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TSA Doing Random Truck Searches On Tennessee Highway
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA is expanding its presence to the American road system. As part of its Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program, TSA agents are now working at 5 weigh stations and two bus stations in Tennessee. They are randomly checking trucks with 'drug and bomb sniffing dogs', and encouraging truck drivers to join their First Observer Highway Security Program and report anything suspicious that they see to authorities. VIPR is allegedly not a response to any particular threat."
though nothing happened in the last decade and all the ball groping that happened, they are still disturbing and irritating people.
wow.
Read radical news here
I am almost sure now that this site is just a mirror of drudge.
You can't handle the truth.
Freedom to travel not something we have anymore?
Should I be carrying my papers?
At what point do we tell these assholes to fuck off? This is one government department that needs to be shutdown.
All the inconvenience of airport travel, coming soon to a town near you. Oh they will start with the truckers but whoever said the slippery slope is not real: watch. Dear God America, you tell the world about how you are the champion of democracy and freedom and then you go an pull shit like this. And you wonder why no one believes you?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm not quite sure how that meets their mission:
The Transportation Security Administration protects the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.
Then again, I'm not sure how much of what they do furthers their mission. It would seem that most of the things they do actually restrict freedom of movement.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
VIPR is allegedly not a response to any particular threat
The threat is very clear - budget cuts. With Osama gone, Al Qaeda a thin shadow of its former self (which was really never much to begin with) and no significant acts of terrorism for the last 10 years, the TSA and the DHS are in jeopardy of being pared back to a size much more appropriate to the risk -- i.e. practically nothing.
If they don't remind us to be scared, who will?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If the "occupy wall st" people added dissolution of the TSA to their agenda, I might join them at this point...
This is the thin leading wedge of tyranny. Everyone involved in the decision making process of this program, starting with Mr. Bill Gibbons, should be fired and banned from Government employment for life, as they have shown themselves as being clearly unworthy of the public trust.
that he didn't stand up when they were drinking to Stalin's health." Citizens being urged to report "anything suspicious," leaves a good taste in your mouth, doesn't it?
weinersmith
My father drove trucks here for years through Tennessee, and I don't even need to ask him whether he thinks this is a ridiculous waste of time and taxpayer dollars. Every minute they waste off the road is money from their pockets. Especially when in many cases you leave the truck running during all of this bullshit in order to pull it to the various road markers for different pointless checks.
They will likely never find a single truck carrying anything of federal importance. All they'll do is use it for catching things which the THP or other federal agencies should already be handling, like catching drugs, and add one more level of red tape to the honest hard-working people.
There are only so many TSA people you can fit inside an airport.
Let's hire MORE and put them to work ... checking TRUCKS! And buses, yeah! Because that's where the terrorists will strike next.
In the year 2035, 51% of the population will be employed by the DHS/TSA to watch/search the other 49%.
"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.
I wonder, has the TSA ever found a real terrorist? Except from their employees, that is. :)
They won't find bombs, but they may find drugs. IIRC, it wasn't the original purpose of the TSA to be another DEA. A few good busts and you may be stuck with them, violating more liberties every day, all in the name of fighting "terrorism".
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart.
Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
To the USSA!
and I was told I just shouldn't fly on airplanes.
Then they came for the truck drivers in Tennessee...
and I was told I just shouldn't drive trucks in Tennessee.
Then...
First Observer Highway Security Program an report anything suspicious that they see to authorities.
Mr. Welles, is that you? This whole thing was President Clark's idea wasn't it?
Are participants required to wear black armbands?
This will probay get me on the watch list but in my opinion President Clark is nothing but a Shadow puppet.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Does jack squat any more. I watch as these Occupy people sit around and sing songs, people up at the capital sing slogans, and they expect things are going to change.
Not gonna happen. If you had the ability to print an infinite amount of money and give it to your friends and yourself, would you give up that sort of power and influence?
You certainly would! Right before you nuke every major city on the globe!
So this whole crapola thing with the TSA isn't going to go away without a real nasty revolution.
No way are the people who have that power going to step aside. They will put a terrorist boogey man in every place they can. If they can't they will nuke a city, and tell you if you don't give us complete control, another "terrorist" will nuke another city.
This is way out of control of the voting booth now.
I would seriously consider having a plan in place to leave the country sooner than later.
Because, if history is any guide, the next thing TSA will be doing is preventing any people from leaving the country, while of course if you are illegal, fine no problem.
There is a definite agenda here, and it is has nothing to do with terrorists that much is for sure.
-Hack.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
This is at weigh stations.
Right now it is. Last week, it wasn't. Next week, who knows. We already get stopped for border searches nowhere near the border, and the supreme court continues to abrogate its responsibility to uphold our rights. This is a classic textbook example of the slippery slope.
Last I checked, Tennessee was further than 100 miles from the national border.
Or are they including foreign embassies and Native American territories in the US as right-to-search borders now? And of the former, I don't just mean static buildings but also ambassadorial mobile vehicles. Want to search without a warrant? Invite a foreign ambassador to visit a nearby county.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Drving, despite what the DMV and the police would have you believe, is a right well-established by both law and court decision. Yes, the police are lying to you as they overreach their authority, shocking I know.
Cites follow, the reasoning is roughly this. A citizen cannot participate in modern society without the use of an automobile. Public transportation only covers a minor portion of the geography of the US. Bicycles and walking cannot cover the routine distances involved in modern life. On the other hand, driving is a dangerous activity with significant hazards to the public at large, thus the right to "Life," balances against the right to "Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Personally, I hope the TSA does expand to random traffic stops. I hope they start impementing strip searches for walking down the sidewalk. I want them to set up shop at the OWS rally near you. The faster they can provoke a full-out general revolt against their nonsense, the happier I'll be.
Here are the court decisions I promised you:
"The use of the highways for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common and fundamental Right of which the public and the individual cannot be rightfully deprived." [emphasis added] Chicago Motor Coach vs. Chicago, 169 NE 22; Ligare vs. Chicago, 28 NE 934; Boon vs. Clark, 214 SSW 607; 25 Am.Jur. (1st) Highways Sect.163.
""Even the legislature has no power to deny to a citizen the right to travel upon the highway and transport his property in the ordinary course of his business or pleasure, though this right may be regulated in accordance with the public interest and convenience." Chicago Motor Coach v. Chicago, 169 NE 22. "
"Complete freedom of the highways is so old and well established a blessing that we have forgotten the days of the Robber Barons and toll roads, and yet, under an act like this, arbitrarily administered, the highways may be completely monopolized, if, through lack of interest, the people submit, then they may look to see the most sacred of their liberties taken from them one by one, by more or less rapid encroachment." Robertson vs. Department of Public Works, 180 Wash 133, 147.
"The right of the citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, either by carriage or by automobile, is not a mere privilege which a city may prohibit at will, but a common right which he has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Thompson v. Smith, 154 SE 179.
"Personal liberty largely consists of the Right of locomotion -- to go where and when one pleases -- only so far restrained as the Rights of others may make it necessary for the welfare of all other citizens. The Right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, by horsedrawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but the common Right which he has under his Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Under this Constitutional guarantee one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his inclination along the public highways or in public places, and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another's Rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in his safe conduct." [emphasis added] II Am.Jur. (1st) Constitutional Law, Sect.329, p.1135.
"The right to travel is a part of the liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the 5th Amendment." Kent v. Dulles, 357 US 116, 125.
"Undoubtedly the right of locomotion, the right to move from one place to another according to inclination, is an attribute of personal liberty, and the right, ordinarily, of free transit from or through the territory of any State is a right secured by the 14th amendment and by other provisions of the Constitution." Schactman v. Dulles, 96 App DC 287, 293.
"Personal liberty -- consists of the power of lo
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Could anyone think of a better way to defeat an omnipotent enemy than causing it to go Stasi on itself?
See http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi
As we say, Stasi "is TSA." Anagram-wise.
Truck search for YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
I always object to people who call driving a right, because political discourse is confused to the point where people confuse rights with liberties.
A right is something you have the privilege to do within the bounds of constitutional law, a thing in which no other citizen can discriminate against you or prevent you from doing, nor the government where it acts as an employer, a buyer of goods, etc. A liberty is generally something the government cannot prevent you from doing, under almost any circumstances. So they're very similar, but not the same.
Driving may have been ruled a right, but it comes with high social costs and responsibilities. It's entirely fair for a legitimate government to certify and restrict drivers in some ways. Many people define driving as a "right" when their argument really defines a liberty, something to which they have absolute privilege and over which they perceive any government oversight as some illegitimate, collectivist intrusion. That always seems to me like social-Darwinist propaganda, the notion that a tool almost entirely dependent on trillions of dollars in public infrastructure and able to kill people at any moment should be an unrestricted, guaranteed 'right'.
I still believe that driving is a privilege in the sense that it can be taken away in response to repeatedly shirking your share of the social costs or endangering other people. It is, if you will, both a right and a privilege. If police or courts are overstepping their bounds in pushing some ludicrous, alternate definition of driving as exclusively a privilege which you enjoy at the pleasure of the state, then directly attack those policies rather than inventing a second alternate reality in which you have unrestricted access to automobiles at all times and without any social responsibility attached.
Adaptations of this quote to every possible privacy or liberty issue deeply offend me.
This poem was the poignant reflection of a German theologian who was actually very humble and self-effacing in his phrasing. He supported Hitler initially but became disillusioned with the totalitarianism of the National Socialists (Nazis) somewhat quickly and spearheaded a group of German clergy who opposed the party. Most of the group caved, but he stayed the course and was finally arrested in 1937. He spent the rest of the war in concentration camps, right up until liberation day. As I understand it he hardly waited till the last moment or until everyone else was gone before he objected, and he felt more guilt about what he *did* tolerate than most other Germans ever did.
So in short, the quote concerns Nazis coming to kill you after eliminating every other scapegoat and dissenting voice in the entire nation. It's petulent, hyperbolic, and actually a rather clear invocation of Godwin's Law to immediately invoke it and pervert it for every piddling privacy violation or TSA bullshit-festival.
I understand you're making an important point about social tragedy and slippery slopes, but they're not Nazis and they're not coming to *kill* you, for God sake. If you absolutely most invoke it, at least quote the original rather than making indulgent, self-righteous parodies, and please consider saving it for more extreme situations.
GP is the single best and most on-topic modification of the original that I've ever seen. You, sir, can go screw yourself.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
... and please consider saving it for more extreme situations.
When would be appropriate, in your opinion? When the damage is already done and there's nobody to listen? The Nazi's didn't START by gassing Jews and invading Poland, you fucking idiot. The guy wrote the poem to illustrate that evil starts small, and needs to be stopped early. Are you seriously suggesting that we wait until it's too powerful to stop, and THEN start complaining about it?
I don't think I've ever read anything so blatantly stupid.
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