Posted on 08/13/2012 4:16:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
The TSA is effectively an unconstitutional, carcinogenic petting zoo. Deep down, we all feel that the airport security system is an FDA-approved rubdown and radiation parlor. But we are busy, rushing to catch flights, and we tell ourselves it is for our “safety.” So, like sheep, we comply.
Unconstitutional
The TSA security process is in violation of the law of the land, specifically the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Let’s be honest, when I “opt” for a pat-down over a blast of cancer-inducing radiation, it is not a choice—it is a preference for the lesser of two fixed evils. A pat- down is a clear violation of my “person;” there is no probable cause warranting random government agents to feel me up for weapons.
The pat-down system also violates my right to be secure in my “papers and effects.” Every time I get a pat-down, my personal property is subject to theft. The TSA pat-down process does nothing to prevent an unconscionable person (going through the scanner) from taking advantage of the fact that I’m helplessly standing behind waiting for a pat-down—unable to monitor my luggage.
Because, here is what normally happens: I inform the TSA agent, “I’m opting out.” The agent then calls for a “female assist” and asks me to step aside. I wait (occasionally up to 10 minutes) for a pat-down. Meanwhile my luggage—including my purse, iPhone, MacBook Pro and other valuables—travel the conveyer belt and idle on the other side of the X-ray machine where anyone could easily walk off with them.
Carcinogenic
On a recent flight out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, a female TSA agent (who was openly annoyed at the prospect of doing her job and giving me a pat-down while oddly assuming that I yearned for her to touch me) said: “Well, if you ask for one, we have to give you one. So, are you just doing this for the free massage we give you?” I wanted to respond: “No way, pervert.” But, since I wanted to make my flight, I replied: “No. I just don’t want the radiation.”
3,778 service calls were made between May of 2010 and May of 2011 to address mechanical issues in backscatter X-ray machines, according to a TSA report.
The New York Times writes: “The machines move a focused beam of high-intensity radiation very quickly across the body, and David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, says he worries about mechanical malfunctions that could cause the beam to stop in one place for even a few seconds, resulting in greater radiation exposure.” The Times reports further: “A recent study reported that radiation from the machines can reach organs through the skin. In another report, researchers estimated that 1 billion X-ray backscatter scans per year could lead to perhaps 100 radiation-induced cancers in the future.”
Many independent researchers concur that the safety and radiation levels are still unknown because the TSA has actively kept its research in the dark and has redacted public reports.
The next time you fly, opt for the pat-down as a form of healthy protest. For now, it’s better than getting cancer from supposedly “fail-safe” body scanners. And if enough Americans congest airport traffic by choosing pat-downs, perhaps the TSA will eliminate its unconstitutional rubdown and radiation parlor.
Petting Zoo
Pat-downs do not keep us safe. They merely serve to treat Americans like animals. I may have long hair but I’m not a fuzzy tarantula or a furry bunny rabbit. I wear earrings in my ears, not bombs. Yet every time I get a pat-down, it starts with a TSA agent tugging down on my hair with clingy plastic gloves.
Last September, a Dallas woman named Isis Brantley (wearing a large afro hairstyle) cleared the checkpoint at Atlanta’s international airport as she had for the previous 20 years. Brantley had made it to the escalator when two TSA officers changed their minds and decided she was a terror suspect—perhaps imagining she used her hair to disguise a diminutive flamethrower. The agents chased her down the escalator shouting: “Stop—the lady with the hair, you!” They began parting through her hair on-the-spot without offering her a private screening area.
The TSA treats humans far worse than animals. For, petting zoo owners do not grope their cows, de-shoe their ponies and pluck their chickens before letting them into the barn. We are rational beings, not sheeple, and our bodies are our private property. It is time we speak up against the unconstitutional, carcinogenic petting zoo known as the TSA.
Carry gloves with you for the TSA to put on.
You, “Please put these gloves on before you run your hands all over my body.”
TSA, “But I already have gloves.”
You, “I don’t know where your gloves have been, but I do know where these gloves have been.”
Stop flying.
I repeat. Stop flying.
If you choose to not take a stand against oppresion, you have sided with the oppressors.
I have. That's one of the reasons i limit air travel as much as possible.
Now, about search and seizure ~ the guys who own the airplanes don't want terrorists aboard, nor do the other passengers. I am sure if it were up to them the SEARCHES would be much more vigorous than the government is willing to perform, or allow to be performed.
I'd say the greater Constitutional violation lies in the realm of the Fifth Amendment wherein government isn't supposed to take property without just compensation ~ and they are letting terrorists on board anyway, and they fly over my house, and that violates my rights ~ where's my money?
I wonder if anyone has ever tried that? I bet the TSA would refuse to use them and pull you out for "special" screening.
Probably.
Reason number 316 why 1996 was the last time I flew anywhere.
Drive instead. We live in an awesome, beautiful country. Slow down and enjoy it.
Had to fly last week for business...
had my can of foot spray confiscated because it was too large (over 3 oz).
Man... I coulda sprayed over half the feet on that flight with that can!
Um, no. They'll use the lines as justification to increase funding and expand their ranks even further.
ping!
The last two times I used an airline for travel was to attend the funerals of my parents.
They are both gone. From now on, if I can’t drive there I just won’t go.
F the TSA gestapo.
I agree that flying is a dreadful experience now. What was once a pleasure is now akin to being loaded into a cattle car, and much of the blame lies with the terrible service from all airlines. But this thread is about the TSA, and I always want to make the same point in TSA related threads. The TSA is not about passenger safety. It is about conditioning citizens to being treated like slaves. The government gets to poke and prod us like animals, and if we complain we are punished by missing our flight. The TSA is the infancy of a totalitarian state. That’s why the TSA is desperate to expand to train stations, shopping malls, etc... This evil agency must be shut down by President Romney soon after he takes office.
I haven't been near an airport for more than 10 years and as an ex airline employee I can fly almost free. Its not worth it!
re: “I am sure if it were up to [the airlines] the SEARCHES would be much more vigorous than the government is willing to perform, or allow to be performed.”
Reality does not correspond to your assertion. When the airlines ran security, there were no personal searches, and the screeners were much more reasonable.
The TSA has never found a terrorist, and there is overwhelming evidence that they never could. They don’t exist for the safety of the airlines nor of the travelling public. So why do they exist?
Some thoughts regarding that last issue are here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2635090/posts
(which posting, BTW, is the very first hit on Bing/Yahoo for “Air Kerma TSA”.)
I live in Washington. My family lives in Louisiana, and my husband's family lives in New Hampshire. So you think that we should concede defeat and give up our liberty to travel as we please, hand the win to the government? Their goal is to take away our right to travel freely, and apparently you are okay with that.
Exactly. These morons that constantly preach stop flying because they have no place to go and so therefore assume no one else does amaze me.
Subsequently there's been a lot less of that ~
I think the airlines got the news though ~ and given a chance would have imposed heavier security than the government does.
Thanks for your response. Sure, the airlines likely would have altered their security procedures after 9/11. Let’s not forget, of course, that it government-imposed “security” rules, such as the forbidding of effective weapons on aircraft, and the mindset engendered by government “security” that made 9/11 possible in the first place.
Thing is, the airlines, left to their own devices, would likely have promulgated effective security that did not harass the passengers. The TSA harasses passengers, claiming to look for devices that do not exist (explosives that are small enough to be secreted on the person, and yet powerful enough to take down an aircraft). Meanwhile, the TSA generally does not screen freight, which actually could contain enough explosives to take down an aircraft. The airlines, as a group, would have found the right way to handle security, whatever that right way is, because (1) the continued existence of each airline would depend on finding that right way and (2) each airline might experiment with a slightly different process to maintain security, thus allowing rapid identification of the procedure that worked the best.
Meanwhile, the airlines have never caused such potential disasters as surreptitiously damaging the sensors on 9 commercial airlines by using the pitot tubes like monkey bars:
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4113058/
By the way, as evidence that the explosives the TSA claims they are seeking — explosives so small as to be hidden on the person, between women’s genital labia, etc — cannot take down an aircraft from inside the fuselage, consider Aloha Airlines flight 243 in April 1988:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
That’s a case in which an old, fatigued aircraft, at a moderate altitude, over deep water, piloted by an inexperienced Captain, lost half the fuselage from the cockpit to the wings. A flight attendant fell out of the gaping hole, but the aircraft, the rest of the crew, and all the passengers, landed safely. Think you can make an explosive device that can do more damage than removing such a large chunk of the fuselage and still have that device be small enough to be hidden on your person? If not, then body-secretable explosives are not the threat the TSA claims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.