFDO program, that there are no plans to reduce or restrict its growth, and that in fact the agency fully intends to grow and expand the program," the statement read. "Government representatives acknowledged that the program needs additional funding to achieve these goals, and that they are actively seeking same." ...

Travelers on 'no fly' list can sue in court

San Francisco Chronicle article on a recent Ninth Circuit ruling that allows a traveler on the TSA's "No Fly" list to challenge their inclusion on that list in federal court:

Critics of the government's secret no-fly list scored a potentially important victory Monday when a federal appeals court ruled that would-be passengers can ask a judge and jury to decide whether their inclusion on the list violates their rights.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a suit by a former Stanford University student who was detained and handcuffed in 2005 as she was about to board a plane to her native Malaysia.

The ruling is apparently the first to allow a challenge to the no-fly list to proceed in a federal trial court, said the plaintiff's lawyer, Marwa Elzankaly.

Article here. Given that the whole process of who gets red-flagged on to the no-fly list is secret, this seems a step in the right direction towards achieving redress for improper inclusion on the list.

TSA weighing airport gun ban

Article discussing a possible gun ban by TSA in all airport areas, not just the secured (security screened) areas.

WASHINGTON - The Transportation Security Administration may allow airports to ban firearms from terminals, parking lots, roads and other airport areas where many states currently allow passengers to carry lethal weapons.

Airport officials and lawmakers are watching closely as the TSA weighs a request by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to modify its security program to impose an airportwide ban on guns. It is the first such request to TSA from an airport.

"Any decisions we make that affect (Atlanta) could affect every other airport in the country," TSA spokesman Christopher White said Thursday.

Federal law bars passengers from bringing weapons to or past airport checkpoints. But in many airports, state law allows passengers to carry guns and knives in unsecured areas such as a main terminal - often to airport officials' dismay.

Article here. Any such ban that purports to override state laws will likely be challenged. It's unclear whether federal law would permit the TSA to exercise jurisdiction over all airport property, such as parking lots and unsecured areas.