To Let the Government Touch, or Not to Let the Government Touch
Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the most terrifying sentence in the English language is “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Truly, Ronaldus Magnus was more right than he ever knew. Behold your friendly government agent, who is only here to help, in a photo at the Denver Post.
It’s not quite the Gadsden Flag, but this image is fast becoming the symbol of the new “Don’t touch my junk” movement. Whether to let government agents touch us where the sun don’t shine or not is no longer an academic question. It’s happening to more and more fliers every day, among other things altering the meaning of “frequent flier” in some unpleasant ways. And never let anyone hear you say that you enjoy air travel nowadays. They’ll look at you funny. And as each day of this passes, you’ll deserve it.
But the great TSA, or T&A, fracas brings up an item for debate: Which is more invasive, the picture machine/close touch combo or the mental search as done by the Israelis? Before you answer, read up on Michael Totten’s take on Israeli airport security techniques:
[O]fficials at Ben Gurion International Airport interview everyone in line before they’re even allowed to check in.
And Israeli officials profile. They don’t profile racially, but they profile. Israeli Arabs breeze through rather quickly, but thanks to the dozens of dubious-looking stamps in my passport — almost half are from Lebanon and Iraq — I get pulled off to the side for more questioning every time. And I’m a white, nominally Christian American.
If they pull you aside, you had better tell them the truth. They’ll ask you so many wildly unpredictable questions so quickly, you couldn’t possibly invent a fake story and keep it all straight. Don’t even try. They’re highly trained and experienced, and they catch everyone who tries to pull something over on them.
That sounds more than a little intimidating. But don’t answer yet. Not until you’ve heard from Claire Berlinski.
When I last flew El Al, they began with simple questions: Why are you flying to Israel? To give a lecture? Where? Who invited you? Really? Do you have a copy of the invitation? How do you know them? Really? And you don’t speak Hebrew? None? Why not? You didn’t learn any in school? Why not? It went on for quite some time. Somehow I ended up telling them where exactly I’d gone to kindergarten. That’s not one of those details that would be easy to manufacture on the spot.
OK I will be the first to say that at best it is sexual harassment and at worst sexual assault and should not be allowed. The full body scan or the invasive pat down should you opt out of the body scan, both are bad policy, let the airports decide how to determine if a passenger is a threat and not Janet Napalitino (sorry if i misspelled her name, she is still incompetent regardless of spelling)!
As one who has passed through Israeli security a fair amount of times, I agree it is far better than ours. Unfortunately, it is very difficult, almost impossible, for the USA to emulate. Israel is a much smaller country with (on average) a much more educated and motivated populace. It takes very skilled people to do what they do in security. Can you imagine what that would cost in our country, considering the number of airports?
Roger, you ask, Can you imagine what that [adoption of the Israeli procedures] would cost in our country, considering the number of airports? No, I have no idea what the current Israeli system costs there or what adoption of comparable procedures would cost in the United States. It would be quite interesting to learn those figures and then to compare them on a per capita basis, a per revenue miles flown basis and as a percentage of GDP.
I agree with the assessment that due to relative educational attainment it would be difficult to adopt those procedures. On the other hand, I have read many articles suggesting that with a (I hope false) choice between (a) the new and increasingly used TSA procedures and (b) being on an airliner bombed out of the sky, the present procedures are not only acceptable but worth what they cost. Might higher but manageable costs obviate this unfortunate choice? We waste millions of dollars daily on less valuable efforts.
I hope it does not seem excessively jingoistic, but I think the costs in money and lives previously expended to preserve our freedoms have been high but worth the costs.
I’m going to say something bold namely that if we were to return to the same passenger-screening protocols that we had on Sept. 11, 2001 we wouldn’t be any less safe.
OK, I’ll put in a caveat that there should be a little bit of profiling — x number of people of a particular accent and ethnicity attempting to board a particular flight ought to raise a red flag, but as far as searches go, they were appropriately thorough then. IIRC, they even found the boxcutters.
The problems start if we revert to the domestic security, intelligence and judicial policies we had pre-9/11 and that’s what I’m most afraid this administration is doing.
It’s a mistake to assume that terrorists are irrational. They make cost/benefit analysis. I am afraid that 0, Napolitano etc. don’t believe that.
When examining passengers, don’t the Israelis focus on people that may want to do harm vs. items that could cause harm? If this is true, there isn’t much sense in searching pilots, nuns or 3 year olds.
So far, our federal betters’ approach has been to adapt to what the terrorists have already done, not what they’re about to do or thinking of doing.
That’s right. From shoes to liquids to crotches.
As Mark Steyn mentioned yesterday (describing a TSA guy peering at his driver’s license with a jeweler’s loupe and never looking at him directly), we’re profiling objects, not people.
The guys in Waziristan and Yemen must be having a big laugh over this stuff.
What can we make the infidel do next ?
The passenger last Friday at San Diego airport was threatened with a lawsuit by the TSA agent who attempted to bar him from leaving the airport after he was well out of the “sterile” area and had missed his flight.
That’s some bad stuff, right there.
I went to Kindergarden in my home town, and since there’s only ONE school in my home town I don’t mind sharing it.
I would rather an interogation in a nice airport lobby then a pat down any day.
As for the scanners I’ve absorbed a lot of electrcity and radiation in my time I don’t mind more. Let them enjoy my naked body if they want, it’s their eyes to claw out.
As for my wife I’m the only one who will touch her or oggle her naked form.
I put it to you that a multilayered system — perhaps where the most incompetent TSA employee imaginable read off a list of random questions going A-Z down a queue, while a trained dog went from Z-A searching for stress pheromones, would be (a) safer, (b) less intrusive, (c) less objectionable, and (d) cheaper than the current system.
The fact that our TSA bureaucracy couldn’t come up with a smarter system than the current reliance on multi-million dollar machines and general harassment is a stunning indictment of our government’s competence.
I have a suggestion, Roger.
We should give California to Israel. They would do a much better job of managing the economy, they know how to keep borders and I could finally get a good deli sandwich in Orange County.
They would no longer be surrounded by people who hate them, but rather, by people who love them…and have an oceanfront view to boot.
They know how to make something beautiful out of a desert, they would not shut off water to the farmers and while I would still be a bit concerned about national security on the East Coast…I would have absolutely no fear about attack on our Western seaboard.
Negotiations with the unions and the teachers and the government pensioners would be moot. A pro business, pro entrepreneurial spirit would arise from the ashes.
We can take every holy site, brick by brick…bring it over here and rebuild it as if it was here all along. Let the Muslims have the Middle East. I would be fascinated to see how the Palestinians fared and what Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia would think of the power balance without their old neighbors. And replacing Jerry Brown with Bibi Netanyahu would be like replacing Mario Mendoza with Babe Ruth.
A perfectly smashing idea
Hey everybody talks about wanting world peace, why not see who is willing to put up or shut up.
It would end all the excuses for Jew hatred in the Middle East…and maybe even Toronto..it would lessen significantly the excuses for jihad, or the call for acts of terrorism against both Israel and the U.S., I would have much greater hope for the 6th largest economy being run by people who actually know how to make an economy grow and prosper, airport security would never be better, our border security would improve a thousandfold, and what better way to be a mensch than to give one of our states…we have 49 others, who would miss it?
Tourism would quadruple, the schools would be vastly improved, and in Hollywood who would notice?
We would get rid of Pete Stark, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer in one fell swoop, we would finally have someone who could do something with the desert and even the Inland Empire.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage would have all the original sites moved here for easy access and worship and the Palestinians would have a land left better than the way the U.N. found it 60 years ago.
CalIsrael would have a capital, Jerusafornia. Mineral, oil and gas rights would be a joint venture, even though CalIsrael would not be a state, but rather, a sovereign nation.
The U.N. could be totally disbanded, because they would have no reason to exist, after all, what possible sham resolutions could they be cooking up after the sham Palestinian “question” is completely resolved.
World peace, world economic prosperity, the end to the reason for all the wars (even Mel Gibson would agree…but he might have to move out of Malibu), improved borders, improved security, improved deli food, better entertainment, improved tourism, improved religious harmony.
Let them move out of that neighborhood and come live here among those who love them dearly. We always have, we always will. By the time they pack up and get here, we might even have a President who agrees.
cf,
Give California to Israel. Geez cf, what do you have against Israel?
/sarc!
Bleachers, that is the single most outstanding contribution to the Israel/Palestine debate I’ve ever heard in my life.
Granted, there’s not much competition with the idiots in Washington these days.
“It could be mildly embarrassing if you went to some school that you didn’t want to admit to in public, I suppose, so Aggies may not like it.”
Actually, Aggies as a group tend to be very proud of their schools. Your east coast provincialism is showing through. You should get out and see and learn more about your country.
Right on, bro. Gig ‘em.
Students of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences can also be referred to as “Aggies” (although not often). So when I first read that sentence, I thought it was a hilarious reference to Keith “Old MacDonald Cornell” Olbermann.
This TSA issue reveals the schism between a desire for security (which the government wants to implant upon its subjects) and freedom (which most Americans expect.) If the government folk respected the Constitution, and Freedom, it would have come up with other options (ie, the Israeli one). But it doesn’t respect individual Citizens’ Freedom at all. The tone of voice used by those who support the TSA system is one used by every authoritarian school marm in the history of the world.
And cfbleacher: if only if only. What a great solution to California’s problems, the Middle Eastern problems… and Israel!
I dunno, the Israeli method seems awfully costly, employing intelligent, trained personnel & all. Maybe it’s better to be groped by a former fry-cook, recently arrived from wherever, and just grin & bear it, what? I mean, we’ve got all these hundreds and hundred of airports, right? I say we put our faith in SEIU and God in Heaven. Think of the money we could save.
Frank, don’;t forget all of the pensions we will owe the TSA employees for all of their hard work. A buddy of mine is about to retire from coaching and intends to work for the TSA because he will get a pension in ten years!
Oof! A pension in ten years? That sucks. No wonder this nation is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Hi
1) track down who is making money off these nude x-ray scanners. The only way to keep selling them is to make ‘opting-out’ less appealing. Somebody in government is making a ton of money here at our expense.
2) can you think ofa better way to minimize the US Constitution than setting up ‘non-4th Amendment’ zones. Wait and see, soon ‘enhanced’ security comes to a subway or football stadium near you.
3) it is now up to us, the people, to stop this. Which are you a sheep or a lion? Let’s shut this stuff down!
A friend of mine who was violently raped a few years ago confided to me that she has had to give up on air travel entirely.
She was one of those who was randomly pulled from the line for a pat down. It triggered an anxiety attack. She wound up canceling her vacation.
For some people it is a big deal.
I’m sorry to hear that. Shame on the TSA for making your friend relive her rape.
I wonder, tho, who has the rights to the body scans? The “raw” data, as it were. Is this something that the TSA could put out there on the market? I mean, for a price, of course — something that could be debited to the General Fund of the United States of America? I’m sure Harry Flynt would be interested. Or Bob Guccioni (no, wait, he’s dead) — how about Hugh Hefner, is he still breathing? Inquiring minds want to know!
That’s it, luv. Raise you arms and think of something naughty!
Photo caption: “Okay, now cough.”
Photo caption: “Is that a rocket in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
Photo caption (for James Thurber): “Ah hah!!”
Photo caption: “That’s what I’m talkin’ about …”
Those who would Sacrifice ,, Freedom for Security ,,Shall Not Have ,, Nor will they Deserve ,, Either One : Thomas Jefferson ! Schieet Can the TSA ,, Hire returning Military ,, Israelification Now .
Photo caption: “So, where you flying to?”
Photo caption: “Does this hurt?”
Photo caption: “Where is it?”
Photo caption: “It’s a boy!”
Photo caption: “Ouch! It’s not a detonator, it’s my left nut!”
Photo caption: “Easy … easy …”
Photo caption: “Leggo of my hand!!!”
Photo caption: “I’ve nearly got it …”
Photo caption: “Damn, I know it’s in there somewhere … Would you mind squatting?”
flying in and out of Israel often, has allowed me to change my attitude as I enter the airport, and pretty much go through without a major hassle. However, I can promise if I am asked to stand in front of the scanner, I will refuse, and pretty much strip down to my skivvies for the agent – if it’s sexual assault, then they better be wearing a chastity belt, what’s good for me is better for thee
Photo caption: “No, you may not just board the damn plane.”
Photo caption: “The call me MISTER TSA!!!”
Photo caption: “Ta da!”
Good night, everyone.
I’m sorry, the photo just keeps calling me back. Does anyone think the photographer will win a Pulitzer?
Photo caption: “Okay, sir, you are free to go, and let this be a lesson to you.”
Good-Bye Pat-Downs, Hello Boom-Booms?
. . . You’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system: “Attention standby passengers–we now have a seat available on flight number XXXX. Shalom!”
There are a few obvious flaws in that new approach to terror in the skies and elsewhere, chief among which is the issue of containing the explosion to the bomb-carrier.
Also to be considered would be the certainty of the ACLU and other terrorist-loving groups filing complaints and lawsuits seeking to overturn the system to give terrorists a fighting chance to kill a bunch of innocents. After all, at that juncture in their travel, they would still be ground-bound and to effectively profile them by singling out underwear or armpit or crotch bombers is un-Constitutional, no?
Finally, the whole plan is impractical. . .
Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2732)
The ACLU defended OxyRush. I can see why you call them “terrorist-defending”.
“A national colonoscopy. Literally.”
The perfect splice-knot between Obamacare and the TSA.
TSA to passenger: “Bend over and spread ‘em sir”
or after the pat down, passenger to TSA agent: “Was it good for you too?” or ” Let’s have a cigarette”
“Bend over and spread ‘em sir” Ha!
What? No gel?
I disagree that the idea of using the Israeli method would not be scalable. Finding competent folks to ask the questions should not be a problem, there are a lot of unemployed out there, some of whom are actually looking for jobs. The only problem I see is getting them into the bureaucracy without ruining them and getting rid of the ones we don’t need or want who are already employed there. Pistole needs to be fired first.
LOL…..Dr. Frank.
Let’s remember a few things… the United States citizen has always been the target of these invasive and illegal procedures,not the REAL terrorists who want to do us harm. Why would they be thinking of giving free passes to muslim women if this were not true? If you don’t already do this,please investigate the “acts of terror”that our government declares gives them the authority to do what they do. If you look close enough you will find that in every case the “terrorist”should have been stopped long before they ever stepped foot in an airport. These people were on watch lists,no-fly lists and in the case of one man,his parents called and reported that he was going to try something. Meanwhile,Americans are being scanned and groped.
Also remember that airports are not forced to use TSA agents,they can provide employees from private companies to do the same work,and they would not be subject to the same guidelines. Call your local airport and remind them of this.
It’s not about security so much as it’s about control. Everything the government has done recently is about taking more and more control of everything and everyone. Now, they’ve move on from grabbing my health care, money, and food to grabbing my testes.
http://robomonkey.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/presenting-sing-along-with-airport-security/
SHOCKING AIRPORT VIDEO
This frightening video is absolutely shocking. How can peaceful, patriotic, America-loving, law-abiding citizens protect themselves from the government? Unless this is stopped now, even worse terror will be perpetrated against us by our own government. Who will protect us from the government?
The TSA is out of control
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhkQoiaf7Uc&feature=player_embedded
The terrorists have won. The inept, frightening government response to Islamic terrorism is to terrorize innocents.
U.S. government sick, depraved, perverted message to Americans and visiting tourists:
We own your bodies; and as the owners of your bodies, we have the right to expose your naked bodies; give you massive amounts of radiation, give you cancers and destroy your health. If you refuse our humiliating, degrading, health destroying body scanners, we will sexually assault you.
This has NOTHING to do with security. It’s all about power and control and destroying our health, basic human rights and our freedom. Ruling elites know the body scanners are useless:
“Full-body scanners are waste of money, Israeli expert says
A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.
“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Full+body+scanners+waste+money+Israeli+expert+says/2941610/story.html
Council on American-Islamic Relations: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” – Omar Ahmad (CAIR co-founder).
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine’s annual convention in Chicago, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam,”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184
Health-destroying, cancer-causing, degrading naked body scanners or dirty sexual assault needed for airport security? A LIE FROM the PIT of HELL.
Global Jihad advances greatly, not because of cruel Islamo Fascists, but because of weak, fiercely pro-Islam, Western enabler leaders. U.S. Airport Security is Deliberately and Shockingly DESTROYED for U.S. top favorite, ISLAM:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com
Controversial Muslim group
gets VIP airport security tour
Feds show CAIR latest screening steps,
sensitive counterterrorism procedures
August 18, 2006
The Department of Homeland Security
took a Muslim group with known past ties to terror organizations on a VIP tour of security operations at the nation’s busiest airport at the same time British authorities were working to break up a plot to blow up U.S. airlines.
On June 21, a senior DHS official from Washington personally guided Muslim officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O’Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.
CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a “front group” for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.
During the airport tour, CAIR was taken on a walk through the point-of-entry, Customs stations, secondary screening and interview rooms. In addition, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were asked to describe for CAIR representatives various features of the high-risk passenger lookout system.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51573
’“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
—Former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne’s prophetic warning to Europe in a speech at the U.N. In 1974.
In Sweden, many Muslim youth wear a t-shirt proclaiming: “2030-then we take over”
Islam can only become the “dominant religion” by selling its ideas. Why do you hate the Free Market (of ideas)?
Are the TSA employees – whom are on the airside of the scanners being subjected to full-body scans or physical gropings everytime they step into the airside area at the security checkpoints? After all, should a TSA employee go outside for a smoke during his/her break period, shouldn’t that person be compelled to go through the full-body scan or a groping upon their return their workstation?
Let’s see how they like it!
Dennis, you obviously have no experience with the dominatrix/slave relationship (or, in this case, the “dominator” — as in male). YOU do as they say, not vice-versa. That’s how it works. Now, stand still and widen your stance, lest I show you the lash!
Profile the passengers at the airports. Profile the airline tickets. Leave the average American citizen alone. This sexual assault on the American traveling public is meant to intimidate, humiliate, and bully and will accomplish nothing except those three things. If the Regime is not smart enough to deal with the terrorism situation that is being precipitated by a bunch of wild-eyed, crazed Muslims, the Regime needs to be replaced. Incompitano is obviously trying to work above her pay grade and needs to be escorted from the building, or charged with sexual misconduct.
Even as a grandmother I shutter thinking of flying these days. I can not imagine being “patted down”. In Bangor, Maine I was selected from our group to be inspected, along with a young father flying with his 3 children. None of this made any sense, but TSA had their orders, someone had to be searched. This is to make it safer for the flying public? Profiling will make it safer for the flying public.
Sorry all you muslims, but I am sick of being pawed and standing in line for hours because your sick religion demands jihad and you won’t stand up against the terrorists among you. So prove Islam is a religion of peace! Yeah, sure.
The revolting photo of the man sexually assaulting another man at the airport is one of the sickest photos on the planet. And what is even sicker, is that our government is paying for the sexual assault and paying for millions of decent, law-abiding citizens to be sexually assaulted. Absolute power and control by the government and the power to sexually assault at will.
If this horror is allowed to continue, we will end up losing ALL of our freedom and human rights.
Absolute power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
WE ARE NO LONGER A GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE. We have been conquered and taken over by those who hate us.
This looks like another chapter from the Nanny
state protocols. That is: protect them weither they need it or not.
Try not to exclude the phrase “jack-booted liberals.”
The pat downs and hypersecurity are for the show of the passengers.
I am beginning to agree with thaqt person who stated that making airlines more monsterous serves to promote high speed rails and the other green agenda of killing the airlines fuel.
Photo caption: Can you give me a high C?
Photo caption: Quit yer sniveling or I give you something to really cry about!
Okay, one more and then I retire.
“That’s no banana, that’s my semtex pecker bomb! Acha cha cha cha cha!”
Let me solve this Airport Security problem for all of undecisive people who can’t decide what color toilet paper to buy. There should be one rule for flying in America. Now, at first glance I know most Americans won’t believe how simple this is because we have to listen to a bunch of pudknocker politicians and news people whine and gasp like a bunch of Hollywood actors, directors, and hair dressers. Here it is people: If you want to fly in America, you will get either a body scan, a pat down or a good old fashioned dog sniff. That’s it. If you don’t like this rule: take the bus, the train, or a
cruise. Got it!
PS, if your Muslim or an Arab, forget about political correctness and if you don’t like this idea, don’t fly.
Now, wasn’t that easy?
Bomb sniffing PIGS! Swine have a keen sense of smell, and are just as intelligent as canines. If they can find a truffle they can find a bomb!