Originally Posted by
TSORon
As I have said before, they don’t detect “prohibited items” and have never been designed to do so. You are making several false assumptions.
Ron, no one said they were supposed to detect prohibited items. What has been said over and over again is that they're detecting "anomalies" that don't exist, and defeating the stated purpose of having them (as any TSO will tell you): "They're here to keep us from having to touch you." The claim that they're working properly is akin to Mike Valentine's claim about his radar detector: false alerts aren't false alerts; they're the machine doing what it's supposed to do.
Just like you, I will be watching. Since I know what the rules are and how they should be applied I will be looking for many things, including TSO’s ignoring or violating those rules. I’ll let you know what I “see”.
Don't do that. The rules are flawed and you're blind to that. Instead, look at it as a civilian, untainted by indoctrination into the TSA culture. Is it revolting to you to see people being patted down? Hey, here's a fun idea: opt out. Don't tell them that you're a TSO, just opt out of the scanner both ways. See how they respond, and see if your answers (or refusal to answer, if you're feeling frisky) to their inquiries about why anyone could ever possibly want to opt out of their perfectly safe and private machine gets you an overly-zealous screening.
It would be helpful if you knew what those civil liberties are first. Then I might put some credence to your opinions.
Who died and made you a Constitutional lawyer? Unlike yourself, there are actually people who hold a law degree on this forum, and some people who are closely related to Constitutional lawyers, who very well understand those rights and the exemptions to them. Those people tend to believe that the TSA's actions far overstep the "administrative search" doctrine, and dive into the murky realm of unconstitutional.
Again I say that it would be helpful if you knew what those civil liberties are first. Without that knowledge, something which seems to glaringly obvious to anyone who actually has knowledge on the subject, your opinion is based upon ignorance. Don’t get me wrong, you are more than welcome to whatever opinion you choose to have, but any opinion based on ignorance is far more likely to be wrong than right.
Opinions are subjective. They are inherently neither right nor wrong. Your claim to understand Constitutional law, however, is wrong. TSOs are not trained in Constitutional law, and whenever one claims that they know my rights better than they do, that they are allowed by the Constitution to perform the search they're performing, or (my favorite) that all rights are surrendered while one is in the secure zone, it makes me laugh and cry on the inside.
So tell me, since you understand civil liberties so flawlessly, what university did you get your law degree from? I ask only because I'm about to finish studies for mine, and the "understanding of civil rights" that you claim is, frankly, laughable. Your understanding of civil rights seems to be limited to parroting off what your three-striper has told you.