The stench of the police state at US airports

[Joanne98]

As tens of millions of Americans travel during the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend, they will come face to face with the new regime instituted by the federal Transportation Security Administration. More than 70 major airports have installed full-body scanners, where randomly selected passengers are compelled to undergo the electronic equivalent of a strip search. Travelers who decline that scan will be subjected instead to an extremely invasive body search that includes an open-palm patdown of the genital area.

There are already reports of gross invasions of privacy and abuse of passengers. A flight attendant was forced to show her prosthetic breast during a patdown. An 8-year-old boy was forced to remove his shirt in Salt Lake City, although children under 12 are supposedly not subject to the intensified searches. A retired special education teacher from Lansing, Michigan was humiliated and left covered with his own urine after a TSA screener broke the seal on his urostomy bag while patting him down.

Many passengers have reacted to the patdowns as a form of sexual molestation. The depth of popular hostility is demonstrated by the informal boycott of the body scanners called for Wednesday, November 24, traditionally the busiest day of the year at airports. TSA director John Pistole was so concerned about the prospective boycott that he issued an appeal Monday against it, claiming it would “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones.”

The new measures, introduced by the TSA November 1, constitute an assault on core constitutional rights. The random full-body scans and/or patdowns are a systematic, across-the-board violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures in which all those who are traveling are treated as potential terrorist threats.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n23.shtml

[TheIdiot]

1. Although I know they've filed an FOIA request...

I sure wish the ACLU were a bit more vocal about this.

[KansDem]

2. I'm to fly tomorrow. Some TSA apologists on DU have stated I "conceded" to these invasive searches

...as it said on my ticket that I waved my rights.

The trouble is: I got my ticket in early September. At that time it was metal detector (and possible wand).

So, to those of you who say I waved my rights: How about I go through a metal detector (and possible wand), therefore upholding my "contract" with the other parties involved?--you know, metal detector and possible wand? You got a problem with that?

Believe me, if this new "development" was announced prior to my buying my ticket, I'd be driving today...

[Old and In the Way]

3. It sure does make a great social lab for testing out the methods for a police state.

Nice controlled environments that allow them to refine their techniques and condition Americans to the need for a security state. Sadly, most Americans don't fly, so they don't really understand what the fuss is about. But can Big Security be profitable with such a limited market? I'm sure the next terrorist attack will occur in some major hi-rise....then they can roll out the TSA program to many more thousands of locations. Our government won't be interested in investigating that next terrorist attack, either. Instead, we'll be told to look forward and see what can be done to prevent future ones.

[bemildred]

4. We are all going to be required to fly once or twice a year before this is over.

Or pay the airlines anyway, some sort of "flying insurance".

[molly77]

5. A friend of mine just flew back from Arizona.

She said it was awful what they were doing to the elderly. She saw one elderly man with loose pants on lift both hands at the same time. (TSA thinks that is important) His pants fell down.