[Livewire713]

I've rode Greyhound a few time's and they do need more security. Some real crazy people on those buses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tim_McLean

[perdition79]

Tampa? That's way too close to home.

Still, makes me think about Greyhound. This TSA move will make some intelligent folks simply travel through major cities using alternate means, then just pick up the bus at a stop just on the other side of town. Then again, some folks already do that, just to avoid the dangerous conditions at Greyhound's major hubs. Ever sit around in the Chicago terminal for more than ten minutes?

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he chief says that out of the 6663 bags searched between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., a crack pipe was the only item confiscated.
“We can conduct any kind of search we want," said McClintock. "We could ask TSA to bring wands or X-ray machines like they have in airports, though we don't think that's appropriate for PATCO riders at this time."

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly. There's no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a choice between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one's right to privacy is variable contingent on the government's discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn't care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court. If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA's newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA's regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.'"

[eXpat]

Boy Asks TSA ‘Why Pat Down Mom And Not Me?’, TSA Replies ‘You Don’t Have Boobs’
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Adrienne Durso describes how a female TSA officer pulled her out of line after she had gone through the metal detector and proceeded to pat her down, “Heavily concentrating on my breast area” in a search that “just seemed to go on and on”.

Relating her story to KOB Eyewitness News 4, Ms. Durso explained how she was made to feel humiliated in front of her seventeen year old son and the rest of the queuing passengers.

I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso said.

Feeling violated and embarrassed, Ms. Durso asked to speak to a TSA supervisor.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, when the supervisor arrived and Ms. Durso’s son asked why he had also not been subjected to the body search, the TSA agent told the boy “well you don’t have boobs”.

[Novus]

The TSA is rapidly turning American airports into Abu Ghraib. The parallels are sick really.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'F')unny article, TSA workers strike back:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]'We hate obese passengers and people with personal hygiene issues:' Now 'abused' TSA staff vent their anger at patdown searches
...
'It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh,' one told the BoardingArea blog.
'Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332307/Now-abused-TSA-staff-vent-anger-security-patdown-searches.html

[eXpat]

HA HA! this is rich, you can be groped and molested, but TSA lets slip a loaded gun.
Gaping Holes in Airline Security: Loaded Gun Slips Past TSA Screeners
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ast fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.
He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.

"It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif told ABC News. "How can you miss it? You cannot miss it."

But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.
...
According to one report, undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times. A 2007 government audit leaked to USA Today revealed that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles's LAX airport in 50 out of 70 attempts, and at Chicago's O'Hare airport agents made 75 attempts and succeeded in getting through undetected 45 times.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')nce again, the TSA is covering their own asses by implementing security-theater measures to prevent the previous attack while ignoring any threats of future attacks. It's the same thinking that caused them to ban box cutters after 9/11, screen shoes after Richard Reid, limit liquids after that London gang, and -- I kid you not -- ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces after they were used to house package bombs from Yemen. They act like the terrorists are incapable of thinking creatively, while the terrorists repeatedly demonstrate that can always come up with a new approach that circumvents the old measures.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]TSA employee sees a frozen chicken, airport shuts down

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eXpat', 'H')A HA! this is rich, you can be groped and molested, but TSA lets slip a loaded gun.
Gaping Holes in Airline Security: Loaded Gun Slips Past TSA Screeners
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ast fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.
He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.

"It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif told ABC News. "How can you miss it? You cannot miss it."

But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.
...
According to one report, undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times. A 2007 government audit leaked to USA Today revealed that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles's LAX airport in 50 out of 70 attempts, and at Chicago's O'Hare airport agents made 75 attempts and succeeded in getting through undetected 45 times.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')laire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.
Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.
"I can't go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me," she said.
Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.
"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.
Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.
"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.
When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

[rangerone314]

Its a crying fricking shame for situations like the above you can't dial up a flash militia group to number several thousand armed citizens to storm the airport by force and do a citizen's arrest of the abusive TSA people, and put them on trial by a citizen's court.

Americans are f'in sheep. I can't wait for things to degenerate into a police state and I hope all the morons who approve of current measures enjoy their cavity searches when they occur in the future.

I wonder what 20 TSA officers would do if 4-5,000 citizens armed with AR15's arrived to perform a citizens arrest?

I wish someone at the airport would pull out a copy of the US Constitution the next time this kind of thing happens, and then pull out their wanker and urinate on the document, because that is what the TSA does.

Ooops, I forgot they are "just following orders". Maybe when the current corporatocracy gets toppled, they can say that at their trials. It worked well at Nuremberg.

I've only ever heard a few people declare what the conditions are for having "Won the War on Terror", but I've heard no one declare what the conditions are for having "Lost the War on Terror". I'd say we've already lost. Somewhere Osama is laughing at us. LAUGHING at us.

Its better to die on your feet than live on your knees. They don't know this in the Land of the Unfree, and the Home of the Cowards.

[Sixstrings]

So much for the First Amendment:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')acramento-area pilot punished for YouTube video
SACRAMENTO, CA - An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.

The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.

He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.

Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.

At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot's gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon .

A follow-up letter from the sheriff's department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.

The YouTube videos, posted Nov. 28, show what the pilot calls the irony of flight crews being forced to go through TSA screening while ground crew who service the aircraft are able to access secure areas simply by swiping a card.

"As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce. It's only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here," the pilot narrates.

Video shot in the cockpit shows a medieval-looking rescue ax available on the flight deck after the pilots have gone through the metal detectors. "I would say a two-foot crash ax looks a lot more formidable than a box cutter," the pilot remarked.

A letter from the TSA dated Dec. 6 informed the pilot that "an administrative review into your deputation status as a Federal Flight Deck Officer has been initiated."

According to the letter, the review was directly related to the discovery by TSA staff of the YouTube videos. "The content and subject of these videos may have violated regulations concerning disclosure of sensitive security information," the letter said.

The pilot's attorney, Don Werno of Santa Ana, said he believed the federal government sent six people to the house to send a message.

"And the message was you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety," Werno said.
http://www.news10.net/news/article.aspx?storyid=113529&provider=top&catid=188

[rangerone314]

Why can't we ever get names of the jerk wads in the government who actually issue an order to go harass someone like the pilot, and why can't we organize a 500-person flash mob to show up at said person's house to harass them right back or at least ask them why they act they way they do and lie.

I get it, because the jerk wads only want to cover their a$$e$ and justify their budgets. Big government is a solution looking for a problem.

[Roy]

I have come to realize that the persons in charge of this clusterfuck are not going to stop until they are physically forced to stop. Elections mean nothing. Public opinion means nothing.

They will stop when they are physically forced to do so. Not one nanosecond before.



The bankers, the politicians, and the bureaucrats.

[Keith_McClary]

Passenger sues Air Canada over missing gifts
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')eter Darcy flew from London to Vancouver on Dec. 15. Sometime after he checked his bags in with Air Canada at Heathrow airport, someone broke the locks on the luggage and took the gifts that were inside.

It wasn't until Darcy got his bags home on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast that he saw someone had tampered with the locks and made off with about $1,000 worth of valuables, he said.

He said he called Air Canada and asked the woman who answered if the theft was a matter for the airline or the RCMP.

"She asked me what an RCMP was," Darcy told CBC News. "I asked her where she was and she told me that she was in Delhi."
...
"One of the concerns I would have … is not just the fact that someone can break in and take something out. It's someone could break in and put something in."

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ardeep Singh Puri, India's ambassador to the United Nations, last month ran headfirst into a controversial new Transportation Security Administration inspection policy for many foreign travelers.

At the airport in Austin, TSA agents demanded to inspect his turban. Puri is a Sikh, whose religion requires that the turban, or dastar, be worn in public to cover uncut hair. Puri refused the TSA order, citing an agency exception that allows Sikhs to pat down their own turbans to avoid intrusive searches and then have their hands tested for possible explosives.

The situation escalated when TSA agents initially ignored Puri's protestations and said they would decide what the rules are, according to an official traveling with the ambassador.