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TSA's VIPR Bites Rail, Bus, and Ferry Passengers
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA's VIPR program may be expanding. According to the Washington Times, 'TSA has always intended to expand beyond the confines of airport terminals. Its agents have been conducting more and more surprise groping sessions for women, children and the elderly in locations that have nothing to do with aviation.' In Tennessee earlier this month, bus passengers in Nashville and Knoxville were searched in addition to the truck searches discussed here previously. Earlier this year in Savannah, Georgia, TSA forced a group of train travelers, including young children, to be patted down. (They were getting off the train, not on.) Ferry passengers have also been targeted. According to TSA Administrator John Pistole's testimony before the Senate last June, 'TSA conducted more than 8,000 VIPR operations in the [previous] 12 months, including more than 3,700 operations in mass-transit and passenger-railroad venues.' He wants a 50% budget increase for VIPR for 2012. Imagine what TSA would do with the extra funding."
We have become consumed by the fear of a mosquito bite, are we going to continue to give up our freedom for what amounts to a non-issue?
Every TSA pat-down, especially those outside an air terminal, are illegal searches. There is no probable cause for agents of the government to initiate a search, even in air terminals, hence is a violation of 4th Amendment Rights. Every time Pistole is questioned about this by Congress, he insists that Air Travelers (and all travelers, by VIPR assumptions) are guilty until proven innocent, and that American children are all bomb carrying agents of Terrorism, because terrorists have used children and women in other parts of the world.
..try to search me before I get off the train.
If I refuse? are they going to prevent me from getting off the train?
isn't that kidnapping? I mean they can search me before I get on with the threat that if I'm not searched, I can't board, but can they really keep me from getting off at a domestic stop?
If they touch me with out my permission isn't that assault?
I know that my response to it will be classified as assault.
It's bad enough that they have made air travel unbearable, do we need to let them mess up this too?
I'm sure that it will help create jobs by discouraging americans from traveling at all.
-- Sig under construction...
I'm a Canadian sysadmin. I love -- LOVE -- the LISA conference (http://www.usenix.org/lisa11/). It's wonderful, informative, and fun; I've made great friends there, learned an incredible amount and generally enjoyed myself enormously.
Last year was the third time I went. The conference was in San Jose. I took a bus and a train -- which took over 24 hours -- from Vancouver to San Jose, rather than fly and go through a naked body scanner. I figured if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.
I'd already decided to skip this year's conference; it's in Boston, which is a long way to go by train or bus. I didn't want to be away from my family for that long. But I had been thinking about going next year, when it's going to be in San Diego.
I'm not going now. Not if this crap keeps up. I'll watch the video on my workstation, I'll listen to the MP3s on the bus, and I'll stay here in Canada. We have problems of our own -- but random searches and "papers, please" for the crime of taking the goddamned train are not one of them.
I'll miss y'all.
Carousel is a lie!
Me too. This is pretty far removed from the Land of the Brave I pledged allegiance to in gradeschool. I fear for my children and especially my grandkids. I am honestly worried.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
No, he means both sides of the isle, but the democrats by far held sway with the various bills that made up the patriot act and led to the creation of the TSA: "The first bill proposed was the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, which was introduced by Republican Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) with Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on September 13..." and "The Intelligence to Prevent Terrorism Act was introduced to the Senate on September 28 by Senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)." (wikipedia)
Note that Fienstien and heckle, jeckle, and Chuck of New York figured prominantly in this legislation.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I hate to admit it, but his crazy ideas start looking a little less crazy every day. I do respect him for sticking to his ideals but he takes a sledge hammer to things that really need a little more precision.
My impression is that he is well aware that he will not be elected president or even vice-president. Given that reality, when he runs for president what he is really doing is using the race as a way to inform the public about libertarianism in the hope that some of it will make its way into the general american consensus. If he were to take less of an absolutist position all it would do is dilute the end result even further.
As support for this belief consider his position on the Federal Reserve - that it should be abolished. He's now the chair of the Federal Reserve Oversight Committee and yet he hasn't killed the Federal Reserve because he realizes that doing so would be impractical, if not impossible, at this point in time. However he has been trying to reel it in, proposing bills to publicly audit it and make it more accountable - which sounds like the kind of precision versus sledge-hammer approach you are advocating.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is pretty far removed from the Land of the Brave I pledged allegiance to in gradeschool
You pledged allegiance to a flag, actually. What most people do not know is that the original solute during the pledge was to extend your right hand, like these children (note that this was taken in 1941):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Students_pledging_allegiance_to_the_American_flag_with_the_Bellamy_salute.jpg
Palm trees and 8
That is an assumption that holds true of a few pseudo-unions (things which are called "unions" but aren't, the same way that many dictatorships have "democratic" in the name) but which simply doesn't hold true of unionism in the historical context. Historical unions don't depend on membership and historically it was unions that fought to keep incompetents OUT of jobs, forcing employers to hire people who were skilled at the job.
True, historic unionism is highly progressive and helped boost profits for the businesses (it turns out that cheap labour produces poorer-quality products and has higher accident/disability rates, inflating net costs in the long-term) and boost the members (since members weren't so subject to office politics and therefore were more likely to be promoted according to merit).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem with getting rid of the security theater is that true security will be impractical for air travel to continue. What has been implemented now is an expensive, ineffective compromise between 'protection' and enabling air travel. The main result is the inconvenience of millions of people and the wasting of billions of dollars.
Example: According to the TSA site, rules prohibit a passenger from carrying more than 100ml of liquid through a security checkpoint. I have no idea how much explosive liquid it would take to cause a serious problem aboard a plane, but I would assume a liter of something would achieve a terrorist's goal. This could easily be accomplished under current rules by having ten terrorists each bring a 100ml bottle of explosive fluid through the security checkpoint, then combining the volume once inside the plane. Even easier would be for one terrorist to simply make ten trips through security, each time bringing in another 100ml bottle of explosive fluid and stashing them somewhere within the gates area to then be combined into a 1-liter explosive bomb.
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How about just getting your government to make the TSA behave like most other western country's airport security? I've yet to see Canadian and European airport security turn up in a railway station and start frisking passengers.
I agree that the German security krewe that screwed with me aren't likely to show up at the Bahnhof by mistake, but this is an international show, Mr. Moore; you can buy your tickets with Euros, too!
On my last trip to Germany (last year), I made the mistake of bringing my reading light. The trip before that one, I had gotten an airplane seat with a broken light, and I wasn't going to suffer through another 10 hours of boredom if I could help it. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat modded LED headlamp: I had one headlamp that had an OK headband and mount, and another one with really neat optics and a broken mount. So I combined them. Unfortunately, aesthetics are not usually my prime concern when I make gadgets for myself—the thing has a largish lump of black epoxy on top where the wires come out. Yeah, it occurred to me that it might confuse people if I stuck this into my pocket, but I couldn't find anything else, and hey, it's obviously a flashlight. How much trouble can that cause?
And in fact, I got through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport just fine. None of the National Security Goons said a thing about it, even though I had my usual snarling match with the dumb f*cks. Ah, but on the way back through the Frankfurt airport, the guy running the carry-on X ray machine literally danced on his tippy-toes, holding my ugly duckling light up high in the air for all to see, calling for a "Sonderuntersuchung". Yep, special handling for the Doctor.
They took me to the Room For Bad Boys (at this point, a certain amount of Reality Skew had already set in, and I was getting junior high school flashbacks). What I thought was really weird is that none of these people understood why I would want a reading light. I tried to explain to them that reading was fun, but was met by looks of blank incomprehension. This was not some sort of language problem, as the Doctor's native language is German. (Well, OK, with a heavy Bavarian accent, but I think even these damn Prussians could understand me just fine!) They kept shining my light on the ceiling (after I showed them how to turn it on); I remember apologizing several times about how dim it was, and offering to change out the nearly dead batteries. Maybe this wasn't a smart thing to say to people who probably can't tell a flashlight from a Klingon phaser. But eventually, they gave me back my reading light, and let me go.
I had taken no more than three steps when I felt a hand on my arm. I was notified (in English) that I had been selected for a "special security check". It was like the scene you've seen in 50 movies where the prisoner is released, thinks the ordeal is over—and is instantly re-arrested by hard-faced guys wearing the 20th century's most snazzy uniforms with those jagged lightning bolt runes. There were at least five of these guys, and two of them were women. Evidently, this somewhat confused paunchy 60+ year old guy with the fuzzy white beard sent the danger meter into the red zone. The woman who was seated behind a desk said, "Empty your pockets please." Further Reality Seepage followed.
I can explain why I lost control. You see, I was wearing my Vest of Many Pockets, and every pocket was filled with things I considered interesting or useful (like reading lights, books, interesting rocks, you know, the usual stuff). I had a mental image of myself emptying out a nearly infinite multitude of pockets, drawing forth who knew what (I certainly had very little memory of what I had collected in the past weeks), a process that, with the accompanying explanations, would clearly consume months. I started laughing. I couldn't help it, I was bent over in paroxysms of laughter, holding on to Frau Schnipperschnapps' desk for support, for what seemed like a
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary