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I know something about America and the American public and there is a message that should get through to the TSA: the body scanners and hands inside the legs rub around ain’t gonna work. The sooner the TSA pulls back from this insanity, the less the damage will be. It is that simple.
No one is going to put up with that sort of thing very long. With the other “security measures”, there was no real way to protest. Besides, in the immediate years after 9-11, anyone saying anything against security would have been shouted down by the much larger, fearful public. Now, there is a growing sense of anger and a clear reason to push back: keep your hands off my genitals (or “junk” as the guy from California inartfully called his private parts).
The machines being installed at airports around the country cost about 200,000 dollars each. You can’t have them everywhere and you can’t put everyone through them, so what’s the use? Select a few victims out of every crowd and force them through. If the machines are so important, and every person is a potential terrorist, why doesn’t everyone go through?
You may, if you are insistent, not enter the x-ray machine, but then you would be subjected to an enhanced pat down. That means a TSA flunky of the same sex would pat your body and put his or her hands inside you legs and up around your crotch. They might even touch your otherwise private parts. We spend our whole lives being told about how to protect our sexual privacy and beings, then we are supposed to go off to the airport and forget about all that? Not likely.
This is a disaster for the TSA, for the issue of security and, ultimately, for the business of traveling freely and unmolested around your nation and world. I am utterly amazed that people in the government think they can get away with this. This is hubris compounded.
How in the world does anyone think they can get away with feeling up people’s crotches at the airports? Hell, if the danger from terrorism is that great, maybe we should all just stay home. Shutdown flying completely. The “naked machines” would have been tolerated by most people, but pairing them up with the alternative of a crotch grab is too much, way too much.
“Liberals” (please sneer when you say the word, everyone else does) will likely protest this intrusion first, along with civil liberties supporters. Sooner or later, I would expect “conservatives” (like the new majority in the House) to start speaking out. That’s when we will know change is coming. It should take Obama about 15 minutes to cave on this issue, because nothing, except the investment in wasted electronic equipment and the pride of the TSA, is really at stake.
The airlines will lose a couple of billion dollars a year or more if this kind of thing is allowed to stay in place. Oh, well, they are so rich and prosperous, they can take it, right?
By the way, there is no doubt that the TSA is lying about whether the images in the naked machines can be saved. First, CNN reported that, under certain circumstances, they are able to be saved. But, let’s not kid ourselves. If the TSA uses the machines, they would want to save the images, with time stamps, for at least one day in case there were a hijacking. That way, they could see what they missed and announce that they were making corrections. Second, if they find something, they will want to trumpet it to the world to say: “Look what a good job we are doing!”.
The TSA is lying about these machines or about some other mechanism to record images. Normally, would never make such a statement on the TerryReport unless I have specific information to back it up. Yet, we have already seen, on CNN, that there is a means to record. Further, it doesn’t make sense to use the machines without at least short term record capability. What the TSA probably means is that the security flunky at the controls has no way to record the images and no way to transmit them. That is not the same as totally saying there is no storage of images. When the lie is found out, they should have to shutdown all of them.
Doug Terry, 11.16.10
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