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EPIC Files Lawsuit To Suspend Airport Body Scanner Use
nacturation writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a petition for review and motion for an emergency stay, urging the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to suspend the Transportation Security Administration's full body scanner program. EPIC said that the program is 'unlawful, invasive, and ineffective' (PDF). EPIC argued that the federal agency has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Fourth Amendment. EPIC cited the invasive nature of the devices, the TSA's disregard of public opinion, and the impact on religious freedom."
Add the embrace of these devices to my list of disappointments in the Obama administration. Not that I'm surprised -- he telegraphed himself very plainly on civil liberties when he backtracked on FISA -- but I'm still disappointed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm glad to see not everyone is taking this issue laying down. Seems like technology is getting more and more invasive as time goes by. Pretty soon everyone is going to be tracked even in there own home. Some already are!
~Bchickens
or having you genitals felt up. Seriously that's their policy. They think if they subject everybody to public humiliation that people will opt for private humiliation instead.
Personally, I'll go for the public. If they're going to be obnoxious, authoritarian jerks, they should be forced to do it where everybody can see them. I'll act like I'm gay and I enjoy it. I will act like I think they're gay, and they enjoy it. I will turn the humiliation tables around and ask them if they like feeling people's balls and vaginas up in public, if it turns them on.
If enough people take my stance on it, they will quit this garbage in a hurry.
Yeah, all you scaredy cat cowards people who think that somehow this will come back on me and make my life miserable. You know what, up yours. It's people like you that've gotten us where we are, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. For once in your life, show a little backbone and self-respect.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Took long enough. I though it would be the ACLU but they seem to have really dropped the ball when it comes to the TSA. Here is the problem with all airport security theater. A dogs are better bomb sniffers than any machine. And B you can put a bomb up your ass. I suspect that the ACLU didn't go after the TSA because they too are turning into a bunch of ass covering bureaucrats and worried about the optics of them shutting down half this airport crap and then some dickweed blowing up a plane and their getting the blame.
Supporting EPIC.
This Friday night, come on down to Club Big Brother! We got a full body scanner, some disco balls, strobe effects, and some kickin' bass! The crowd will go wild when you step into the full nude scanner and it's shown on our 2 story high video wall! No cover for ladies and half-price drinks! Club Big Brother-because privacy violations are one big party!
Salon and the Atlantic report that you have to take off your belt when you go through these things. And that you have to raise your hands.
So my plan (which all slashdotters should copy) is to wear loose pants and go commando.
Best Slashdot Co
The GRAMMAR BOT 9001 has determined you have confused the words "their" and "there". An infraction has been added to your permanent record and your mother has been notified.
He may look like Wilt, but he plays like Neville.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
,,,
/. is broken and I often can't paste into the text box, so no link. However go to ACLU.ORG and search for TSA.
IN fact, they have been calling for a ban of this kind of scanner in airports since 2002
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even the Air Marshall on planes have been shown to be a over priced ineffective program that is nothing more then a ego feed for people like you who feel the need to have a false sense of security. The full body scanners are the same. Cost a lot and don't really have any effect on security.
Your right, flying is a privilege, but your argument is straw man at best. That is like saying if a restaurant want people to take off all their clothes to enter it should be done because it's a privilege not a right to eat there.
Hijackings used to be about money. Passengers would sit them through and get let go when it was all done with a pretty good chance of making it.
Nobody holds to that illusion anymore. Myself (and I'm sure many others) would curb stomp to death anyone who tried to hijack a plane I was on, or die trying. That, and the staff and pilots are better prepared for this now.
These things are just unnecessary.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
How many "Guards" have you met, known, dealt with? Most are just twisted enough or suck at lying to the point they fail the psychological or poly or background check for any Law Enforcement position. The pay is McDonalds grade, the job is boring, most of your co-workers have sub standard personal hygien and as a bonus the public pisses on you every chance they get. When you fail to present them the opportunity they create one for themselves. Another words only a sick twisted sociopath with an authoritarian complex works in the Guard industry. Want to guess what I do for a living? Muah Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!
There are modesty requirements for several religions, including forms of Islam (well-publicized) and Judaism (not as well-known). Any sort of display of the flesh other than face or hands (and sometimes limits on those) is a violation of the religion, with narrow exceptions for family and doctors.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The framers of the Constitution of the US had a lively debate on whether or not to include the Bill of Rights. They felt that such an enumeration would lead to damaged thinking about how people get a specific set of rights, listed by a government, and anything else is "not a right." Your post is evidence that the concern was well founded.
I have the absolute and sovereign right to conduct transactions with any other party as I see fit. That includes paying an airline to provide travel services... or a boat company, or a train company, or gasoline vendors so I might power my car. These are my rights, just as providing those services are the rights of those individuals or entities.
The US federal government and its child governments have made decrees that our rightful ability to make such transactions should be hindered or outright prohibited (see drug and prostitution laws).
A free people, in a free country, could easily go about choosing to purchase travel services from whichever entities they choose, and be subject to agreed upon security arrangements with those entities. Some airlines could specialize in extensive strip-searchy, genital-feely security theatrics, and some could specialize on a more distributed "hand every non-drinking passenger a little baseball bat as they board" approach. Then you could exercise your "right to feel" safe, while the rest of us exercise our rights, sans conflict.
What you seek is less and less respect from government, in exchange for absolutely nothing other than a baseless "feeling" of security. Plenty of cowards felt the liquid ban made them safer... until the wannabe crotch-bomber showed them it meant nothing... Plenty of cowards will feel safer now that everyones genitals are felt or photographed, until the next elevation in this arms race. Then the cowards will be ready for the next bit of demeaning, useless, costly garbage, further hindering our freedoms and rights, such as travel at will within the borders of "our" supposed country.
I'd rather walk through a body scanner before boarding a plane than be required to give them my name and other irrelevant information that only helps the government and the airline to track my personal travel and also helps the airline to continue to restrict transferring of tickets.
As a side note, I've always thought it was just "wrong" that the ticket did not just entitle the holder of said ticket to a particular seat on a particular flight regardless of who originally was considering sitting in that seat.
If you dont like it, then dont fly.
"Hey boss, rather than take the 5 hour flight across country to meet with that critical customer in person and sign off on that that big $$$ deal, I'm going to take about 50 hours to drive one way and about the same back. I won't be able to do any work during the trip, but hey, you'll pick up the expenses for this won't you?" .. Yeah as if that will work.
Oh and by the way, you may not have noticed but there are some places you can't get to without flying .. pro tip - take a look at a world atlas and look for all those places separated or surrounded by water
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Good for a laugh, sure, but we all know that if they were actually charged along those lines, MSNBC would have Chris Hansen conducting entrapment operations at every pediatrician's office across the country.
For $deities sake please don't encourage him.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Um, *everybody* has a right to privacy, not just some special cases.
PS: The machines won't stop anything, explosives fit inside body cavities just as well as heroin/cocaine does.
No sig today...
I'll whip my junk out for the security guards before I go through the scanner.
Eschew Obfuscation
Want to lose your 1st and 2nd amendment rights? Vote Democrat.
You do realize that, under Obama we signed into law the expansion of gun rights in national parks (was outlawed, now legal)?
Don't paint with too broad a brush.
Now if we could only also vote for those appointed positions that hold so much power (SoS,NSA,CoS, etc).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"Surely they do wrong things, too?"
No.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The Wall Street Journal is generally fairly Republican-happy; it's a lot less free-to-view, though. The Drudge report is Republican-happy most of the time, but they're about this close --> <-- to being a tabloid. (Ever-so-convenient, though.) The media at large is not infrequently accused of being "liberal" Democrat-huggers, but some parts are more so than others (e.g. the New York Times.)
If you want a balanced view of the politics in America, you're not going to get it from just one news source, one way or another.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Some rights are so obvious the protection thereof just did not occur to the Founding Fathers. They just never imagined the right to vehicular travel could be infringed, would become licensed, and subject to for-all-practical-purposes strip searches.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
It's also MY RIGHT to feel some assurance that the guy sitting next to me isn't planning on hijacking the plane.
No it's not your right. So, this is your reasoning:
"Oh NO! I want to feel safe! Please government, go ahead and search me and make sure I don't have any weapons so that I'll be safe! Take my Fourth Amendment rights away."
It's that sort of attitude that makes terrorism so effective. Yes, I'm saying people like you allow terrorism to be effective.
Thank you so very little.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I think part of the concern the GP was expressing is because it isn't just a privacy concern for cross-dressers and pre-op transsexuals, it's a safety concern. Those individuals' personal safety depends on their ability to pass as their preferred gender, and forcing them to submit to what amounts to a strip search destroys that ability.
Having read the article posted on the subject a week ago (that I won't link because somebody else already has), I think it's a legitimate concern. It mentionned one person having been arrested after taking a swing at a TSA officer who made a joke about the size of his penis as he walked through the scanner. That isn't exactly the level of professionalism I'd trust for a significantly more sensitive situation like a transsexual....
Groundless stripping & groping normal innocent citizens who just want to fly isn't a power granted government.
Had the Founding Fathers imagined infringement of the right to vehicular travel, no question they would have included it in the Bill of Rights - and realizing they may have missed some, they DID include the catch-all 9th Amendment.
And they DID include an explicit denial of warrant-less searches by government agents, which is what this case is about.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I'm not against these types of screenings at all. I would prefer them to pat downs or strip searches.
Lets face it. People have to be screened before the board a plane and I prefer the safety that these provide vs being a victim of someones terror. (being blown up, or being touched by a security officer)
Then refuse to be a victim YOURSELF. The authorities cannot (some would argue will not) stop every possible threat. If we can't keep drugs, shivs, shanks, cellphones, and zip guns out of prisons what makes you think we can stop threats with less than prison level security at airports?
Chap next you tries to light his shoes on fire? You punch him in the skull holler for help and don't stop until he stops being a threat.
Achmed starts acting funny and pulling something out of his ass? You do what you have to do to stop the threat.
Someone mugs you and seems to want more than your wallet? You fight, stab, kick, and shoot until he stops being a threat.
Fall down and get injured? You had damn well better be able to patch yourself up enough to get to where you can get professional help.
You may be comfortable being a victim and relying on centralized services to be there all the time and be omniscient. I am not.
Just you wait until someone does blow up a plane and went through the body scanner. Sooner or later they will make a bomb from threads of C-4 or whatever, sew it into a set of pants and shirt, and then we'll have to fly naked because the TSA is scared of clothing.
They are already scared of shoes, toothpaste, hair gel, nail clippers, bottled water, yadda-yadd, ad-infinitum.
Here's what I don't get. We had the "shoe-bomber" which in turn, made the TSA remove and inspect our shoes. Then last year we had the "underwear-bomber"... So how come the TSA doesn't make us remove and inspect our underwear?
Just wait till some guy detonates a bomb he shoved up his ass. Then it's cavity searches for all.
And the airline industry will slowly crumble from pissed off passengers refusing to fly. Or we'll just accept it by that time, just as we now accept the humiliation we currently go through.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Actually he didn't do what he said he would do with regards to health care. Candidate Obama condemned the notion of a mandate to buy health insurance and effectively leveraged the issue against Clinton during the primaries. President Obama signed a bill containing such a mandate into law.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The political system in the U.S. is FUBAR. The only "vote" we have these days is with our dollars. Don't like being treated like a criminal or a porn star at the airport? Stop flying. Or, if you're running a company, cut back on corporate air travel by 50%. Use teleconferencing. Plan ahead and take the train. I haven't flown anywhere since 2000. But, I've traveled all over the country by train. When you decide to stop flying, make sure you tell them why you're not flying. Their response can be quite entertaining.
When I canceled my cable TV subscription back in 2006, they (Time/Warner) asked why I was leaving. I told them I was sick and tired of paying over $100/month to watch commercials. I was particularly outraged at the (usually animated) self-promotion ads that ran at the bottom of the screen during the show or movie I was trying to watch. The T/W customer "support" person's response was, "Well, sir, we don't have any control over that. Those are decisions made by the network." To which I replied that Time/Warner owned TBS and TBS was, at the time, one of the biggest (ab)users of this type of TV spam. Her response? Dead silence. Made my day.
If the airlines (big corporations) start feeling the economic heat (sometimes just the well-orchestrated threat of economic heat), you will be amazed at how fast things will change in Washington. And at the airport. But, you have to make sure you tell them why you're leaving and taking your dollars with you.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
Since when did your right to that comfy, warm, snuggly, "big-brother is watching out for you" feeling trump my right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search? Don't like the risk of someone sneaking a weapon on board the airplane? Don't fly. Flying on an aircraft isn't a right...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?