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!
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.
,,,
/. 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
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?
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.
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...
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."
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?