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."

Comments

This is out of control

[fredrated]

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?

Re:This is out of control

[dkleinsc]

It should be noted that that part of thing isn't going to plan: A number of returning US Marines have volunteered to help protect Occupy protesters from the police.

Re:This is out of control

[demonlapin]

I'm guessing you know very few former military personnel. Not a lot of cop types in the bunch.

Personal theory follows, ignore, comment, whatever. This is just a musing on general trends.
I've known a handful of cops. Their reasons for becoming one are varied, but the one constant is a rules-based view of the world. There are rules, and if you break the rules, you must be punished. The soldiers I've known tend to be more focused on harm: if you broke the rules, but nobody got hurt, then let it slide; conversely, if you followed the letter of the law but ended up fucking people over, they'd as soon kill you as look at you.

Cops can't really be any other way, because we can't let law enforcement be completely whimsical and subjective. But I know which group of people I'd rather hang out with.

Illegal Search

[Matt.Battey]

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.

Re:Illegal Search

[dkleinsc]

I know rules can be bend, and even dodge, etc, so what kind of strategy is being used to keep on doing something illegal to the people of the USA without receiving any consequences?

It's very simple, really: Although there have been rumblings about this sort of thing going back at least as far as Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, the various top political elites have an unwritten but very real agreement to never prosecute each other no matter how heinous the crime. They've also generally had agreement to protect their top financial contributors, which is why practically no executives are in jail for fraud regarding worthless mortgage-backed securities.

Here's where the flaws appear to be:
1. The politically appointed (or in some cases elected) prosecutors can choose whether or not to zealously prosecute a defendant regardless of the strength of the evidence against that defendant. So when Lloyd Blankfein commits fraud on a massive scale, but contributes to the president's campaign, the president tells the AG to tell the US attorneys to ignore any evidence of his crimes.
2. In states with elected judges, it's not uncommon for judges to trade favorable decisions for campaign contributions.
3. And of course, if all else fails and somebody is convicted of a crime, elected leaders can override court decisions with pardons and commutation (e.g. Scooter Libbey).

The trouble is, there's no obvious solution to any of these. Forcing prosecutors to do their jobs won't work because they're the ones responsible for enforcing the rule that says they have to do their job. Appointing judges won't completely work because you'll just get the governor's or the president's cronies. And there's really no way to stop a president from letting somebody go even if they've been convicted of a crime.

That's it.

[Saint Aardvark]

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.

Re:Ron Paul 2012!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.