TSA: "You have your law, I have mine."

We boarded the plane and nobody looked at the cannisters carrying drink for my youngster- I could easily have boarded with nitric acid and glycerine and mixed them in the toilet.
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Don't forget the "other " acid that acts as the catalyst.


To those people who have said that if we do not like to be searched then we don't have to fly. Well, the same can be said about you wanting your safety more than your civil rights when you fly. If you don't like it if they ever stop these offensive and/or intrusive searches before you get on the plane and the TSA guards and your "safety" is no longer there, you can always drive. :rolleyes:
 
For our resident TSA apologists

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...av=rss_business

TSA Slated for Dismantling

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A01

The Transportation Security Administration, once the flagship agency in the nation's $20 billion effort to protect air travelers, is now slated for dismantling.

The latest sign came yesterday when the Bush administration asked David M. Stone, the TSA's director, to step down in June, according to aviation and government sources. Stone is the third top administrator to leave the three-year-old agency, which was swiftly created in the chaos and patriotism following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The TSA absorbed divisions of other agencies such as Federal Aviation Administration only to find itself now the victim of a massive reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security

The TSA has been plagued by operational missteps, public relations blunders and criticism of its performance from both the public and legislators. Its "No Fly" list has mistakenly snared senators. Its security screeners have been arrested for stealing from luggage, and its passenger pat-downs have set off an outcry from women.

Hit the link for the full story. ;)
 
I stopped flying way before 9/11 and wont anymore so could add nothing pertinant to the issue..

But ya gotta love all that rightious indignation in this thread!! :D :D

That's the spirit of America folks. Some from seriously respectable people and even LEO's...I applaud you guys for that. It's encouraging to an ultra-conservative such as myself.
 
I do have one question, if you don't mind. Have you ever watched a male security agent grope a female relative or significant other? Does it make you feel better and more secure about the flight?
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Nope. I didn't see them grope any female strangers either.
 
Nope. I didn't see them grope any female strangers either.
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Okay, that explains it. You don't see the problems in part because you're ignorant of - or at least distanced from - the abuses.

My sister wasn't too fond of the guy fondling her breasts in public a little over a month ago. I don't recall her being offered a female screener either. But it's all in the name of perceived safety so it's okay.
 
Okay, that explains it. You don't see the problems in part because you're ignorant of - or at least distanced from - the abuses.

My sister wasn't too fond of the guy fondling her breasts in public a little over a month ago. I don't recall her being offered a female screener either. But it's all in the name of perceived safety so it's okay.
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The fact that TSA employees have broken the rules has nothing to do with whether the searches are legal or whether people should be subjected to being searched before boarding airplanes.

I know of plenty of instances where cops have broken the law and many more of cops breaking the rules. That doesn't mean the search and seizure law or policy is flawed.

We should let people on board airplanes secure in the knowledge that they can't randomly be searched because some government employee felt your sister's boobs?
 
We should let people on board airplanes secure in the knowledge that they can't randomly be searched because some government employee felt your sister's boobs?
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No, not quite what I was getting at.

You seem to be extremely supportive of giving a free hand to the TSA to do as it wishes to guarantee your illusion of safety. Indeed, you go so far as to say that you're okay with anything short of a body cavity search. When someone criticizes the abuses, you rush to defend the system as it stands and accuse anyone who disagrees of being unreasonable.

The point is, while the TSA may do a great job at giving people that safe feeling (whether that feeling is founded in reality or not), the manner in which they do so is repulsive to me. Regulations one has to obey but can't even read because they're considered "Sensitive Security Information", screeners routinely abusing their arbitrary authority to steal and sexually abuse passengers, limited (if any) recourse for those who suffer abuse - these are what bother me most.

By the way, why do you set your personal limit of tolerance at body cavity searches? Doesn't my right to not be blown up at 35,000 feet trump your "right" to not have your anus probed? Do you suggest people should feel free to give themselves with explosive enemas without fear of being randomly probed by TSA agents? ;)
 
Pathetic apologia

"The fact that TSA employees have broken the rules has nothing to do with whether the searches are legal...."

Wrong! The fact that your sainted TSA thugs have "broken the rules" is precisely what makes those sexual assaults - excuse me; your "searches" - illegal.

It is what makes an utter mockery of TSA's claim to legitimacy; i.e., it's ostensible guarantee of our security.

Groping and fondling passengers and filming those assaults is not "security."

Stealing from passengers' luggage is not "security."

Threatening, intimidating and otherwise abusing passengers while citing specious "regulations" is not security.

It is abuse of power, pure and simple. You worship it in the pathetic pursuit of an illusory safety, the perfect example of Franklin's dismissive assessment of your kind.* :barf:

The majority on this board can distinguish real security measures from the rampant excesses of high school drop-outs drunk with power, and the curtailment of fundamental rights on the disingenous premise of "security."

*"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty in order to gain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
 
The fact that TSA employees have broken the rules has nothing to do with whether the searches are legal or whether people should be subjected to being searched before boarding airplanes.
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If I remember correctly the whole reason they put the 4th amendment in the constution was to because they were afraid that if the government was free to search us whenever they wanted, then it would be abused. Sounds like TSA employees breaking the rules is similar to the british redcoats busting down a colonials doors to his home. It was just a FEW redcoats and their officers that did that 250 years ago too.
 
Wrong! The fact that your sainted TSA thugs have "broken the rules" is precisely what makes those sexual assaults - excuse me; your "searches" - illegal.
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Let me clarify: Just because some TSA guy broke the law/rules and searched your sister when a female TSA should have done it, doesn't mean that searches of flyer's carry-on luggage without probable cause is illegal.

screeners routinely abusing their arbitrary authority to steal and sexually abuse passengers, limited (if any) recourse for those who suffer abuse - these are what bother me most.
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I personally don't know of any such abuses. Since you do, I can understand your opinion of the system. However, I don't think the problem is nearly as wide-spread as you do. And even if the whole TSA system is scrapped, there is going to be someone else, maybe even more incompetent at times, doing the searches and screening.

Sounds like TSA employees breaking the rules is similar to the british redcoats busting down a colonials doors to his home. It was just a FEW redcoats and their officers that did that 250 years ago too.
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I think the two have very little to do with each other, other than both being warrantless searches. And the police may still legally bust down the door to a colonial, or even a tudor without a warrant under certain circumstances.

It is abuse of power, pure and simple. You worship it in the pathetic pursuit of an illusory safety, the perfect example of Franklin's dismissive assessment of your kind.*
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A little melodramatic, don't you think? I "worship" it?? Please.

By the way, why do you set your personal limit of tolerance at body cavity searches?
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Because I think it's too intrusive to be reasonable under the circumstances, although with probable cause I would believe it to be reasonable with a warrant.
 
interesting thread

We the Sheeple of the United States.....

So as it stands now, citizen's rights are being violated (or very close to it) on a regular basis by employees of the government, while our borders are porous and people flood in by the millions a year, and we're tolerating it?
Where is the huge outcry? Where is the groundswell of public outrage?
Seems like the careful examination of passenger shoes, among other things, are nothing more than a visible feel-good exercise.

Someone said on another thread "bread and circuses" Seems appropriate. The Founding Fathers are way past rolling in their graves.
 
And even if the whole TSA system is scrapped, there is going to be someone else, maybe even more incompetent at times, doing the searches and screening.
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And here is the problem. You're proceeding from the premise that searches and screenings MUST be done.

The problem is that this premise is built in to the aviation system - if an airline wishes to forego screening and demand armed pilots and armed passengers, federal one-size-fits-all anti-market regulations forbid it.
 
I got the solution

Seems like the careful examination of passenger shoes, among other things, are nothing more than a visible feel-good exercise.
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So as it stands now, citizen's rights are being violated (or very close to it) on a regular basis by employees of the government, while our borders are porous and people flood in by the millions a year, and we're tolerating it?
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O.K. so heres what we do, we gather up all of the TSA agents and put them on the border with Mexico and treat illegals the same way they do us. That way they would refuse to put up with the B.S. and stay home. :D

We would be ten times safer closing our border to the south than we are now with "reasonable" searches at the airports.(I know it has been said many times already but it deserves repeating.)

What we need to do is to develop and install the equipment we have been promised that they would install. If we had explosive sniffers to detect without making us take off our shoes and combine that with a computer controlled (and without a human looking at our privates) full size X-ray type of imager, then we wouldn't even be having (most of) this discussion. Instead we use a system that isn't prefferable and in my opinion, intrusive beyond "reason".

Oh, and arm pilots too.
 
And here is the problem. You're proceeding from the premise that searches and screenings MUST be done.
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Searches and screenings absolutely must be done. Or, to find out what society is prepared to accept as reasonable, we could announce flights on which luggage and passengers are screened and searched, and those with no screening and searches. If you want to fly on the former, you have to submit to a screen and search. If you don't want to submit, you can fly on the "unsearched" flight, with the rest of the people whose persons and luggage hasn't been searched or screened. Think that would work out for you?
 
Searches and screenings absolutely must be done. Or, to find out what society is prepared to accept as reasonable, we could announce flights on which luggage and passengers are screened and searched, and those with no screening and searches. If you want to fly on the former, you have to submit to a screen and search. If you don't want to submit, you can fly on the "unsearched" flight, with the rest of the people whose persons and luggage hasn't been searched or screened. Think that would work out for you?
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YES!!!! The free market system would work itself out. We would have a choice. Armed pilots and the undercover airline cops (their proper name eludes me right now) and unintrusive security measures would protect us that flew it. I think that is EXACTLY what half of us have been saying in this thread.
 
YES!!!! The free market system would work itself out. We would have a choice. Armed pilots and the undercover airline cops (their proper name eludes me right now) and unintrusive security measures would protect us that flew it. I think that is EXACTLY what half of us have been saying in this thread.
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I'm sure Al-Queda would agree.
 
Frank,
The way the system is being done now is NOT the only way to provide us with security. Let's hear you solution to all those people's complaints. If you think it is just a few of us that are complaining then you have your head stuck .. ..... ...
I can't remember if you said you were TSA or not, but let me ask you this: Are the only people you strip search, or search more than the others, the ones who look suspicous?? Well think of that poor girl that had a stranger feel her up the last time she flew. Every time she flew after that don't you think she would look suspicious because she was acting nervous. Of course she would be acting nervous because she be scared that she would have a man or a sexually ambiguous women touch her pubescant, VERY private parts again and again and again.....

Pleeeeaaaase tell me that you don't think it is right for this to happen and that we must try to find a better way of doing things.
 
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