Former DHS Official Blames Privacy Advocates For TSA's Aggressive Procedures

colinneagle writes with an interesting excerpt from Senate testimony offered yesterday, on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, from Stewart Baker. Baker formerly served as DHS Assistant Secretary and NSA General Counsel, and gave his opinion on the source of the real problems within the TSA, opining: "Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions."

Comments

Sounds like the lesser of two evils

[h4rr4r]

Sounds like the lesser of two evils to me. If you really think they would not have done both keeping data and the enhanced pat downs I have a bridge to sell you in New York. Slightly used.

Re:Sounds like the lesser of two evils

[mellon]

Furthermore, what the hell are they talking about anyway? Are they not aware of the TSA Secure Flight program? The no fly lists? Etc? You can't get anywhere near a commercial flight without the TSA knowing everything including your shoe size.

Re:Sounds like the lesser of two evils

[Hatta]

The TSA had two choices. Treat them all alike and respect their Constitutional rights, or treat them all alike and ignore their Constitutional rights. The TSA chose the latter, and everyone involved with it deserves prosecution for deprivation of rights under color of law.

Re:Sounds like the lesser of two evils

[Anonymous Coward]

If the TSA gets direct access to the NSA's data, your average TSA grunt will read his girlfriend's email and find out that yes, she has been cheating on him. He will then get out of his dead-end relationship, pick himself up and get out more, meet new people, and have more sex. Once his sexual frustration is gone, he won't have to take his frustration out on travellers by harassing them and thrashing their luggage.
The question we should be asking is, why does the EFF hate our luggage?

Re:Sounds like the lesser of two evils

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about recognizing that the locked cockpit door, and widespread public knowledge of the outcome of 9-11, are all that's really important to secure our air travel from 99.9999% of potential threats, acknowledge that all the rest is just Security Theater, and just let us on our way. That isn't as lucrative for business or expansive for government, though.

bizaro universe

[dissy]

Yes, I was punching, kicking, and otherwise beating the crap out of this random person.
It was the fact they put their arms up to shield their face that resulted in such a horrible beating. I bare no fault what so ever for his actions which, despite being performed after I started the beating, are still somehow the reason for the beating.

Re:bizaro universe

[Jason Levine]

It was the fact they put their arms up to shield their face that resulted in such a horrible beating

You say this as a funny comment, but I've been told this seriously. Back in the second grade, my son was in lining up for an assembly (about bullying, ironically) when one kid (a known trouble-maker) started jumping forward in line. My son is sensitive about his personal space so when the kid jumped in front of him, my son put his arms up to protect his face. The kid hit my son hard in the stomach. Hard enough to send him to the nurse with bruises.

I had a meeting with the principal and teachers about it. After first denying anyone saw what happened, they then told me that my son started it by raising his hands. When they moved from that to "your son's not the TYPE to be bullied" (their exact wording), I ended the meeting and my wife came to bring my son home. We pulled him out of school and went to the superintendent to change schools since we didn't feel he was safe there.

Blaming the victim, sadly, is something that many people engage in instead of taking responsibility for their actions.

Re:bizaro universe

[CanHasDIY]

A buddy of mine was just telling me last week that his 3rd grade daughter was suspended for defending herself against a known bully; the school's rationale? She had a conversation with the bully once before, which in their eyes counts as a willing confrontation.

I wonder, sometimes, how much more fucked up these policies can get before the pendulum swings in the other direction.

Re:bizaro universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Daughter, First Grade. Hit a biter after he drew blood on her and told him "BITING HURTS TOO BUT YOU KEEP DOING IT" while showing her leg when he ran to the teacher.

She was suspended for three days [of snacks and videogames I assure you] and I had to explain to her that sometimes very bad people are in charge, so doing a good thing makes them want to punish you.

Vice-principal wasn't too happy about the explanation being done in front of the teacher and the little bastard's parents, but we'll see about changing schools next year.

Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

What a strategy. Want to curtail both privacy and freedom? Set up a a blackmail scheme where you pit one against the other.

And the bully said...

[jd2112]

It's not my fault I beat you up. If you had just given me your lunch money you wouldn't have a black eye.

I am sorry I you raped me

[1_brown_mouse]

It was all my fault for standing in line. Being there.

Won't happen again.

Re:I am sorry I you raped me

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya. Our family doesn't travel to the US anymore. I hear what the american gov does to their own people; I sure the hell aren't going to give them a chane to pull that crap on my kids.

Accountability

[LeifOfLiberty]

No, the problem with the TSA is that they exist in the first place. Airlines should be responsible for ensuring their flights are safe. When airlines handle safety they can be held accountable if they do it poorly or they mistreat their customers. The TSA can clearly never be held accountable for anything.

Liar!!

[MatthiasF]

They have had the data since 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Flight

Every person's name that has flown, what airline, what flight, gender, etc.

ALL OF IT FOR ALMOST FIVE YEARS.

And have they caught anyone using it? Not that I've seen.

The Horror!

[Bob9113]

With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike,

What a horrifying reality, in which the government is forced to treat all citizens as equal. If the government were only allowed to pick and choose the dissidents to subject to harsh treatment and intimidation, all the properly submissive subjects would be free to do anything that doesn't irritate the lordship. You see, it is not the ruling elite who are imposing these restrictions that are harming you, it is your filthy fellow peasants. If you could all simply learn to kneel and submit to the natural authority of the nobility, you would all be happier.

In other news...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Pedestrian's unwillingness to voluntarily surrender the contents of their pockets is the primary reason for so many of today's muggings.

Sounds like evil to me

[betterunixthanunix]

The TSA checkpoints, pat downs, nude scanners, and so forth are a complete waste. No competent terrorist would be deterred by such things -- and "competent" here means "able to do more damage in an airplane than out." It is easy enough to make a makeshift weapon past the checkpoints, and the 9/11 hijackers all used makeshift weapons. I am not even plotting an attack and I can think of a half dozen ways to arm myself on the other side of a TSA checkpoint.

Basically the TSA is cover-your-ass security theater. If there is any kind of attack, nobody wants to be the politicians who voted to remove the TSA from our airports, regardless of whether or not the checkpoints make a difference.

Re:Sounds like evil to me

[Entropius]

Never mind that. Imagine someone wheeling a wheelie-suitcase consisting of explosives, nails, and warfarin powder into the TSA checkpoint -- you know, the ones consisting of a thousand people milling around waiting in line to take off their shoes and get groped -- and blowing it up.

You'd have a giant bloody mess, gobs of dead Americans, and a lot of very expensive theatrical equipment damaged, plus temporary paralysis of air travel, plus even more rules that impede travel.

The fact that nobody has done this yet points to al-Qaeda not trying very hard -- if they really did want to kill a bunch of Americans and terrorize us, they could do a lot better than the motley assortment of underpants bombers, shoe bombers, butt bombers (wasn't there one of those in Saudi Arabia?), and the like that have shown up lately.

Re:Sounds like evil to me

[mellon]

Depends on their goal. The underwear bomber made a shitload of money for the pornoscanner companies. The shoe bomber slowed down security checkpoints. The liquid explosive fraud created a huge hassle and is now making a lot of money for concessions at airports. The amount of economic damage these attacks have caused is absolutely massive! A suitcase bomb at the TSA screening area doesn't have an easy and economically damaging countermeasure, so there's not much point. That attack was tried once. Aside from a temporary dip in the stock market in Russia, it was ineffective—no massively expensive security measures have been instituted in response.

Re:Sounds like evil to me

[icebike]

Never mind that. Imagine someone wheeling a wheelie-suitcase consisting of explosives, nails, and warfarin powder into the TSA checkpoint -- you know, the ones consisting of a thousand people milling around waiting in line to take off their shoes and get groped -- and blowing it up.

There are a lot of easier places to hit than airports, as the Boston Marathon bombers proved. Yes, they maybe could have hurt more people by crashing a plane, but they could have done far more damage at any random sports stadium in the country with far simpler tools. Should any putative terrorists get their hands on simple mortars they could do this from half a mile away.

I agree, the evidence is that al-Qaeda, and their wanna-bees are not trying very hard.

And its not due to the surveillance culture the federal government has dropped over the entire nation. Virtually every fool the feds have caught was lured into a trap that they probably didn't have the brains or the means to develop by themselves. Meanwhile the determined, but not terribly bright Boston Bombers walk right through the dragnet even after being fingered by the Russians.

In the meantime Air travel in this country is virtually unbearable, no-fly-lists are unconstitutional, and every federal agent knows ahead of time you are planning a trip anyway.

The whole privacy argument is nonsense. You could make a case for the anti-racial profiling causing mass fondlement, but not privacy.

Re:Sounds like evil to me

[Actually, I do RTFA]

no massively expensive security measures have been instituted in response

That's because the massively expensive security measures that the government ordered implemented were overturned by the Russian courts as depriving people of rights.

In America, you violate the rights of citizens in the name of security; In (former) Soviet Russia, the independent judiciary acts as a check and balance on the totalitarian executive branch.

For some reason, it's less funny then most of Yakov's jokes.

Re:Sounds like evil to me

[Ol Olsoc]

Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery and it failed because his body basically shielded the intended target from the blast. Kind of like a twisted version of throwing yourself on the grenade.

When the police were investigating the scene, the prudish officer asked a witness where the bomber hid the device...

He hid the Damn thing up his Ass, Officer!"

"Rectum, please, his rectum" The officer retorted

"Rectum Hell, it killed him!" the witness declared.

Dear Mr/Mrs Member of Congress

[l0ungeb0y]

Dear Mr/Mrs Member of Congress,

Anyone that impedes process of Authority by invoking their Constitutional Rights is an un-American terrorist sympathizer who should be locked up in one of our Secret Prisons under Secret laws to be tried at some future date in a Secret court.

The Constitution is the most Un-American thing about America and should be abolished. The TSA and DHS need swift, unquestioned Authority to protect us from those who would harm America and to speed up those long lines at Airport Security Checkpoints and the long lines we shall soon be seeing at Security Checkpoints at Shopping Centers, Train and Bus Terminals and many other major facilities across the Nation

Love,

Stewart Baker

Re:Actually, quite logical

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. Just like the police would probably catch a whole lot more "bad guys" if they could just bust into whomever's house they wanted to on a whim, go through their stuff looking for evidence, and not have to worry about warrants or anything. However, there are very good reasons that we prevent them from doing this. First and foremost because this power would be abused to intimidate. ("You said something we don't like so we're going to 'search' your house twice a week until we find something to lock you up on. Or until you shut up. Or until you resist the slightest bit so we're justified in shooting you.")