From: WASHINGTON DC CONNECTIONS <groups-noreply@linkedin.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:03 PM
Subject: New comment on "Petition and protest against TSA molestation"
To: Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com>
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You all do realize that as travelers are subjected to intimate pat downs, the threat simply shifts to goods, equipment, luggage handlers, food service, and explosives concealed within the human body? Report back after you've been through the procedures a few dozen times. Meanwhile, could you not disagree civilly rather than with such vulgarly belligerent quasi-public ad hominem attacks? | |
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Michelle Pelescak, MS/MBA, CNMT, Teresa Hartnett like this
26 comments
Follow Mary
Mary Mihalik • There's a difference between 'feeling' safe and BEING safe. Time and time again we have seen ourselves willingly giving up our civil liberties. From writ habeaus corpus to the new "hold-em up" pose for electronic strip searches (or you can choose the alternative 'freedom' pat down). Guilty before proven innocent?
Duck and cover - you'll protect yourself against nuclear fall out.
If there was truly threats to our safety, more deaths, disruption, and distruction can be done on a train at Penn Station NY or 30th St in Philly or Union Station in DC. Amtrak now allows unloaded firearms on trains - your ammunition can be in your luggage (like someone won't reach up to the overhead rack and re-load? seriously....) Heck, on a plain, you can set off a bomb on an airplane by using your cell phone to detonate a bomb concealed in your checked in luggage in the belly of the plane.
70% of all Americans - as represented by the comments to this post - do NOT object to the strip searches, electronic or otherwise. Not because it is actually making us safer, but simply because it feeds our fears and need to feel safer.
We had the technology in 2001 to stop the terrorists. And, yet, just this week, the hosts of Myth Busters smuggled on a bunch of case cutters, etc.
Duck and cover has a reprise in the new millenia.
The terrorists win. as pointed out, the threat simply shifts.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
~ Ben Franklin
Follow Ben
Ben Sims • I think that it would be far more inconvenient to be the victim of a terrorist attack of any flavor, than to be aggressively screened at the airport. I think I would rather see them use dogs more often though, of course if we do that then people who are afraid of dogs are being "terrorized" It's sad that we can't find a solution that provides real security, yet does not cause people to cry about being violated. These two goals seem in direct opposition. Until we find that solution, I'll stand firmly on the "not wanting to be blown up" side of the body scanner issue.
Follow Sigrid Caroline
Sigrid Caroline Schroder, JD • In a society which babbles about "boundaries" and "privacy rights," the mass acceptance of degrading public search and pat down is rather astounding when better technology for searching the person exists now and the real threat can be slipped onto the plane in a nearly infinite number of ways. Don't you think that all of you deserve a higher standard of technology and consideration? Has anyone asked David Grizzle, Chief Counsel of tthe FAA? We know terrorists aren't Boy Scouts, but there are better ways.
Jeffrey Rosen wrote a fascinating commentary in the Post on the 28th, aside from the real Constitutional issues, he pointed out the following technological argument:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112404510.html
He wrote:"For example, Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, the European airport that employs body-scanning machines most extensively, has incorporated crucial privacy and safety protections. Rejecting the "backscatter" machines used in the United States, which produce revealing images of the body and have raised concerns about radiation, the Dutch use scanners known as ProVision ATD, which employ radio waves with far lower frequencies than those used in common hand-held devices. If the software detects contraband or suspicious material under a passenger's clothing, it projects an outline of that area of the body onto a gender-neutral, blob-like human image, instead of generating a virtually naked image of the passenger. The passenger can then be taken aside for secondary screening. TSA Administrator John Pistole acknowledged in recent testimony that these "blob" machines, as opposed to the "naked" machines, are the "next generation" of screening technology. His concern, he said, is that "there are currently a high rate of false positives on that technology, so we're working through that." But courts might hold that, even with false positives, "blob" imaging technology that leads to a secondary pat-down is less invasive and more effective than imposing a choice between "naked" machines and intrusive pat-downs as primary screening for all passengers."
Follow Eric
Eric Davis • For those that are pointing out other means a bomb can get on... something this should put things into perspective.
We cannot eliminate the risk of an attack. There will always be a way around the system. As there is a way around every system. We can only work to prevent an attack as best as we possibly can. Safety is always a limitation on one's freedom. JUST ACCEPT THAT.
I will give you some perfect examples of safety that limit your freedom that you do everyday and you don't cry about it.
1. The seat belt. Yes, it is a law to put it on when you are in a vehicle. But who's right is it to restrain me in one?
1. Child safety seats. It makes total sense to have it, but who's right is it to force me to purchase something so my child can go in a car?
1. Suicide. Yes, you are not allowed to kill yourself. If you are suicidal and are caught before you do it successfully you will be put in a mental hospital. (I think I should have a right to live or die)
4. Risks in pregnancy. I can't specifically remember where the boundary lies, but in some cases the potential mother's life is put to the side for the sake of the unborn child. Even though the unborn are not considered living, essentially until they are born. (you cannot count them as a dependent or include them in upcoming expenses for debt evaluation, etc.
Is there a better way to do these scans? Maybe, but until they figure out a better way I am happy to let them scan me or feel me up to make it more difficult for them to get a knife or bomb through security. If you don't like it don't fly.
Follow Ben
Ben Sims • If you look closely Miss Schroder, I think you might find that those who babble, aren't the same one's who are accepting of these searches. They are very clearly two very different groups, you cant effectively lump them together to prove a point. This is very clearly apples to oranges. We, nationally are very divided on this issue. Either both sides can dial back the propaganda and work on a middle ground solution, or we can continue to have these little disagreements.
Bruce Majors • You know you have convinced me. But since Washington DC is no doubt a particular target I think we should have weekly inspections of your homes for dirty bombs. And strip searches and cavity searches of all of you who work in federal buildings.
And then we must RFID chip you and your children.
Perhaps given the mood of the electorate in fly over America, I could get that into some Congressional candidates platforms. Daily cavity and strip searches and RFID chipping of all federal employees and contractors, at least residing in DC.
Bend over honey. I am putting your chip in very deep.