"Please Remove Your Shoes" Uncovers T.S.A. Theater

Anyone with the ability to fire a few neurons in their head can see the farce of the T.S.A. Taking off shoes, wanding old ladies and as of recent looking at people through their clothes are all tactics utilized by glorified security agents. Now we finally have a film to expose what is going on at the agency and where the lapses are. Check this out and remember it when you fly and are forced to foolishly take your shoes off under the guise of safety.

Airport TSA Coming To A Subway Station Near You

Get ready to take your shoes off when getting on the subway. Well not really, but the TSA employees that demand it of travelers at airports will be coming to New York's subway stations to replace some of the NYPD officers that make random bag searches. It's bad enough that the cops are allowed to randomly (and ineffectually) stop straphangers without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.

Now it'll be even worse:

MYFOXNY.COM - EXCLUSIVE: The New York Police Department is shrinking, and the department can't hire the number of cops it would like to. Fox 5 News has learned that help is coming from security screeners at the area airports. They'll be replacing some police officers in the subway who do bag searches. But some critics say this is just another clear example that the economy has affected security.

Within the next two months, Transportation Security Administration bag screeners from Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty airports will be replacing most NYPD cops in the subway that screen bags for explosives.[...]

This is how it would work: About 30 TSA screeners a day will be pulled from the three area airports Monday through Friday to inspect bags at various subway locations throughout the city. At each location they'll be teamed up with one police officer instead of the two or three officers you currently see at inspection sites.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association is blasting the plan, saying despite the city's financial crisis the city needs to hire more cops. According to the PBA, the city has 4,000 fewer cops on the street than it did in 2001.

Hiring more cops is another issue but the idea of putting the TSA at subway entrances is a terrible idea. They're bad enough at the airport, at worst abusing travelers and at the least acting as if they really made the airports secure. There is no way thirty of these people can keep the M.T.A. secure. Their presence, like that of the NYPD's current bag searchers is an act that either makes people think they're safe or simply that they have to trade their liberties so that it appears law enforcement is doing something to combat terrorism.

Seriously, leave the TSAers at the airport and put the cops on the trains where they can actually be of some assistance.

Your TSA Security Is An Illusion

Every couple of months or so, I get to experience the ridiculousness that is airline travel in our country today. This past weekend included two of those moments, going out to L.A. on Friday and coming back last night. Now I'll exclude the parts about how a few thunderstorms were able to delay my fiancée and I from getting home by a few hours, thanks in part to a needed refueling after circling Pennsylvania for an hour. That's a whole other story.

The focus I have is for the Transportation Security Administration. Almost every single time, I whisper under my breath, or at least loud enough for people in the immediate vicinity to hear, that this process of taking off our shoes and ditching water bottles is a complete farce and that TSA does nothing to ensure our security. The only thing they do is make some of us feel safe. Having flown to several other countries, I'm aware that the TSA is not the gold standard in airline safety. No one makes that more clear than Israel in my opinion. So I was amused to see an article from the Jerusalem Post late last night telling Israelis (and anyone who wanted to read it) what a joke America's guard at the airport really is.

From The Jerusalem Post:

While US Transportation Security Administration officers relentlessly made sure that my 83-year-old, wheelchair-bound mother-in-law was not smuggling a shoe bomb onto her plane recently, was anyone thwarting an attack by a real terrorist? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Living in Israel, a country where every supermarket and café has a guard with a metal detector, I looked in vain for real security at the four US airports I passed through last month. It was clear that the TSA is mostly engaged in providing an illusion of security, while ignoring real threats.

Exactly! So how can it be done differently, if we really wanted to ensure our safety at the nation's airports?

ALL THOSE BILLIONS of dollars, all that high-level training in shoe and water bottle scrutiny, is invested in guarding the wrong place. No suicide bomber in his or her right mind would try to slip an explosive device past the TSA at the sensitive entrance to the boarding gates. A terrorist doesn't have to, for the TSA guards the wrong perimeter.

The boarding gate is the final hurdle for a terrorist whose particular preference is to slaughter innocents only in the air. A much easier target is the unguarded departure hall, which is freely accessible to the public at US airports.

At Ben-Gurion Airport, to get as far as the boarding gate, a passenger must first pass through several concentric rings of security checks. Unlike at US airports, vehicles approaching Ben-Gurion are checked at the outermost perimeter by guards armed with automatic weapons. Passengers dropped off with their luggage are then given the once over by more subtle plainclothes guards as they enter the terminal.

Before a passenger can approach the ticket counter, he or she is briefly, but carefully interviewed by another security guard. Then the luggage is X-rayed. Even the ground stewardess at the counter is trained to look for anything suspect about the passenger, including the travel documents. Then the passenger must show passport and boarding pass again before doffing shoes and being body scanned, and proceeding to yet another check at passport control.

That is how security it is done. If the Department of Homeland Security really wanted us to be secure and not just in our minds, they'd emulate Israel. Now if DHS doesn't care about bombs blowing up at JFK, O'Hare, LAX, etc...can I please leave my shoes on as I carry my drink through the metal detector?

The Incompetence Of The TSA Is Astounding

If there isn't enough problems at the airports or in the planes we fly, an idiotic TSA employee decided to add another kink in the system at Chicago's Midway Airport the other day. Now I've never had much faith in the people who don those "TSA" embroidered shirts, especially since I've had to pass through their checkpoints at many different airports. After hearing this story, they dropped another notch or two in my book.

From RawStory:

Negligence during TSA security checks on planes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport caused at least forty commuter flights to be delayed after nine American Eagle planes were grounded, a source told ABC News.

A TSA agent, conducting a security check on a parked plane, reportedly used an air thermometer mounted on the plane's fuselage as leverage to climb on.

"The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers," a pilot wrote on an Internet forum. "They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder."

"Our inspector was following routine procedure for securing the aircraft that were on the tarmac," TSA official Elio Montenegro said.

Not only did an untrained TSA 'official' damage a crucial piece of an airplane, one of their buddies covered up for them and claimed nothing was done wrong. Either Elio Montenegro is a liar or an incompetent prick that did not make himself aware of the situation that occurred. I'm sorry but when it comes to believability between a TSA inspector and an airplane pilot, I will almost always side with the pilot (perhaps it has something to do with their reputation).

One Million Terrorists Served

McDonalds may have served tens or hundreds of billions but now the morons freedom fighters at the Department for Homeland InSecurity can claim an impressive feat, one million people.....placed on the terrorist watch list. Yep, thats right, one million people are out there, trying to cause the United States harm. Vicious criminals like Cat Stevens and (until recently) Nelson Mandela can not cross our borders without us knowing about it and being apprehended. So lets all give a big hand to the efforts of the Bush Administration.

From the ACLU:

"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."

Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Civil Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.

"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."

"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning," said Steinhardt. "I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."

For many conservatives, the public's enemy #1, wants to change this. They want such ghastly, anti-American changes like due process, constant updates on the system to take those proven innocent off the list and better criteria when adding people to the list. I know, I know, people with the name "Robert Johnson" are obviously America-hating terrorist, so we should just leave the government alone to continue their wasteful, er, patriotic way of protecting us. Yeah, um, thats the ticket. Damn that ACLU for exercising common sense, why do they hate George Bush so much?

Scanning Your Body At An Airport Near You

Airport security in America is an interesting topic to be sure. Some don't mind being scanned, searched, poked and prodded. If they think it keeps them safe then more power to the ill-trained men and women with shirts that have "TSA" embroidered on them. Taking your shoes off is standard here, but laughed at in most of the world's airports. The thing is, most people just don't know if the TSA is doing a good job or merely acting like it. Well now they get a new piece of equipment to play with.

From USA Today:

BALTIMORE — Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport.

Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

"It's the wave of the future," said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.

Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation's 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. "We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging," Schear said.

Security people love this because they can look more intimately at passengers and call it "more advanced." The reality is that the machines can be fooled by someone that would want to do harm, while for the most part all it does is strip (no pun intended) innocent people of their privacy, allowing TSA personnel (some of whom have questionable personal backgrounds) to see private parts of people (albeit in black and white imaging). Their spokesman says its no big deal and people don't mind, but that is to be expected from a biased source.

"1984" Just Came A Little Closer To Reality

The book is a frightening sci-fi thriller that exhibits a world full of war, fear and doublespeak from the government. Sadly, after seven years of George Bush we have been becoming more and more like Orwell's fictional account. Now it turns out that one more piece of the novel has found it's way from the pages to reality of modern life.

From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

If a pair of Transportation Security Administration officers strolling by a Sea-Tac Airport ticket counter wish you happy holidays and ask where you're traveling, it might be more than just Christmas spirit.

Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors.

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

If you have flown at all since the start of TSA, you know how terrible the outfit is, to actually think that they can pull this off with professionalism and dignity is laughable. Of course if I laugh at them in the airport they'll probably arrest me. If I cite the section of "1984" they'll probably haul me off to Guantanamo.

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

Scare ya just a little bit?

A Little Lighter Sense

The infamous Shoe Bomber Richard Reid used matches in an attempt to light a bomb implanted in his shoe a few years ago. This crazy action prompted another by the Congress at the time. Cigarette lighters were to be confiscated, but you could still bring matches on-board just as Reid had done. The Transportation Security Administration followed this ridiculous law for years, until they concluded this month that the rule was a waste of time and a waste of millions of dollars to dispose of the confiscated items.

From The Chicago Tribune:

Lawmakers said that if Reid had used a lighter, instead of matches, he might have been able to ignite the bomb, but Kip Hawley, assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said Thursday that the ban had done little to improve aviation security because small batteries could be used to set off a bomb.

Matches have never been prohibited on flights.

The policy change, which is to go into effect Aug. 4, applies to disposable butane lighters, like Bics, and refillable lighters, like Zippos. Torch lighters, which have thin, hotter flames, will still be banned.

Security officers have been collecting some 22,000 lighters a day nationwide.

So come August 4th, bring all of your lighters to airport, and wave them in the faces of the "security officers" and shout "nah, nah, nah, nah nah" at them. Or something grown up and responsible like that. Just make sure the lighters have less than 3.4 oz of fluid, or else they'll still take it away. That goes for such explosives as water, toothpaste and hair gel, you know, the dangerous stuff.

Are You Feeling Safer Yet?

I'm really glad that the TSA is protecting me when I fly around the country. The level of security is unheard of. Just last month when dropping my mom off at Newark airport one of the head guys talked down to her like she was 2 yr old when she wanted to know which way to go the ticketing office. Then he proceeded to flirt with one of the young women working there and within seconds was acting with condescension towards another traveler.

When I heard that Walter Murphy was placed on the no-fly list, it was apparent that safety for American flyers was job number one. Why you ask? Is Mr. Murphy a terrorist? Sponsor terrorism around the world that is aimed at American interests? What could possibly be the reason for a Princeton Professor Emeritus to be banned from flying? Well, he was speaking out against King George and his 'benevolent' government that cares so much about our citizens and those around the globe.

From Balkinization:

"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

"After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical."

I would be a tad skeptical as well. All kidding aside, this is just another story that highlights the disgraceful TSA and the Bush Administration that tries to silence dissent at any cost. I personally despise the TSA, their 'security' is nothing more than smoke and mirrors that only humiliates people into taking off their shoes, belts and whatever else the men with the gold-plates badges ask of you.