Slashdot Mirror
Rand Paul Has a Quick Fix For TSA: Pull the Plug
suraj.sun quotes from Politico:
"Rand Paul has a reform plan for the Transportation Security Administration: Scrap the whole thing. A personal message from Paul (R-Ky.) came atop emails this week from the Campaign for Liberty Vice President Matt Hawes, asking for readers to sign a petition in support of Paul's 'End the TSA' bill. A Paul spokeswoman said that legislation is being finalized next week. 'Every inch of our person has become fair game for government thugs posing as "security" as we travel around the country. Senator Rand Paul has a plan to do away with the TSA for good, but he needs our help,' reads the petition, which also asks signers to 'chip in a contribution to help C4L mobilize liberty activists across America to turn the heat up on Congress and end the TSA's abuse of our rights.' 'The American people shouldn't be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane. As you may have heard, I have some personal experience with this, and I've vowed to lead the charge to fight back,' Paul wrote at the top of a C4L fundraising pitch, according to blogs that received the email. 'Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pressure Congress to act now and restore our liberty. It's time to END the TSA and get the government's hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers.'"
Sign me up. This security theater has got to stop.
...gets it right twice a day.
I would love to.
But if anyone besides a small following was listening to Ron Paul, US might have repealed PATRIOT act and even bombed fewer countries with drones.
Can we get a non-extremist pol who thinks TSA is a bad idea and has the power to do something about it?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Since all the submitter could be bothered to do was pump up Politico page views, here's the link to the > petition> .
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I presume his bill will have a rider that ends the rest of the federal government also.
It's a sad day indeed when common sense is considered "extreme".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government only has the powers given to it by the People of this land. If I can not touch your breast or crotch, neither can the government.
BTW there's already a law that allows airports to remove TSA from their buildings. So far I've only heard of one airport that considered evicting them. (And the government responded by saying that airport would be removed as a travel destination, if it followed through.)
Government is not eloquence or reason: It is force and intimidation. See the medical marijuana users who, even though they followed California law, were arrested anyway by U.S. police violating the 9th and 10th amendments.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Unfortunately, the political mainstream in America does not give two hoots about civil rights, except when it comes to protecting the rights of corporations and wealthy Americans. We have gotten the point where the bill of rights is "extremist."
Palm trees and 8
Bear in mind that the Campaign for Liberty is about a lot more than opposing the TSA, some of which some people may not find all that palatable (e.g. free market fundamentalism, scrapping the Federal Reserve, dismantling most of the federal government, withdrawing from most international organizations).
I think you missed the point.
If I set up an organization to grope people in libraries people have the option not to use the library, but that doesn't make my groping legal.
Learn to read -- this is not by Ron Paul.
When everything is corrupted, the only solution is the hammer.
The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car, and for that matter they don't have jurisdiction over you when you are using a private airport.
Yet. (Though remember their parent DHS claims jurisdiction and the right to search anyone freely at any point within 100 miles of the US border, which covers 90ish percent of the population, if I recall right.)
So then, what is your response to the TSA "Tiger Teams" setting up roadblocks and checkpoints on the highways then?
that air travel is a privilege, not a right
Oh, that is why we bailed out the airlines a few years back? You know, to ensure that people have the "privilege?"
The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car
You do realize that the reason they cannot just demand that you open your car for an inspection is the same fourth amendment that should make nude scans and pat-downs unconstitutional, right? Your rights are not supposed to disappear just because you are in an airport.
Palm trees and 8
The Pauls have a quick fix for everything, and it's usually some form of "pull the plug".
Ron Paul 2012: because quick fixes haven't screwed up the world enough already.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints.html
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
Well... for politicians. The problem they have is that if another terrorist attack gets through they don't want to be held accountable for it. So the TSA was created and the security was made as annoying as possible without actually making it so annoying that the TSA is scrapped. It's a balancing act.
Anyway, if there is another attack they can point at the TSA and say " do you want it to be any more annoying then that?!" And if they've made it annoying enough everyone will agree it is almost unbearably annoying.
So they'll say "well, you chose not to make it any more annoying so that's on the American people and not your entirely blameless elected official."
And thus they can't be held accountable for anything that could go wrong.
If you scrap the TSA and there is another attack, they'll get blamed for it. That's not acceptable.
If they put in a better system that isn't annoying but is much more effective and there is an attack they could still get blamed even if they gave us a really good system. Why? Because unless it's really annoying someone somewhere will blame the system.
So here we are... and in a lot of ways it's all our faults.
I'm personally going through the pat down process every single time I travel. If more people were like me, the TSA would have disbanded about ten seconds after it stopped because logistically they can't pat everyone down.
Many people have messaged me in the past on this very site to tell me that they shouldn't have to go through that process and so they go through the scanner instead. That's fine. You're making it easy for them and it is because of people like you that the TSA gets away with it.
If you don't like the TSA then get a pat down or stfu.
Ron Paul can't do anything about it. The man has no power. He has one isolated seat in congress. Who votes with him in a block? No one. He's all by himself out there. So whatever you think of his politics, he's not really an effective response to anything. He won't be president and he's isn't even a relevant force in the house.
If you care about the TSA's abuse of the common traveler... never walk through the scanner. Always take the pat down alternative. If enough of us do it. We win.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Although ending the TSA is an admirable goal, please do not send money to this group.
This group also has goals / ideas which are not as logical as the removal of the TSA.
Push your own congress critter to move forward on this, and work on legal petitions, not these fake online ones.
That is a stupid and ridiculous statement. This is the 21st century, and air travel is the most common form of transportation for nearly all people is by air, to exercise their constitutional right to petition the government. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that horse and buggy is still an option is simply stupid. The government must change with the times, and these times predominantly use air travel.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
If you don't like the TSA, you can travel a different way
Sure, as long as you also don't want to travel by car or train or subways or ferries
I guess that still leaves by foot (as long as you don't go in a subway tunnel) and maybe horse. I guess we really shouldn't complain.
"The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car.."
"You are welcomed to opt not to travel by air."
Or train, bus, or car.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/20/nation/la-na-terror-checkpoints-20111220
http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/highway/index.shtm
http://autos.aol.com/article/tsa-screening-drivers-in-tennessee/
Can we get a non-extremist pol who thinks TSA is a bad idea and has the power to do something about it?
No. Next question.
Seriously, the TSA is going to have to do something horrendous to get reformed. (I mean like killing babies horrendous, not their usual baseline horrendous) Otherwise any politician who tries to change it will be accused of coddling terrorists. Sad but that's the political reality we live in.
Nearly everybody thinks that at least some kind of security measures are necessary for airplanes.
Yes, and we had some kind of security measures for decades before 9/11. Let's go back to that. The only security measures we need to take to address the problems that lead to 9/11 are 1) locking the cockpit door, and 2) tell passengers to fight back against hijackers. That's it.
The TSA has already killed more people than Al Qaeda has, by encouraging them to drive instead of fly. Why shouldn't they be treated as anything other than terrorists?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>>>privilege
Not according to the Supreme Court which has, in more cases than I can list here, asserted time and time again that freedom to travel is ONLY restricted when crossing an international border (and then you can be subject to a warrantless search).
People have always had a Right to travel, whether it is by foot, wheeled vehicle, horse, ship, or plane. Just as you have a right granted by nature to open your mouth and speak. It is YOUR body and you may use that body however you desire (except not to harm others). Including thinking, speaking, eating, working, or traveling.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They searched my back once they saw it on the radar. Poor dude manning the XRays when my bag went through couldn't figure it out, and the chick who searched my bag was like "Ohhhhh!" once she realized what it was. She still had to wipe it down with something (for what, I don't know) and after they reran my bag, they seemed rather embarrassed about the whole thing.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I signed the petition (once I FOUND it, thanks Slashdot for not actually linking to the thing). I was then immediately hit with a "GIVE MONEYS PL0X" page. It really didn't feel right.
If I do give moneys, I'll also be supporting the campaign to repeal Obamacare (the petition for which I am intentionally not linking to), so no thanks.
Every inch of our person has become fair games for government thugs
"thugs" might be a little far, but there is at this point pretty much no point they are not allowed to inspect. Remember these guys are not even real law enforcement.
I would even argue that at this point "thugs" is not that far off the mark; I was made to wait at a security checkpoint as punishment for forgetting a water bottle held in plain sight on the outside of a laptop bag. Instead of them just saying "I have to throw this out" which I've had happen before and am OK with, they held my bag until they found some other winner in the "forgot I had water" sweepstakes, then we had to wait until an officer came over to snarkily ask us if we understood that we were not allowed to carry water through security, where merrily forgetting was not good enough an answer. Basically to him we were three year olds.
It's true that not ALL of them are thugs, I've met a lot of nice TSA people as well. But the structure in which they operate is one build to enable and protect true thuggery and that is why his statement is not as far off the mark as you would think.
It's much less vitriolic than it is accurate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
High speed rail will get you to your destination faster than by air, curb to curb, up to about 400 miles. (Even bicycles are occasionally faster than flying.) And to date, no terrorist has ever steered a train into a building, so unless you're going through the tunnel under the English Channel, there will always be less groping to board a train than an airliner.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The Paul family has made the American public ponder deeper about certain topics than they normally would. I have to give them some kudos.
Ron's comment about foreign policy versus the golden rule during the GOP debates was a key moment in political history. It put the Neocons' philosophy up to the public X-ray machine.
I applaud them for making America think; something that is hard to do.
Table-ized A.I.
Travel by Y is a right
Which ones go where? Foot horse private horse drawn carriage company owned horse drawn carriage (stagecoach) train privately owned vessel ship bicycle privately owned automobile company owned automobile (limo/bus) privately owned aircraft company owned aircraft
The constitution is silent on specific modes of travel. I take that to mean that all modes of travel belong in Y.
If there's one thing I've learned from programming, it's that quick fixes are always the best. Why bother trying to understand the details of a problem when you can just band-aid over it?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
And you've got a deal!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The TSA employs about 58,000 employees.
The number one thing by far that voters in the US care about is jobs.
This will never happen.
I can only imagine what freedoms you'll be wanting to relinquish once they start detonating bombs in the security line at the terminals.
Nevermind that. The the AC will want to give up even more freedoms when terrorists start thinking about detonating bombs in a pre-security line anywhere.
Prior to September 11th, 2001, how many bombs were detonated in security lines? Also, who is "they"?
There were certainly problems with some security checkpoints prior to 9/11/2001, but bringing in the TSA didn't really solve that many of the problems.
Any place there is a security screening line is an effective site to set off a bomb. Lots of people standing around and no one has been screened yet. Why bother going through all the trouble to get a device on a plane? Wherever there is a chance that you might be discovered, set it off. You might take out a multi-million dollar scanner! I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet (or has it?).
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I'm starting to like Rand Paul myself - he seems to bring the rational libertarianism of his dad, without the 33% batshit-crazy-racist stuff. "Ron Paul without the crazy" is someone I'd vote for, if we could find such a person ...
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That depends on how their insurance think about the importance of passenger screening.
Well, the main reason to go to the trouble of getting a device on a plane is so that you can repurpose the plane into a big missile filled with flammable material, and do a LOT more damage and kill a lot more people than you could with a bomb in a security line. However, the days of that happening are over now, and indeed were over on 9/11 as soon as the passengers on the fourth plane learned what happened on the other three, and now that planes have locked cabin doors, and passengers willing to fight to the death (as has been demonstrated several times, not only on 9/11 but in a couple other incidents when passengers beat the snot out of people with bombs, which of course made it right through the oh-so-effective TSA screening), it's all moot.
However, I think terrorists could do a lot more damage copying the terrorists in Mumbai than bombing security lines. Imagine if terrorists came to shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season with AK47s; this scenario has been discussed many times before. The fact is, there's only so much security precautions will do for you; for all these other things, you just have to take the risk. Besides, it's much riskier driving your car to the mall, than the tiny risk of being shot by terrorists when you're there. Auto accidents kill 50,000 Americans every year (and 250,000 people worldwide). That's far more than have ever been killed by terrorists, but we do absolutely nothing about that.
Any literate teenager should know that the "war on terror" has nothing to do with preventing terror. Just like the "war on drugs" has nothing to do with drugs. I love these people who say that these security measures are "ineffective", as if they're put in place with lofty ideals, but just aren't executed well or whatever. That's a load of garbage. They're actually quite effective and are doing exactly what they're designed to do! Who said the government is inefficient? Yeah, it's inefficient for anything YOU desire, but it's actually quite efficient at keeping a hold on power. The "wars" keep the American empire "secure" and keep internal fear at a high and dissent at a low.
Any place there is a security screening line is an effective site to set off a bomb.
Yet it doesn't really happen. Not even in Israel, let alone the U.S.
There is NO threat from criminals that want to commit mass murder by hijacking planes.
There is A GENUINE THREAT from heart disease, cancer (including that caused by ionising radiation), diabetes, driving a car.
Hell, in america, more people died from hernias in the last 15 years than from plane hijackings.
Imagine if terrorists came to shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season with AK47s;
This would be less likely to happen in state such as Texas or Arizona where there are very liberal (ie right wing in this case) conceal carry laws. If one in twenty people are carrying a gun, your AK-47 rampage is ending very quickly.
Rand Paul has proposed legislation to ban abortions and end birthright citizenship. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-gaggle/2011/01/28/rand-paul-wants-to-ban-abortions-and-end-birthright-citizenship.html
I'm fine with a senator having either of those positions. I don't really aggree with either one, but they both come from a rational place (just IMO wrong ones). We're in serious need of immigration reform, we need to as a country reach some sort of compromise on when "personhood" begins. I'm cool with politicians starting off with the ideologically pure positions on issues like these - that's where each side should start, so that we compromise to something practical.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Of course we do a lot about car safety. Are you kidding me? Traffic laws, speed limits, mandatory seatbelts laws, airbags, crumple zones, government mandated safety ratings, harsh DWI penalties, etc. But there's only so much you can reasonably do to protect people while still leaving that mode of transportation viable and cost-effective.
Please tell me what we've done to improve driver training in this country.
The TSA is security theater, and Rand Paul's proposal is liberty theater.
Sure the TSA sucks but this won't get rid of the FBI's national security letters, the PATRIOT Act, the indefinite detention provisions of the recent NDAA, torture, robo-bombing of other nations at will, extraordinary rendition, NSA snooping every email, NSA snooping in everything else, the looming legal lockdown on the internet, the elimination of the public domain culture in favor of permanent copyright, FBI infiltration and disruption of dissident organizations, or any of the other dozens of despicable BS our government has done recently.
In fact Rand Paul would just privatize the TSA, because government tyranny sucks, but corporate tyranny is the Amuuurican way!
-- QED
Well, the main reason to go to the trouble of getting a device on a plane is so that you can repurpose the plane into a big missile filled with flammable material, and do a LOT more damage and kill a lot more people than you could with a bomb in a security line.
You're living in a dream world. The objective of terrorism isn't material damage, it's psychological/economic damage.
No sig today...
My current best guess for who "they" may be is the U.S. government themselves. Our government has gone rogue. I wouldn't put it past them to run a false-flag operation to gain even more power over us and take away the rest of our freedoms.
I don't trust either party. No matter who you vote for this November, the government wins.
The so-called war on terror is an excuse. Any damned fool could tell you that if somebody is threatening us with "terror", the only way to win is to NOT be afraid. Ignore them. Take the hit. Then strike back harder AFTER you find out EXACTLY who did it.
This would be less likely to happen in state such as Texas or Arizona where there are very liberal (ie right wing in this case) conceal carry laws. If one in twenty people are carrying a gun, your AK-47 rampage is ending very quickly.
Have you ever seen an assault rifle in action? They are built to put a lot of people in the ground, and fast. They have been refined to do this well for the past 60 years. If I had a 9mm Tupperware gun, and some guy opened up with an assault rifle, I would not be trying to take him out. I would be grabbing cover and running.
The fact that Tx and Az have liberal gun laws isn't a solution to the problem, it feeds it by making it easier for dangerous people to get guns.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yeah! Just ask Gabby Giffords, you know, the congress woman who was shot in the head in Arizona by a gun-wielding lunatic using a pistol with an extended clip that was illegal under the Clinton era gun laws. . . after all he was stopped when the his fellow Arizona citizens "where there are very liberal conceal carry laws" shot him . . . oh wait . . . actually he was stopped when he ran out of bullets and someone tackled him.
Geese . . . its like only the crazies carry their guns everywhere they go.
you mean the newsletters that weren't written by him, he's admitted as a mistake, and denounces?
yeah he's racist lol.
I thought the objective of Al Qaeda was to get us to withdraw from the Middle East. By making a high profile attack it would suck us into a never ending war in the middle east costing us Trillions of dollars and sending our economy into a recession that bankrupts us and forces us to withdraw all troops from the middle east. Basically the same tactic they used on the Soviets.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
^This.
LMFAO The C5 is a huge military transport. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-5_Galaxy
While you might "walk" through security, your altered gait might give it away.