Here’s another collection on the choice between government in your gonads and taking the position of a criminal surrendering to the police.
Roger Cohen writes, “Give a bureaucrat a big stick and a big budget, allow said bureaucrat to trade in the limitless currency of human anxiety, and the masses will soon be intimidated by the Department of Fear.” He adds, “When a government has a right to invade the bodies of its citizens, security has trumped freedom.” To borrow a cliche, the terrorists have won–and it’s time to fight back.
The ACLU has collected 900 complaints from passengers who have felt abused and even sexually molested by the TSA (think: penetration). One secondary emotion dealt with fear of retaliation. Some passengers report punitive actions on the part of the TSA, while others have had to censor themselves: Don’t ask questions or voice objections or you’ll be put on a terrorist-watch list.
Don’t object to the naked body scanners because you don’t fly (much)? Wait until they get rolled out elsewhere. Federal marshals are experimenting with putting them in federal courthouses. If the grope-or-scan policy isn’t reversed, expect to see it rolled out elsewhere, such as at bus stations, in public buildings, and so forth. It will take a while but it will happen.
Can the TSA prohibit you from photographing a grope-down in progress? That’s what a TSA workers told one man. Unaccountable and secretive government, anyone?
The TSA, allegedly protecting the public, may be spreading diseases by not changing gloves after each grope-down.
The site eSarcasm has “obtained” a recent memo from the head of the TSA.
The TSA demands that you take off your belt when you through a metal detector–even if it’s not metallic. Why? So it won’t interfere with a naked-body scanner. What if there’s no such scanner near the metal detector? it doesn’t matter.
Even while 80-year old grandmothers with walkers are subject to groping, thousands of airport workers get no security checks. That, says a pilot who is screened on a routine basis, is a double standard.
Peggy Noonan imagines a conversation between a “special assistant to the president for reality” and Barack Obama. Here’s a sample of the talk the two might have:
President: We should have pointed out not everyone goes through the new machines, and only a minority get patted down.
Assistant: Mr. President, if you’d told people, “Hello, there’s only 1 chance in 3 you’ll be molested at the airport today” most people wouldn’t think, “Oh good, I like those odds.”
From the Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=1132