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DHS Gets Public Comment, Whether It Wants It Or Not
OverTheGeicoE writes "The motion to force DHS to start its public comment period is still working its way through the court (DHS: 'We're not stonewalling!', EPIC: 'Yes, you are!'). While we wait for the decision, Cato Institute's Jim Harper points out another way for the public to comment on body scanners, tsacomment.com. Even before this site existed, of course, the government was receiving public comment anyway in the form of passenger complaint letters, which they buried in their files. Even so, the public can get a chance to view those comments as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests. An FOIA request about pat-downs by governmentattic.org yielded hundreds of pages of letters to the government from 2010, including frequent reports of pat-down induced PTSD and sexual abuse trauma."
On one hand, I understand their ham handed approach to national security after 9/11. It was like a fire department flooding a property to make sure the fire was out. People had and will have good justification for ridiculing their blunt instrument approach to airport security -- especially the randomness of it all. On the other hand, we have intelligent people with experience enough to know that x-ray devices and bag searches only give the illusion of security. While on a much smaller scale, look at what the Israeli's do. A very well trained security person looks deeply into your eyes and questions you. That's it. That's all it takes to give the green light or send up a red flag. And, when was the last time you heard about a hijacking in Israel? Screening passengers by observation techniques can't be thwarted, while technological safeguards can always be overcome.
The last half dozen times I've flown, I managed to steer myself to a metal detector line, instead of an irradiating machine. A few weeks ago, though, they simply weren't using the old fashioned metal detectors, so I had my first "opportunity" to opt-out. I was really looking forward to being fondled and groped, but the TSA screeners were so uncomfortable, that they probably weren't able to determine definitively that I was male, much less if I were carrying something dangerous, like a comb or a camera. The dudes didn't want to touch me or look at me! While I was being not-fondled, one of the other TSA screeners unpacked and repacked my carry-on at least three times, and re-X-rayed it. I guess she was confused about why I would need two phone chargers (one for the wall, and one for the car). I mean, aside from that, there were two books and some napkins. Oh and a bottle of alcohol - but no one had any problem with that. I got the impression that she was just trying to punish me for daring to opt out. The guys just wanted to move on. It would have been cute, if the rules they were following didn't so blatantly violate good sense.
What good is public comment when 90% of the country disagrees with you and thinks that the TSA is legitimate protection?
Does our collective five-year-old psyche want its' security blanket? Yes.
Unfortunate? Yes.
Can we educate people that the TSA is an ineffective waste of money? No.
We haven't even succeeded in teaching Kansas that Gorillas and Humans share a similar genealogical lineage.
If a simple pat-down "induced PTSD and sexual abuse trauma", it is more likely to suggest a problem with the passenger rather than the TSA. Even so, America really can't afford billions of dollars in unnecessary equipment and personnel just to provide security theatre, especially since this particular theatre is not the slightest bit entertaining when it happens to you.
And when you can get away with ignoring a court order, isn't that a symptom of a larger problem?
Let's have two classes of airline - one with TSA fully funded from ticket fees and another that has no TSA and standard security. Let the market decide.
I love America, actually. Not overly fond of Americans (the stereotypical kind, not the real ones), nor the politics, but as a country it's actually quite nice.
I still don't travel there, though. I used to. A lot. But I haven't flown through US airspace since the TSA started with the whole backscatter x-ray system and gropings. I've read far too many stories about things they've missed (remember Adam Savage's discussion about how they missed a 12" saw blade?), and it doesn't take a civil rights activist to decide that being forced to allow a high school dropout to look at a naked picture of you to get on a plane is an invasion of privacy. I won't even drive to the US, even though large parts of the eastern seaboard are within a day's drive of here, because I've heard about them thinking of installing those machines at land crossings and ports of entry, too. It's not a lot of money they've lost from me, but I know a fairly large number of people who live outside the US who won't touch it with a 10-foot pole any more... you have to wonder how badly this is impacting the US tourism industry. *gasp* perish the thought, but I'm spending the same money I used to spend in the US in Cuba or Mexico instead....
There was a time when the TSA actually tried doing things in a sane way. I've had dealings with them at airports before they started with the backscatter x-ray nonsense, and most of the officers I dealt with seemed genuinely interested in doing a good job making things safer. Admittedly, the last time I dealt with them was at the airport in Dayton, OH, but my experiences with them at airports like Dayton, or Bangor, ME, or smaller airports like that was actually pretty good. I have to wonder if the people who think, generally, that they're doing a good job today are basing that opinion on experiences like mine, which were both many years ago, and at airports that were small enough to be able to actually hire good people. I don't think, now, that they're doing a good job, but they used to give the impression that they were.... if you still hold on to that opinion of them, you must not be reading the same news that the rest of us are.
We didn't have any Japanese attacks on American soil after that happened.
Not true. "On the nights of June 21 and 22, 1942, a Japanese submarine fired 17 shells at Fort Stevens, making it the only military installation in the continental United States to receive hostile fire during World War II (the oil fields in Santa Barbara, California that were also shelled by the Japanese, was not considered a military installation)." Santa Barbara could be said to happen before, but the Fort Stevens attack happened after.