Drudge Stirs National Debate On TSA Abuse

[Bangkoktraveler]

This TSA grouping crap is just more abuse from the Federal Government.

 

If a person wants to do a terrorist act, all they have to do is go and rent an airplane just like that chap in Texas did that flew it into the IRS building. His problem was he didn't convert the plane into a missle by loading it with explosives.

 

People can still buy and fly their minature manless planes. With the technology we have today, it doesn't cost much to make your own drone.

 

If a terrorist wants to take down a big airline, all they have to do is blackmail somebody who is stealing at the airport.

 

But then, we have already lost the war on terror just like we have lost on the war on drugs. Our own fears were used against us to defeat us.

[Flashermac]

I worked for the US Army back during Desert Storm. We would see shipments of TOW missiles leaving regularly without any security. All a terrorist had to do was hijack a load of those. Fire a few at airliners landing or taking off and they would shut down every airport in the entire USA. Probably not that hard to do nowadays with even homemade missiles. Yet our govmt wants us to think that their squeezing our gonads will make the nation safe.

 

 

 

[chuckwoww]

Can't you get that stuff on ebay?

[Flashermac]

Gonads or missiles?

 

 

[chuckwoww]

I think you're confusing ebay with craigslist.

[Bangkoktraveler]

I worked for the US Army back during Desert Storm. We would see shipments of TOW missiles leaving regularly without any security. All a terrorist had to do was hijack a load of those. Fire a few at airliners landing or taking off and they would shut down every airport in the entire USA. Probably not that hard to do nowadays with even homemade missiles. Yet our govmt wants us to think that their squeezing our gonads will make the nation safe.

 

 

 

 

 

In 2012 the ig squeeze will come for businesses. The IRS wants a 1099 sent to every vendor a business does business with.

 

My question is how to do send a 1099 to somebody overseas you don't even know their name?

[Steve]

The voracious need for more money in a bad economy is prompting this. Taxing the internet is next. Its a certainty in my opinion. They've been trying to tax emails for a while saying its similar to the post office and emails are reducing the need to write letters and using the post office.

 

Anyway, with regards to the TSA and airline security, I brought this up once but an airline security expert from Israel and if anyone knows airline security its them said all this public display at the airport is to alleviate public fears and letting them see something tangible.

 

He said stopping terrorists is about stopping them BEFORE they get to the airport with good intel. He said that's where 99% of the fight is in terms of airline security and hijacking. Once they reach the airport its 50/50 and they have already accounted for patdowns and searches. They either have a person on the inside or have already worked around the patdowns.

 

The shoe bomber was successful in terms of getting on the plane. The bomb didn't go off, that was the problem. We got lucky.

 

 

[Bangkoktraveler]

A lot of this is more fallout over the Pariot Act.

 

They got us by the balls.

 

And nobody is really doing anything!

[Flashermac]

Analyst: TSA methods 'will kill more Americans on highway'

 

 

The recent public ire toward the TSA’s new pat-down and body imaging screening methods is likely to cause more people to drive automobiles and forego airline travel, say two transportation economists who have studied the issue.

 

As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

 

[color:red]“Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,†said Horwitz. “The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.â€Â[/color]

 

[color:red]Clifford Winston, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institute, stopped short of saying that more people could die as a result of the TSA policies, but said that the airline industry will definitely see a decline in passengers if the public’s contempt for the pat-downs and advanced-imaging technology systems continues.[/color]

 

“They added another wrinkle to airline travel by saying they’re going to screen you more thoroughly,†said Winston. “Demand for transportation takes into account the price, but also the time, and if you add on top of that the disutility or annoyance of having to be groped, then for some people that’ll also have an effect.â€Â

 

Under new TSA rules, passengers are required to go through advanced imaging technology units. But because some people believe that the technology is too invasive, TSA officials give people the option of passing through a metal detector or receiving a pat-down, which some have said makes them feel like they’re being groped.

 

The public outcry over these methods caused the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) to write a letter to TSA head John Pistole on Friday asking for him to “reconsider†using the methods.

 

Thompson also said that the TSA should have told people about the techniques and “had a conversation with the American people about the need for these changes†while making sure to conduct and publicize privacy and civil liberties evaluations.

 

“By not issuing these assessments, the traveling public has no assurance that these procedures have been thoroughly evaluated for constitutionality,†said Thompson in the letter, which was also signed by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, the chairwoman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on Transportation, Security, and Infrastructure Protection.

 

Pistole has been at the center of growing public concern about the new pat-down techniques, which he described to senators earlier this week as “clearly more invasive†than the traditional screening airline passengers have received in the past. But, he said, the invasiveness is justified by the level and types of threats to the airline industry to which he is privy.

 

Pistole told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee this week that the pat-down technique was so thorough that, had it been used, it would have thwarted the suspected Christmas Day bomber, who allegedly hid an explosive device in his underwear.

 

The TSA was not planning to alter the newly imposed security measures for passengers, Pistole said. But on Friday the TSA revised its initial screening policies in response to objections from a growing chorus of pilots so that now they will be exempt from being scanned or patted down.

 

And earlier this week in protest of the screening measure a group began organizing a “National Opt-Out Day†for next Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving and one of the heaviest sky trafficked days of the year.

 

The airline industry has gradually bounced back since the Sept. 11, 2001, plane attacks when it saw its profits drastically dip for many months as passengers opted for other travel means or not to travel altogether. But the recent controversy over the screening methods could cause that uptick in profits to be short-lived, said Horwitz and Winston.

 

“It probably won’t be as big as the original effect of post 9/11, but it will be a chunk of airline travel,†said Winston. “And it will make it that much harder to move back to a more user-friendly environment.â€Â

 

 

Get a horse.

 

[Flashermac]

GOP Rep: 'TSA could screw up a two-car funeral'

 

By Gautham Nagesh

 

 

 

A Republican Congressman who supports the use of full-body scanners blasted the Transportation Security Administration on Friday for failing to deploy technology that would prevent the scanners from capturing images of private body parts.

 

[color:red]Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) told CNN's Anderson Cooper he hasn't had a change of heart about his initial support for the scanners following the attacks on 9/11, but faulted TSA for deploying equipment he termed "invasive."[/color]

 

[color:red]"They [TSA] went ahead and, without consulting us [Congress], bought - to me - offensive equipment that should not be used, and it does invade the privacy of people," Mica said. "We need this kind of equipment, but it can be done the right way. TSA could screw up a two-car funeral."[/color]

 

In a stark reversal of the Bush years, it fell to the Democrat, Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security chairwoman Sheila Jackson-Lee to defend the Department of Homeland Security by invoking the spectre of 9/11.

 

"Frankly, Anderson, I would like everybody to be reminded that we might have wanted to have this kind of equipment on 9/11," Jackson-Lee said. "This is a different America and a different world. And so we have to confront issues head on."

 

Jackson-Lee acknowledged joining a letter sent to TSA Administrator John Pistole on Friday by Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) urging him to reconsider the controversial pat-down procedures for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but said the letter wasn't aimed at stopping the pat-downs but preventing them from being administered to children or in other inappropriate situations.

 

"I don't want them to stop. I do want the public to be informed," she said. " I want to make sure that children are not patted down in the incorrect manner."

 

Mica also spoke out in favor of privatizing TSA, a proposal that Jackson-Lee said would be akin to reverting to conditions before 9/11.

 

 

 

The govmt sucks no matter which party is in charge.