Here’s a round-up of some news I found today on the TSA’s peekaboo-or-grope regime.
One doctor says that the risk of radiation from the new scanners is not significant. Yet as Jane Orient, MD point out, there’s a certain irony: “if you had a deadly disease, and the scanner were an FDA-regulated device that might save your life, your doctor wouldn’t be allowed to use it, because of inadequate study.”
The doctor also points to health risks of the gropers: “what about the transmission of scabies, crab lice, bedbug larvae, and all manner of germs by TSA gropers? Do they change gloves and wash their hands between subjects, as hospital personnel must do?”
Adam Savage of TV’s Mythbusters fame, says the TSA missed two 12-inch razor blades he accidentally took through security. Great: Undignified AND ineffective screening!
TSA patdowns kill, at least indirectly, by encouraging people to drive when they could fly. So much for increasing public safety.
P.J. O’Rourke once said “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. On that note, one woman alleges she got sized up and then felt up by TSA agents.
Jim Harper of the Cato Institute says “TSA is overreacting. That’s exactly what Congress asked it to do-and it’s exactly what terrorists want Congress to ask for.
Harper dismisses both profiling and trusted-traveler programs as foolproof. The alternative: Accept the fact that we live in a world with risks. “The small risk of domestic undergarment bomb smuggling, suggested by a decade without any such attack, is something the public can tolerate – if prison-style searching of innocent American travelers is the alternative.”
After Watergate, there came a phrase, “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” A corollary of may apply here: It’s not the affront to human dignity that the new regime that’s the most scandalous, it’s the reaction of the Obama Administration. According to one man who has seen a highly-placed memo, the view from your “public servants” is that people who question the scan-or-grope approach are “domestic extremists.” Hey, at least they didn’t throw in “traitors” or “terrorists” as well. But it looks like the Detroit News may be considered an “extremist” for letting me publish my daily collection of news items about the controversy. The feds are making a list and checking it twice, not of children anticipating Christmas gifts, but of their critics. Can anyone say, “chilling effect?”
Finally, a college student goes through a metal detector in a speedo.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=1130