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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."
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.
How about this mission statement:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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 analogy is irrelevant. one was a response to something we KNOW was going to happen BEFORE it happened (or rather didn't, due to the dilligent work of those that sought to prevent it), the other was a knee-jerk response to something that should have been spotted before it happened, but wasn't.
you can't say attacks have been prevented by the TSA's ball groping, and naked-scanning-irradiating-machines without some form of proof. considering the massive scale of abuses the TSA is committing, it'd better be solid proof of thousands of attacks directly foiled by ball-groping, otherwise it simply is not worth the sacrifice in freedom.
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%.
One step closer to police state IMO.
I hope our freedom was worth it.
"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. :)
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
I'm normally not one for slipper slope arguments, but this is a creep that is happening right before our eyes.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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...
The fact that there are more people whining about security at airports than dying in hijackings is a good thing. Because back when it was the other way around, that shit was whack.
If they catch terrorists that proves they are working well. Which they didn't. So no proof of success there. They did however allow a half dozen to slip by and a few to detonate their bombs on the plane. So there's a priori proof of a 100% failure rate. And by the metric used to measure how successful a government agency is I would say the 100% failure rate for the TSA is an A+. I'll bet this abject failure is even rewarded with a budget increase.
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."
I think he must have meant back in the 70s or so. There was a time period when there was a lot of hijacking, relatively speaking. Then there was almost none for a long time. Then there was 911 and everyone invented a lot of largely irrational security safeguards. If you secure the cockpit door, it becomes almost impossible to hijack a plane. The most you can do is blow one up, and that involves killing fewer people than you would kill if you blew up a bomb at a medium-sized high school sporting event.
Which makes the TSA, mostly, a massive way of pumping money into the economy. I don't mind a few of those--it's good to keep people employed--but we should have them employed in a productive way, rather than one which makes the system less efficient. Put them on environmental projects, for example.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!