Ganging Up on Grandma

You may think LaWanda and her 43,000 blue-gloved colleagues at airport checkpoints couldn’t sink any lower than humiliating a little boy wearing braces on his legs. Or forcing a woman to stand on her sprained ankle, thereby fracturing it. Or yanking the crutches from a passenger crippled by polio and threatening to charge her with assault for reflexively grabbing at them – after ordering her to drop her trousers (not to worry: they promised to shield her privacy with a sheet, sorta like the whole-body scanners that blur our faces while strip-searching us).

Ah, but you underestimate LaWanda et al. These brutes boast a limitless reservoir of cruelty – as Nadine Hays, her elderly mother, and a friend who was helping to care for the aged lady discovered at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, CA, last April. Before our public servants finished with them, Mrs. Hays would be in jail, her mother in emotional and physical distress, and her friend in tears at the savagery visited on them.'

Read more...

More Surveillance: Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Buses

We’ve already seen and experienced the effects of government intervention at airports, with many Americans opting out of flying altogether in order to avoid the hassles of TSA full body scans and gestapo-like interrogations. Whether the the security procedures at airports have made us safer is an oft debated topic, with those who oppose the stringent screening policies pointing to the recent Christmas Day bombing plot and senseless acts of humiliation and demoralization regularly carried out by TSA employees as failures of the current system.

In the near future the government is likely going to begin considering similar “security measures” for all public transportation systems, as Senator Lieberman suggested. If history is any guide, mustering support in Congress for new public security laws should not be very difficult to accomplish. In an environment where the powers that be have created an air of fear around just about everything from health care to financial reform, it is simply a matter of telling the right story to the American public and Congress. For those of our representatives who are ready to pull the trigger on more draconian control and surveillance, an attack anywhere within the borders of the United States, similar to what happened in Moscow recently, would be enough to institute public transportation security and surveillance laws within a matter of days if such an event were to occur.'

Read more...

Airport Security: Welcome to Scannergate

Call them what you will: bottom feeders, corporate con-men, flim-flam artists, peddlers of crisis, you name it.

You can't help but marvel how enterprising security firms have the uncanny ability to sniff-out new opportunities wherever they can find, or manufacture, them.

After all, nothing sells like fear and in "new normal" America fear is an industry with a limitless growth potential.

While Republicans and Democrats squabble over who's "tougher" when it comes to invading and pillaging other nations (in the interest of "spreading democracy" mind you), a planetary grift dubbed the "War on Terror," waiting in the wings are America's new snake-oil salesmen.'

Read more...

We're the TSA and You Can Count on Us! (to overreact to tiny threats and ignore big ones)

US Airport Shut Down By Jars of Honey

At the Bakersfield airport in California, TSA authorities recently shut down the entire airport after finding what they thought was a container of liquid explosives.

Luggage screeners discovered five Gatorade bottles full of an "amber" liquid. TSA agents then opened the bottles and complained they smelled "a strong chemical odor." They then complained of nausea and were taken to the local hospital for treatment.

According to Reuters, "Kern County Sheriffs deputies, fire crews, FBI agents and members of a joint terrorism task force responded to the scene and spent the day questioning Ramirez before further tests showed that the liquid was honey".'

Read more...

TSA, FBI, Cops Turn Virginia Bridge Into Constitution Free Zone

Gestapo teams, originally confined to airports and then rail stations after September 11, 2001, are increasingly engaged in mission creep. In Virginia Beach this week, drivers on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel are witnessing the police state in action — armed TSA VIPER teams with bomb-sniffing dogs are checking in determined fashion for al-Qaeda, or so they tell the public.'

Read more...

Greyhound Bus Passengers Get Screened, Pat Down in Special TSA Operation

Bryce Williams wasn't expecting to walk through a metal detector or have his bags screened for explosives at the Greyhound bus terminal near downtown Orlando.

But Williams and 689 other passengers went through tougher-than-normal security procedures Thursday as part of a random check coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

The idea is to keep off guard terrorists and others who mean harm, thereby improving safety for passengers and workers. There was no specific threat to the bus station on John Young Parkway south of Colonial Drive.'

Read more...

Government Permission Will be Required to Travel

Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel by air. As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth "Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S." Getting a reservation and checking-in for air travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration authorization. That permission is by no means assured: For example, if your name matches a "no-fly" list, even mistakenly, you can be denied the right to a reserve a seat on a flight. If your name is on a "selectee" list, you and your possessions will be searched more thoroughly before you can board. What is going on here?

All travelers will need government OK in order to board a flight, or take a cruise. What the government can allow one day, it can forbid the next.

Read more...

Carrying Cash?

Get stopped by the TSAthe airport branchof Homeland Security



This has been going on forever.

I don't know if the DEA still does this, but they used to ROUTINELY arrest and take money from people carrying what they considered "excessive" amounts of cash in airports.

How did they know?

Some people pay for their tickets and flash a roll when paying. Ticket clerks were paid a "finders fee" to turn in passengers.

The victim would then have to sue to get his money back and prove that he earned it through legal means and was not involved in the drug business.

"Are you surprised that this happened?"

Me?

Not at all.