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National Opt-Out Day Against Virtual Strip Searches
An anonymous reader writes in about a protest called for the busiest airline travel day of the year. "An activist opposed to the new invasive body scanners in use at airports around the country just designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 as a National Opt-Out Day. He's encouraging airline passengers to decline the TSA's technological strip searches en masse on that day as a protest against the scanners, as well as the new 'enhanced pat-downs' inflicted on refuseniks. 'The goal of National Opt-Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change,' reads the call to action at OptOutDay.com, set up by Brian Sodegren. 'No naked body scanners, no government-approved groping. We have a right to privacy, and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we're guilty until proven innocent.' The US Airline Pilots Association and other pilot groups have urged their members to avoid the scanners and have also condemned the new pat-down policy as humiliating to pilots. They've advised pilots who don't feel comfortable undergoing pat-downs in front of passengers to request they be conducted in a private room. Any pilots who don't feel comfortable after undergoing a pat-down have been encouraged to 'call in sick and remove themselves from the trip.'"
The US airlines are already suffering because of TSA.
I just bought a ticket for a trip from Ottawa to Punta Cana. The cheap flight was American Airlines via some US connection. For $100 more, I could avoid the US and fly directly on Westjet (a Canadian airline). There really wasn't much of a choice, I picked the direct flight. Saved time, avoided TSA. (Well, not completely. They still require info because of the US overflight. But getting into a database is less invasive than a personal search.)
Keeping what safe? A gaggle of meekly surrendering sheep, or a nation of free people?
It's flock you insensitive clod.
Keeping what safe? A gaggle of meekly surrendering sheep, or a nation of free people?
I'd feel a lot safer if every passenger was given a sap or a combat knife and instructed to deal with any terrorist by everyone rushing them at once. Of course that doesn't follow the pattern of passively waiting for government to rescue you which is why no media outlet or authority figure is ever going to promote it. So punches and kicks it is then.
It's only a "gross violation" if you are forced to do it. There is an opt-out.
Yeah, and in some cases opting out means being ejected from the airport without being allowed to board your flight, and even threats of $10,000 civilian fines. Here are just a few recent reported incidents:
TSA encounter at SAN
Woman Says She Was Cuffed And Booted From Airport For Questioning Body Scanners
Pregnant Traveler: TSA Screeners Bullied Me Into Full-Body Scan
Even pilots are being ejected from airports for refusing to submit to the scanners:
Pilot who refused body scan at Memphis International blasts TSA security
Sorry, but if even a pilot can't opt out of going through the scanners then either something is severely broken in the system or the whole opt-out argument is complete bunk.
I was managing the campaign of a United States Senate candidate that actually read the health care law and was a rabid opponent of it, holding town hall meetings all over the state educating voters about how bad the bill was. Why, what were you doing, complaining about it on Slashdot?
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
An 'adult' would recognize the value of safety policies when it cost almost 3000 Americans their lives. And don't kid yourself; this IS a left-right issue, if only for question of timing. Bush put in place these policies and the left has been using them to their political advantage ever since. If Obama or Clinton were in office in 2001 they would have done the same thing and the right would have had a field day with it too. We can call each other names all day long but when it comes down to the hard reality of saving lives we rely on policymakers to make the best decisions. And they have performed admirably.
do they avoid the doctor's office as well?
If you have to strip naked when you go to the doctor, there's something wrong and you should get another doctor.
We live in a world where airplanes attract way more than their fair share of terrorism - we need to accept that fact
The US hasn't really had any significant experience of terrorism. We had it for decades in the UK, thanks to the Irish Republicans (and indeed the various loyalist groups, although they mostly kept themselves to NI without going into the rest of the UK). We didn't find it necessary to strip-search everyone who went into a hotel, or onto a train.
Wow, that whole post reads like a drug-induced hallucination. Every bit of it is false. However, I'll just comment on this part:
"Terrorists don't go after low-hanging fruit... they go after the spectacular. Otherwise they'd be bombing suburban bus and train routes, malls, and other places which are almost impossible to police."
Um, yeah, that happens, like, every day in Israel, the greater Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan? Three days ago a car bomb blew up a building in the center of Karachi (Pakistan's largest city). Link. Two weeks ago a bomber killed 20 people in Istanbul's tourist and shopping center. Link. The last attempted terrorist bombing in the U.S., in May, was in the shopping/entertainment area of Times Square. Link.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Children are allowed and encouraged to cry.
You mean sort of like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TCHSGvNwRY
I seriously doubt too many parents will let their children get traumatized like this when they realize what a TSA pat-down of a small child will likely result in.
That's about it. My wife and I tried taking amtrak. Its like how air travel used to be. There was an obvious security presence, but not even a metal detector between you and boarding- and this was at Union Station in Chicago. Not to mention the seats were larger and you had more legroom on board, plus there were two three-pronged outlets so i could keep my phone charged and watch some videos on it.
For us, if its domestic travel, rail is a no-brainer now. Even if high speed rail takes a while to finally come to the US, I'd rather ride comfortably for five hours while I can just relax and watch movies or sleep than spend two hours in the air with all the hassle of at least an hour before AND after being treated like a criminal, sitting in a cramped tin can with stale, dry air and generally hating life and humanity.
The Europeans don't do this. They don't even allow the scanners!
Actually the Europeans do allow scanners, and claim that 95% of passengers approve of them:
Manchester Airport body scanners in all three terminals
Besides, if an international airline flight originates abroad and lands in the US, then the TSA forces the originating airport to jump through all sorts of security theater hoops. Back in 2004 I flew to New Zealand & Australia. My flight back was from Brisbane to San Diego. At the Brisbane airport the flight departed from the very last gate in one of the concourses. I got there a couple hours early due to the timing of my connecting flight, so I went to the gate, sat down, and started reading a book. About 2 hours before the flight a group of about 5 security agents showed up and had everybody leave the departure area - moving to the next-to-last gate in the concourse. Once our departure area was vacant they roped it off, put on rubber gloves, and started searching the entire area. They searched under the seats in the departure lounge, inside the trash bins, around the gate agents desk, etc. Once they had swept the gate area all but one went on board the aircraft and I assume did a fulls sweep of it as well. After that was done they allowed passengers back into the waiting area, but they screened our passports as we returned. I asked one of the screeners what this was all about, and they told me that it was solely because the destination of the flight was inside the USA and therefore USA regulations required the additional screening.
Anybody with even a tiny bit of intelligence could see how useless all this security theater was. If I was a terrorist and wanted to hide a bomb in the airport I'd simply hide it in the waiting area of the next gate and detonate it when the security sweep is going on since all the passengers would now be in that waiting area. Or if I was going to smuggle weapons or anything else on board the plane then I'd have them hidden elsewhere in the concourse for me to pick them up. Unless the screeners search the ENTIRE concourse then a sweep of just one departure lounge is a complete waste. But it was a requirement forced on them by the USA.
Congratulations, America.
Osama Bin Laden has won.
Read the ridiculous treatment of this upstanding citizen who stood up to the TSA. He wrote a very interesting account of the abuse the TSA is doing.
An excerpt: 'I looked him straight in the eye and said, "if you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."'
http://www.object404.com
Their counter resistance is a threat of a $10,000 civil suit after their own agents tell you to leave the airport: http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html
I wonder how well this would've gone over in October 2001. We haven't had a genuine terror attack in a long time, so people start getting indignant about security again. Do we really need to have another international calamity for us to start respecting laws that were put in place to keep us safe?
Do you know anything at all about 9/11? The hijackers did not carry their weapons (boxcutters) through airport security. Someone (whose identity has never been determined) smuggled the boxcutters onto the planes for them. So these scans and patdowns would not have helped AT ALL. Learn some history before you start taking my freedoms away from me.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Then you don't even need a kill list. There's a principle of self defence against immediate danger. Anwar al-Awlaki is not shooting anyone.
NOWHERE in any employment contract that I have see can an employer FORCE you to consent to having "nearly naked" images taken of you, force you to be repeatedly exposed to harmful radiation, or force you to be sexually molested.
Most people are empoyees-at-will, which means if you don't like the job assignment, they are free to fire you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't stand up for what you believe in, but be prepared to face the consequences.
The first one is a check on the power of the judiciary - and the judiciary's reluctance to acknowledge its own mistakes. It's based on the notion that most of us would rather have a few criminals go free than allow any innocent people to be imprisoned. A governor's or President's commutation or pardon is often the last recourse for the wrongfully convicted.
And note that Libby, criminal that he is, wasn't pardoned; Bush merely commuted his sentence. This was one of the things that drove a wedge between Bush and Cheney during their second terms.
The second two violate the Constitution, and if we had a Supreme Court with a backbone would be overturned. Alas the judiciary's check on the power of the President and Congress isn't working well right now.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
"checking an employee's ID ... is good practice."
Of course it is. I never said otherwise. What I was contrasting, though, was the treatment meted out to employees and their families vs. ordinary "folk" coming in through the public entrance. They pass through scanners, of course, and are told that certain items are prohibited, but that's about it. But the government can't do truly invasive searches on these people because it would cause an outcry.
That's why I used the example of the drunk looking for his keys "where the light is better." Government boffins take the path of least resistance.
There are a number of ways in which security could be enhanced at airports, but many of them are Politically Unacceptable. As a result, honest, ordinary folks like yours truly must suffer. These invasive scanners are a good way to demonstrate that the government is doing something. Obviously, someone (perhaps Napolitano herself) ruled that they were Politically Acceptable -- certainly far more so than stopping and searching a passenger named "Achmed" from Yemen or Iran.
On the "path of least resistance" principle, by the way, it should come as no surprise that Napolitano and her boffins seem to be genuinely puzzled and dismayed by the outcry. I guess they routinely subject themselves to high-radiation scans that render them naked, and figure, "what's the big deal?" :)
By the way, the best example of political correctness run amok is the idea of completely random searches. Every "nth" entrant must be stripped to the bone, regardless of the likelihood that they might actually be carrying something nefarious. I guess the idea is that terrorists (who doubtless are capable of instant, high-level math calculations in their heads) realize that there is a small, but finite, chance that they'll be searched. In real life, what happens is that Richard The Shoe Bomber makes it onto the plane, whilst granny is spread-eagled on a steel table being probed by government boffins wearing latex gloves.
(In case you missed that, the intelligence of the average terrorist is approximately equivalent to that of a small pet. If the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result, then they truly are insane. One almost wishes they'd try something different; the "attack the air travel industry!" angle has been worked to death by these geniuses.)
So, even though my wife and I will be flying over Thanksgiving, I just take all of this in stride. I'm Hawkeye, jibing and joking with Trapper John when the next batch of government lunacy comes down from above. My life goes on, and one's best response is just to laugh at it. (When possible. If they start groping my wife, however, I shall become famous. You will read about ME on the evening news.)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Careful when you throw such statements around eg "muslims have been taught to hate jews." I certainly wasn't. I also know plenty of Muslims who grew up in jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Maybe you could be more specific, such as "Saudis have been taught to hate jews" rather than imply that the billions of Muslims are all that way
Note that the English are not entirely European... so they tend to do things differently than the rest of Europe do.
We need volunteers to:
1) stand at the TSA line and hand out leaflets explaining why the TSA is sucks.
2) get interrogated by TSA officers and removed from the airport.
3) try to fly and find they're on the no-fly list.
4) sue.
And people to fund this effort.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Next Wednesday, the US Senate's Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security is holding a hearing. Contacting a congresscritter can sometimes be more useful than ranting on the Internet (only sometimes, of course).
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=AviationOperationsSafetyandSecurity
The chair is Sen. Byron Dorgon (dorgon.senate.gov; ph: 202 224-2551) - I suggest you call and suggest that this issue show up on the agenda, no?
For DC locals:
Jena Longo - Democratic Deputy Communications Director, (202) 224-8374
Nov 17 2010 10:00 AM
Russell Senate Office Building - 253
But until dubya decided to get his jollies by launching himself a couple o' wars
Bush invaded Iraq on the information he had at the time. That information turned out to be false (my money says someone grabbed the warheads and bolted before/during the initial invasion given the ridiculous amount of warnings they were given, but the fact is I don't know). 9/11 was a rude awakening for him and made him take a good look at the world's preeminent threats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujail_Massacre
http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/iraqfocus1.pdf
http://www.c-span.org/Content/PDF/hrdossier.pdf
Let's hope those will convince you what an evil scumbag he was and how the world is better off without them. And if you're still wondering about the al-Qaeda connection, they had a base in Anbar province.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Anbar_Governorate
If I were him, I'd have invaded sooner, with or without WMDs. Nevertheless, I believe that Bush is a good and honorable man and I will defend him until I'm dead.
I'm leaning towards wearing a kilt.
I have done this. Not in the US, but the are a couple of practical issues:
1) kilt pins, stow them in your luggage and make sure to stay out of wind until you can out it back on. Three inches of pointy metal won't make you popular, and the pin weighs down the apron part of the kilt, so, use your imagination
2) the buckles, most of my kilts have 2-3 buckles made of metal
3) the sporran, mine has a chain and metal snaps
4) sitting in an airplane seat in a kilt is a tricky issue, especially if you are a little rounder like me and want to be sure not to give a show
5) don't even think of the dagger in your sock, and even the kilt flash on your socks have buckles
6) depending on what you wear for footwear, unlacing your shoes/boots could be tricky. I wear Doc Martens with my kilt, so there is some work involved.
7) my utilikilts have about 10 snaps. All metal.
However, the pat down procedure could be hilarious ... Just hoist up the kilt and show the whole damned airport. Of course, that will get you arrested for a different reason.
Happy kilting.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not to ding the Israeli experience, because it did keep me safe... but that wouldn't work in the US. It adds a ton more time to your trip, and they ask very personal questions and scare the devil out of you with the third-degree. I'm not even sure it would be legal for the government to ask you questions about race and culture in this country :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Likely there would be some muttering over the crater that was Mecca
If you think that is a possible scenario, your grasp of international politics is somewhere weaker than my ten year old daughter's.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it