The outrageous invasion of our privacy rights that is the whole-body scanner (and its equally outrageous counterpart, the full-body pat down) was hurriedly put in place by the government, before Americans could really comprehend what it would mean and whether they were willing to tolerate it. Yet where did the impetus for installing these scanners in our nation's airports come from? And who's responsible for this unfolding nightmare being unleashed on the American people?
As Reuters reported on Dec. 30, 2009,
The path toward rolling out wider use of whole-body security scanners in U.S. airports runs through the White House... U.S. President Barack Obama could expedite such a deployment because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) don't need legislation from Congress to start using the devices at any of the 560 U.S. airports with scheduled airline service.
In fact, legislation has been proposed to mandate full-body scanners and make them the primary screening method in all U.S. airports by 2013, but Congress has yet to act on it. We can thank President Obama for this frontal assault on our Fourth Amendment rights. Mind you, this is the same man who insisted that "we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans." Yet in the wake of the bumbling underwear bomber's botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound plane, Obama directed the Homeland Security Department "to acquire $1 billion in advanced-technology equipment, including body scanners, for screening passengers at airports." In fact, Obama's Stimulus Bill, which committed more than $3 billion for homeland security projects, is funding the installation of the devices in airports across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration have been quick to do the president's bidding, aided and abetted by corporate lobbyists eager to make a profit at taxpayer expense. The TSA plans to roll out a total of 450 full-body scanners by year's end, with an additional $88 million included in the 2011 national fiscal budget for 500 more machines. And Congress, which has the power to halt this thing (or at least provide oversight), has done nothing.
All the while, the American people are being subjected to all manner of egregious searches by government agents. Since my commentary about the airline pilot who refused to go through the scanner or be subjected to a pat down (""Michael Roberts: One Man Against the Surveillance State""), I have been bombarded by emails from individuals -- particularly women -- who have shared their own horrific encounters with TSA agents. The following are some of the most egregious.
This first account is from a woman who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome:
I was subjected to a TSA rub down in Pittsburgh in September. There is no patting happening. The officer ran her hands over every square inch of my body, firmly pressing into my flesh in every area when I declined to have myself irradiated. Being a recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome, I am extremely aware that my body needs protection from anything that is unnatural or unnecessary, and excess radiation is on my list of things to avoid. Unfortunately, the rub down elicited some trauma issues, and when I got upset and started crying, they started the "pat down" all over again. After I received my belongings, I attempted a photo of the TSA station and officers, at which point I was apprehended, my ID was taken and I had to delete my photos at their demand. Eventually when they realized I had no record, they told me to go get on the plane before I got into trouble. Why am I, a 49-year-old woman, employed for 28 years by IBM, mother of two teenagers, married for 27 years, being viewed as a terrorist? The trauma of the "pat down" has reactivated an autoimmune condition and I have spent the last 4 weeks working to bring my immune system back into balance. I can't imagine getting on an airplane with the possibility of this happening again. I would like to protest this invasion of privacy, but how?
The second is from a ticketing agent who was suspended after objecting to TSA's search of her wallet:
I just had my second run-in with TSA while attempting to go to work. I was refused the right to go to work because after I willingly handed TSA my lunch bag (which only contained my pocketbook, 2 restaurant paper napkins, and a piece of a news page crossword puzzle), they proceeded to empty my pocketbook, piece by piece, and go through my wallet, credit card by credit card, checking every nook and cranny in both my purse and my wallet. When they began going thru my wallet, I objected. I may have lost my job because of these arrogant and ignorant individuals.
The last is from a flight attendant who commutes to work each week:
This Sunday, I unknowingly went through the full body scanner. I had heard a little about the full body scanners but just never paid attention because I just thought that it wouldn't really happen. The TSA people said that the other machine was "broken" so me and one other female flight attendant would have to go through the new one.
They didn't tell me it was a Full Body Scanner. I was not made aware that I even had an option to be patted down instead. After the scan, I was still patted down on my breast area because I was wearing my flight attendant wings. I truly felt molested. As a female traveler, I already have to deal with personal safety issues. In the past, when I have gone through the security line, I have experienced two of the TSA men standing staring at me, and I could overhear them deciding whether they thought I was attractive.I realize the fact that the security people are not really highly trained professionals is a separate issue from the fact that I am literally being stripped of my Liberties and Rights. That just makes it all the more unjust. It is humiliating to be strip searched. I haven't committed a crime, so I have not given up my rights! I have not broken any laws. I am a Citizen of the United States, and I thought that I lived in a free country where people fought to protect our Liberties. Why couldn't they have spent the money to implement security measures that involve using high levels of training that are proven to protect? The Israelis have a 40-year proven track record and they do not use full body scanners.
What are my rights? Do I even have any? I don't choose to fly. I do it because I need the money to survive. It's my job. I don't want to be strip scanned because it is an invasion of my privacy rights as a human being. If I give in to this and act like I'm fine with it, just to fit in at work and not be singled out, then what next? Will I be subjected to cavity checks? I feel sickened by this, literally. It's like the frog that gets boiled slowly. It all is very subtle. People just go along and when we realize that we have no Rights left it is too late. I am not ashamed of my body but the reality is I am having to basically be naked in front of a group of my "peers" who I don't trust and who have no right to search my being.
I fly for a living every week. No one is more concerned about airport/airline safety than I am. One truly infuriating aspect of this whole body scan debacle is that it has been shown to fail. Far more insidiously, it eases some people's minds into a false sense of security.
I literally got ill from stress after educating myself on Full Body Scanners and that I was clueless enough to walk through one giving my rights away. In the future, I may be forced to do it several times a week just to keep my job. My rights are just being taken away, and I am now at the mercy of being stripped and it isn't making me any safer! I could deal with a few TSA agents being abusive when I had the protection and dignity of my clothing layer protecting my private areas. Now that those same people have the power to virtual strip search me and pat down my crotch and breasts, I just feel abused.
This whole procedure is as arbitrary as making me pull down my pants before I can receive my coffee from the girl at Starbucks in the airport. I am going to choose to be patted down from this point forward, but this could put me at risk of delaying a flight and mistreated by the TSA to prove a point to me. I am a very compliant, shy person by nature. Full body scanners just made my personal world all the more dangerous and unsafe for me to live in. There are other proven "Effective means" to do this without taking my personal dignity and my feelings of personal well being away from me.
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and the "pat down" is considered rape in some states, but most
of the scanners are real x-rays. That's right, not the problematic
heat radiation one hears so much about from cell phones
and microwaves, but the real McCoy.
Gamma radiation. The nuke stuff.
The TSA is hedging on this, and there are two types of machines.
One has, and one does not have x-rays. More on this,
and what is being done, at this website. http://bit.ly/PH3MF
As a parent, we teach our children to not let others touch their bodies.and TSA the ability to manually touch our bodies in its quest to out the bad guys?
TSA’s latest is a blatant encroachment on all things private—no longer a pat down … what’s being done bypasses any police “pat down”. Traveling as many do with artificial joints and implants, I’m one of those who sound the alarms.
I don’t look like a terrorist; I don’t act like a terrorist; I don’t think like a terrorist … I am not a terrorist. What I am is a frequent traveler with double titanium knee implants. Most of us frequent flyers just want to get through the damn line and to our boarding gate.
Frankly, I don’t want anyone feeling me up and down unless I invite them to do it. “ With the full ankle to crotch “feels,” how do the guys like it as the hand moves up to the base of the crotch, touching their dangling parts?
Why has Congress approved this outrageous, personally humiliating “search” that screams sexual harassment? I want to know which members voted for it. Where is the ALCU in its outrage on the assault of the innocent flyer? Why aren’t the airlines shouting, “enough of this nonsense”?
A full body massage when you are in the buff has more integrity. I will do everything to curtail travel using the airlines. What’s the number for Amtrak?
This is an excellent article. It is scary to see how gullible people are and how easily they submit to yet another affront on our liberties. The government tells them it's for their own safety and good and they gobble it all up. So passive, so easily taken for a ride by government propaganda. It is those civil rights and liberties that so many people have wanted to come to this country for and now they are being systematically stripped away from us, almost literally now. The INS, Homeland Security and government as a whole has done a very poor job protecting our freedoms and securing our safety, so to make a show of them doing something meaningful, they're rolling out this security theater under lame excuse of "it's for our own safety." Is there nothing we can do about it and force our government to work more effectively to protect our freedom and safety without this farce?
http://www.frequency.com/video/tsa-violates/523641?embed=true
What will the TSA do when somebody blows up a plane with a bomb hidden in a breast implant or shoved into a rectum or vagina? Will we all get cavity searches at the airports then? When will this politically correct madness stop? We know who the problem people are - why are the rest of us being made to suffer?
1) Israel and its American supporters are the root cause of antagonism between Western and Muslim countries, and the conflicts that consequently ensue.
2) The corporatocracy that is 21st century USA is run for the corporations by the corporations. The whole 'homeland security' industry is just the latest way to profit from the ever passive American Tax-payer.
Read The Shock Doctrine for a start. http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book. Written, by the way by a lady whom the Zionists call a 'Jewish anti-semite' LOL.
(1) Muslims have been attacking the west since the 10th Century AD. In 1683, they got as far as Vienna, Austria before they were driven back. Neither the US or Israel existed at that time. So what caused those attacks? Boredom?
(2) Your logic amounts to this: "I punched you in the face because you annoyed me so much that you caused me to punch you in the face, so it's really your own fault." You can justify anything with that logic, including (obviously) unprovoked terrorism.
As to corporations and government being in bed together - well, duh. Welcome to reality.
Former IRA operative said "We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every day."
That sums it up. And that's where we're headed if we don't address the CAUSE of why so many would risk so much to destroy this country's history of freedom of movement.
It's Israel. We all know it - including the monstrous Likkudniks who control content in this country.
I read to day that the Pilot's and Crews will cut a deal to exempt themselves from the tyranny. Ditto for Congressional aides, reps and American royalty who don't fly commercial.
I am flying next week - and I fully intend to resist any and all groping. They grope me - I'll grope them.
there are going to be casualties if we resist this tyranny. I can only hope that regular Americans support the martyrs who are going to be in the news over the next months.
Grope me? then grope Gwenyth Paltrow boarding her jet!
Grope me? -- then it's the same for every congressman, his wives and kids and aides.
Let the mutiny begin!