Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA

[notesdev]

The Republicans control the House of Representatives and are bracing for a long battle over the President’s health care proposal. In the spirit of bipartisanship and sanity, I propose that the first thing on the chopping block should be an ineffective organization that wastes money, violates our rights, and encourages us to make decisions that imperil our safety. I’m talking about the Transportation Security Administration.

Bipartisan support should be immediate. For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA. For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

But won’t that compromise safety? I doubt it. The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility. This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal.

The odds of dying from a terrorist attack are much lower than the odds of dying from doing any of a number of incredibly mundane things we do every day. You are almost certainly more likely to die or be injured driving to the airport than you are to be injured by a terrorist once you’re in the air, even without a TSA. Indeed, once you have successfully made it to the airport, the most dangerous part of your trip is over. Until it’s time to drive home, that is.
...


http://blogs.forbes.com/artcarden/2010/11/14/full-frontal-nudity-doesnt-make-us-safer-abolish-the-tsa/

[rucky]

1. But, but...

We've had a shoe bomber, and a liquid/gel/aerosol bomber. What if we get a penis bomber?

[bluestateguy]

2. Do you really want to go back to private Rent a Cop security at airports?

I don't,

How soon we forget.

[Tunkamerica]

3. pay attention

[ixion]

4. The TSA is distinctly un-American

so I am certain that is NOT the solution.

I would take rent-a-cops to this thuggery nonsense.

[jefferson_dem]

6. Matt Drudge is stirring the pot of demagogery. Don't you know we're supposed to ...

hate and fear the "regime" ... and question the perveted sexual orientation of Janet Napolitano?

Here are just a few of the leded on SludgeReport:

Airport body-scan radiation under new scrutiny...

Government in our pants...

TSA agents eject man from airport for opting out of 'groin check'...

'You touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested'...

BIG SIS DOUBLES DOWN: Scanners are safe, pat-downs discreet...

[jefferson_dem]

5. I see some have found their shiny new object of scorn and hyperbole.

'Scuse me if I don't join in the circle-jerk of outrage.

Also, it seems this Art Carden fella (author of the piece in the OP) rather likes these sort of "scorched earth" reforms. He also penned "Repeal The Minimum Wage". http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/minimum-wage-labor-economics-opinions-contributors-art-carden.html

[notesdev]

7. It's a worthy target

I for one don't want a country where intrusive security checks that cross the border into sexual assault by the government against citizens who are neither suspected nor convicted of any crime are acceptable.

[jefferson_dem]

8. I agree - that's a worthy concern.

However, I question the motivation of many who are promoting this issue (not you) and will await more "evidence" before jumping to conclusions.

[notesdev]

9. regardless of motive

It's a worthy goal and if there is all-around support for getting rid of the TSA then this is a golden opportunity for our representatives to show some responsiveness to the needs of the people. The activities of this agency constitute almost pure malicious abuse and the attitude it presents towards innocent travelers is abominable!

[theHandpuppet]

10. +1

:thumbsup:

[seabeyond]

11. and some people are able to recognize there is a line to personal rights and our body is one.

this was not sucj a far fetched belief a mere couple years ago froma nation as a whole. that lasted a good couple hundred years. amazing how there are people that can so easily and willingly be led to an abuse because their govt assure it is for their own safety, even when facts and every other nation support opposite....

[jberryhill]

13. Of course it's a Forbes blog piece

Did you notice this part:

"I’m pretty sure I own stock in at least one airline, and I’m pretty sure airline managers know that cutting corners on security isn’t in my best interests as a shareholder."

Ah, yeah, laissez faire security.

[jefferson_dem]

15. Are people really that ignorant of recent American history?

And the partisan battle over airline security in 2002? We lost some brave soldiers in that battle. My former Senator Max Cleland comes to mind. Surely, that pasty-faced fuck Saxby Chambliss is smiling right now.

[jberryhill]

16. Oh, it's pretty much pure free-floating id around here these days /nt

[soryang]

12. Michael Chertoff and General Hayden could care less

They are making money off this. Who cares about what American citizens or airline professionals think?

Obama and Congress are going along with these goons. Obama even brought the naked body scanner CEO to India to force it on them.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x521668

The additional irony is that the overwhelming majority of naked body scanners were purchased with stimulus funds. They are hurting the economy. People will avoid airline travel and the tourist and hospitality industry will suffer. Great stimulus!

[HereSince1628]

14. The formula is take an existing fear and heighten it.

We aren't afraid of getting killed in our homes although crime statistics show that family members are dangerous. We avoid neighborhoods where an errant shot from one desperate person aimed at another desperate person might kill us because those neighborhoods are where violent crime happens.

We aren't really afraid of dying in a car accident, although statistically the chance is many times higher than dying in a terrorists airplane downing. Probably because we think that we, who are obviously safe drivers, have control of the risk. Accidents and dying are for folks who aren't as careful as us.

We are afraid of simple things, like falling, like flying, like being mistaken for some bad person, of being in the wrong place, like being in a place that's a target for crime, by people who we regularly identify as 'them.' You know...people who are usually brown, who speak a way we don't, and who, unlike us, are people that don't practice the tenets of a religion based on love and peaceful coexistance. Fear of dying in a terrorist attack as we fly off on a vacation, or sit at a desk in a high profile building in a high profile city is a sum of fears that is much greater than it's parts. If you are Tom Clancy, or Dick Cheney or bin Laden you well understand that the Sum of All Fears is controlled by complete control of other people. Both bad guys and good guys. It requires not only the loss of liberty, but the loss of our sacred peace of mind. It requires being terrified.

If you don't get that in a seriously deep in your bones affective sort of way, you aren't going to understand why the TSA and the HSA want to probe your underwear, your body cavities and all of your personal communications--all the time. And even if you do 'sort of' get it, you're very likely to feel insulted by 'security' who really just can't see that you/me aren't one of those brown, strange speaking, weird believing people with frightening things up your rectum.