Originally Posted by studentff

9/11 was a tragedy that should be remembered, but let us not get so caught up in those memories that we forget the monster we have created in our own backyard.

A post from 7:05 p.m. on 9/10 in the passive-millimeter-wave thread demonstrates yet another example of TSOs and in this case a screening manager needlessly abusing and humiliating a disabled American. That is not anomaly in an agency that has forced people to remove prosthetic legs, forced prosthetic wearers to drop their pants either in public or at private screenings, and forced a woman to remove a nipple ring while TSOs laughed. (The nipple-ring removal was even endorsed by TSA management in the press before a "policy change" was eventually announced.)

This is also the same agency that uses an un-American secret blacklist to deny innocent Americans freedom of movement with no effective means of redress or due process. If the Blogger Bob was learning about terrorism in college Poly-Sci classes, he also should have been learning about secret blacklists in the era of red scares and labor strife and why we don't use them in a free society.

And of course, TSA continues to steal under color of authority, permitted items like the custom battery pack for an external DVD player. Again, this theft was touted as a success by TSA. And that's not to mention the countless thefts of other permitted items such as hand tools.

Meanwhile, power-tripping screeners and their supervisors continue to abuse passengers with little accountability and under the protection of being able to issue civil fines for "non-physical interference" if a passenger so much as questions them. Power-tripping TSOs refer a special-ed teacher for arrest and threaten her with a $10,000 fine for carrying a leather bookmark, while power-tripping screeners at another airport issue a passenger a fine for "only" a few hundred dollars for forgetting a cheese slicer in his carry-on. TSOs needlessly paw through non-alarming wallets hoping to read some juicy tidbit that they can use to justify detention and harassment. Retaliatory secondaries and arbitrary interpretations of the SOP are routine to anyone who flies more than a few times a year, and TSA management rarely if ever undertakes transparent, public discipline of the offenders.

TSA continues to endorse and encourage such power trips by relying on secret rules and using SSI and designed inconsistency as excuses for misbehavior.

As for TSA's ever stricter prohibitions on items, for "many, the rules are now burdensome" because they have gotten out of hand. TSA is obsessed with finding cash and drugs, which are not threats to aviation, in hollowed-out shoes, when a metal detector (to detect knives/guns) and an ETD swab or puffer (to detect explosives) would detect threats to aviation without forcing shoe removal. TSA has created a papers-please state of laughable ID checks with blacklights and loupes, where you have to request permission from the government to travel in your own country. And of course there's the war on water--2 years after TSA over-reacted to a half-baked plot, they still ban most passengers from carrying any significant quantity of liquids. I still think that when someone weaves explosives into fabric, TSA will actually try to demand that we fly naked.

9/11 was tragic, but I am sick of hearing how things "changed forever" on 9/11. Terrorism was and is nothing new, and the only reason things "changed forever" was because our government and people tolerated throwing out the Constitution, liberty, and common sense in the name of feel-good security theater.

Meanwhile, cargo still is not screened.

TSA is so out of control and on such a gigantic power trip that the only way to solve it is to disband the agency, bar the leadership from public service or security service for life, and re-constitute airport screening with as much emphasis on liberty and civil rights as on security. The mission must be pared down to the legal mandate of keeping weapons, explosives, and incendiaries off of commercial aircraft; no other activities (blacklists, papers-please checks) or seizures (cash and drug referrals) should be allowed.


By all means should our law enforcment, intelligence agencies, and military search for and root out terrorists. But the place for law-enforcement to catch them is before they get to the airport, and the place for the military to catch them is before they get in the country. Better checkpoint screening would not have stopped 9/11 because the attack was based on a philosophy of crew-cooperation with hijackers, not on prohibited items. Better intelligence and usage of intelligence might have stopped the attacks.

7 years later America is substantially less free and little if any safer. I still live my life, but no longer refer to the USA as a free country and use the phrase "land of the free, home of the brave" only in sarcasm as I point out that my countrymen are afraid of 4-oz toothpaste. If I ever have kids, it will be hard to explain to them that our country used to value liberty, privacy, and the right to anonymity while they grow up in the growing surveillance state and budding police state that we have become. The terrorists have caused us to spend untold billions of dollars on security by executing an attack that cost them less than a million dollars and less than two dozen operatives. I don't consider that outcome to be an appropriate honor for the 3,000 victims of 9/11.