Airports consider congressman's call to ditch TSA

[defendandprotect]

Airports consider congressman's call to ditch TSA


ATLANTA – In a climate of Internet campaigns to shun airport pat-downs and veteran pilots suing over their treatment by government screeners, some airports are considering another way to show dissatisfaction: Ditching TSA agents altogether.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who's a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA's place.

Furor over airline passenger checks has grown as more airports have installed scanners that produce digital images of the body's contours, and the anger intensified when TSA added a more intrusive style of pat-down recently for those who opt out of the full-body scans. Some travelers are using the Internet to organize protests aimed at the busy travel days next week surrounding Thanksgiving.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_airport_security_private_screeners

[marmar]

1. Turn it over to the private sector? No thanks.

nt

[laughingliberal]

2. +1 nt

[haifa lootin]

3. Could it possibly be worse?

I'm trying to imagine how...

[marmar]

5. Poorly paid, poorly trained employees? You betcha.

nt

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. what the fuck do you call what we have now?

A bunch of boorish thugs strutting around the airport terrorizing their fellow Americans is an improvement over pre-9/11 how?

[marmar]

11. And privatizing them will make that soooo much better.......

Maybe they'll be like Blackwater. :think:

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

14. I don't think it makes much difference,

When you hire the scum of the earth the result is more or less inevitable

[marmar]

17. Well, quite honestly, that hasn't been my experience with the TSA......

..... not that this particular set of new rules doesn't need changing, but I've experienced very few of the "boorish thugs" and I fly a decent amount.

[haifa lootin]

19. Which would be different from what we now have...how, exactly?

What we have now is a gang of overpaid, poorly trained perverts who can't wait to shove their hands down your skivvies. Maybe that's appealing to you.

[marmar]

21. Umm, the touching rules would be the same if it was in private hands......

...... and how nice that you think that every TSA employee is a pervert. At least you're not rushing to a rash generalization or anything. Jeezus, how daft.

[LisaL]

25. So TSA rules specificially demand that crotches be patted?

Otherwise it's no good? Can you show me a link to that?

[marmar]

27. I'm just making the point that TSA rules would still be in effect if a private company was in charge

..... whatever they are.

[LisaL]

31. Well if TSA doesn't specify they have to preform crotch

searches, why should I worry a private company will have to do the same?

[name not needed]

28. As opposed to well paid, poorly trained employees?

[donheld]

30. Let priests do it

:hide::D

[gkhouston]

4. Change the rules, not the enforcers. n/t

[burnsei sensei]

6. We don't need searches of any kind.

All that's necessary is the right person asking a few questions of each passenger.
I often cross the border into Canada, and this is what happens to me. Just a few questions with careful attention to answers and body language.
Questions can be invasive, but they don't have to be.
Find people who are not afraid to read body language, and TSA procedures, even the DHS, can be abandoned completely.

[Michigan-Arizona]

10. totally agree burnsei n/t

[LisaL]

7. Well I think it's a good idea.

If enough airports decide not to use TSA just maybe TSA will reconsider their procedures.

[PSPS]

9. Except for their real agenda -- more corporate welfare

Given the chance that TSA will unionize, every republican will be anxious to turn it over to "the private sector." This is code for turning it over to their criminal cronies who will then pay minimum wage without benefits, charge airports huge fees, then launder a portion of the huge profits back as "campaign contributions" to keep the scheme self-sustaining. This is the standard recipe for the off-the-shelf campaign money laundering machine that the GOP has used for a long time.

[marmar]

12. +100

nt

[leftstreet]

15. +1 Just last Friday the FLRA decided TSA workers can vote union rep

This smear campaign is no accident

It's sick

:puke:

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

20. What is being said now that wasn't being said on Day 2?

This isn't about unions, it is about reigning in an out of control agency that has been out of control since their creation, answers to nobody and has gone so far down the rabbit hole they could never be dragged back out.

If the Republicans were still in the white house this website wouldn't be bringing the TSA shitheads under the umbrella of worker solidarity, they would be calling for mass arrests, the resignation of everyone at DHS and TSA, including the parking lot attendant and making comparisons to every totalitarian state in real life and fiction, along no doubt with convoluted gender based arguments about how this is part of the patriarchal pornographic rape culture. But because the Democrats are in the executive branch the TSA is all cool, just hard working americans fighting the war on terra.

[leftstreet]

22. Yes, it is about organized labor

And privatizing govt services (see education, prisons, military, medicare, ss)

And by the way, there is no information any TSA worker has been charged or convicted of a sexual assault crime. Frankly it's disconcerting that so many make a connection between a security search and 'pornographic rape culture.'

Creepy

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

29. TSA employee Charles Henry Bennett plotted to make teen his 'sex slave,' cops say...

A perverted Transportation Security Administration employee's alleged plot to turn a 15-year-old girl into his "sex slave" was foiled after his arrest for abusing the teen, according to cops in Florida. Charles Henry Bennett was arrested Friday after the girl came forward claiming she'd been molested by the suspect when she was 12, Orlando TV station WKMG reports.

The 57-year-old Bennett acknowledges he "groped" the girl, according to the station, citing a police report. But the girl's version of the encounter is reportedly more graphic. On a MySpace page that apparently belongs to Bennett, he says he is a S&M-oriented swinger out to meet "submissive females," the station reports. Cops say Bennett was forthcoming about his plans for the teen in a statement to authorities.

"He advised, in a written statement, he actually asked her to be his sex slave," the report reads, according to WKMG.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/01/2010-02-01_tsa_employee_charles_henry_bennett_plotted_to_make_teen_his_sex_slave_cops_say.html

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TSA airport screener arrested for child porn also worked at Catholic school

CBS News reported yesterday that a former Homeland Security TSA agent was arrested on federal charges in January. Billy Alfaro, who CBS reports worked as a screener at Los Angeles International Airport since January 2008, is reportedly in federal custody facing child pornography charges. He was fired on January 12th of this year.

CBS also reports that Alfaro worked at St. Paul's Parish School in South Los Angeles as a "volunteer religious education teacher". CBS reports "Parents we spoke to at the school never knew". and that "The parish did notify parents in the monthly bulletin of what happened." Alfaro also allegedly coached a soccer team not associated with the church school, but that according to school officials quoted in the CBS report, he may had recruited players from the school.

http://www.examiner.com/la-county-libertarian-in-los-angeles/tsa-airport-screener-arrested-for-child-porn-also-worked-at-catholic-school-questions-remain

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Undercover work in St. Lucie nabs TSA employee on child porn charges

FORT PIERCE — Tenacious police work by a St. Lucie County undercover officer resulted in the arrest of a 48-year-old Homeland Security Agency employee from Massachusetts who is charged with several counts of child pornography.

Richard D. McLaughlin of Everett, Mass., was arrested at his home earlier last month. He is housed in an administrative segregation unit at the St. Lucie County jail in lieu of $340,000 bail. McLaughlin, who works for the Transportation Security Agency at Logan Airport in Boston, was first spotted by the detective using an AOL account in January.

The persona used by the undercover officer, whose specialty is arresting Internet sex predators, was that of a man with an 11-year-old daughter. According to the police report, McLaughlin gave his home phone number and then a number of calls and e-mail exchanges followed, all of which were recorded by the detective. McLaughlin allegedly said he was interested in "family sex, young stuff" and bragged that he had molested his 8-year-old niece. He asked the detective to put his "daughter" on a web camera and perform sex acts with her.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/apr/01/no-headline---02fsolicit/

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TSA officer charged in boy's kidnap attempt

KTVB-TV, NBC’s Boise affiliate, reported that the TSA officer was charged with second-degree kidnapping Tuesday under the name of Robert Joe Harrison Jr. Fifth District Magistrate Ted Israel set bail at $500,000.

The station said the man known as Harrison has worked as a TSA officer at the Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey since November 2005. It said he has been suspended without pay pending investigation of the kidnapping charges.

Police detectives in Ketchum arrested the man on Tuesday, after a 10-year-old boy reported that he had been lured into a red Dodge Dakota pickup truck while walking home from school and driven to an apartment complex by a man who invited him in to watch a movie, KTVB said. The boy left and told his mother about the incident and she in turn called police, it said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12302041/

---

Putting that list together took all of two minutes,

Can you not see that this type of work and the opportunity to view nude images of and physically grope children might be intensely appealing to pedophiles, perverts and republicans?

[kysrsoze]

26. We've had private security everywhere for years, and IMO, TSA is just as bad.

In this situation, I don't know that it could get any worse.

[Matariki]

13. Arrrgh. Here I stupidly was thinking the Republicans were actually upset about privacy issues

Thinking this was some sort of bipartisan kumbaya moment. I should have known better.

[TorchTheWitch]

16. the private firms still have to use the scopes and gropes

as they are required to follow TSA guidelines. All that using a private firm would do is make the airline pay the agents less, training and background checks would be even worse, and their benefits would be crap. And who pays for the private security force that is STILL required to do the nudie-scope or genital grope?

[frazzled]

18. So this is a love thread for the uber-conservative Republican Congressman?

Or what? Anything for a laugh here, I guess.

[haifa lootin]

23. Even a conservative person (it's still an adjective) can be right occasionally.

I'm pretty sure there's no rule here that says a poster can never support anything a
Republican advocates. If I'm wrong about that, I sure would be grateful if you'd show me why...thanks!

[frazzled]

24. That's what Christopher Hitchens said ...

when his hatred for the Clinton administration reached such crazed proportions that he flipped from Marxism to conservatism and support for the "rightness" of Bush's Iraq invasion. I think that's what is happening here. As I said, anything for a laugh.

[PSPS]

32. It's all about motivation. Republicans are jumping on the anti-TSA bandwagon now 'cause they smell $

[defendandprotect]

35. Yep, they probably know some real perverts who could be pressed into service to replace TSA--!!

:evilgrin:

[defendandprotect]

34. Detest Mica ... and btw he was on with ..... Larry O'Donnel tonight ....

hated seeing that -- but missed most of what was being said --

I posted this because I think DU'ers should know what is being suggested.

And elsewhere I'm saying passengers should keep in mind that the AIRLINES

are a good pressure point for action to get rid of this insanity!

TSA should go -- but they should not be replaced by anyone or anything!!

This is Orwellian!!

[defendandprotect]

33. Airlines are a good pressure point here --!! Agree TSA should go ... but no replacing them--!!