TSA = Customs?
 

Do you think TSA's goal is to become a domestic version of Customs? With "enhanced" ID checking, more BDO's, etc? What do you think their eventual endgame is, with the ID checking/BDO charade?

As an operating agency of a Department whose endgame is to convince the American people that restrictions on their freedoms is an acceptable tradeoff in the name of alleged increased security, TSA's main goal in life is to justify their continued existence. They want to convince Congress that they provide an essential service as part of the DHS continuous Global War on Terror that will never end, if DHS can help it.

More like the East-German Stasi than US Customs.

IMO the endgame with ID checking/BDO is for passengers to be required to register/request permission for each flight, including giving a reason for travel deemed legitimate by TSA. (i.e., no mileage runs.) Also to require pax to provide extensive background information and clear a periodic TSA background check to avoid SSSS treatment on each flight. TSA will keep a log of each trip and use data-mining software to associate you with your declared and undeclared travel companions and determine "suspicious" activity and incorrect/misleading permission requests, and such suspicion will be sufficient cause to deny travel.

Once they get pax used to all of this, DHS can drum up some excuse to require checks of your Real-ID and permission-requests to travel interstate on roads. They could also put automated license-plate readers at each state border crossing to augment their travel logs. Once everyone's Real-ID, which they will be mandated to carry at all times, has an RFID chip in it, they can use readers to track movements of individuals instead of vehicles. Those policies may be hard to sell, but if they have people used to the checks at the airport and there's a couple of truck-based terrorist attacks, they can just claim such checks are a natural extension of an already established, accepted, and legal policy.

Then they will effectively have control of all long-distance movement by law-abiding citizens.

Airport "security" is turning into transportation "security": buses, bridges, trains, etc. Note that "security" is not security. For example, I don't know what kind of security bored looking cops in body armor (including blood type labels) with M4s provide in narrow crowded passageways in train stations that already have literally dozens of other cops standing around, nor do I know how "randomly" checking the ID of train passengers already on-board improves security. :rolleyes:

Then we must ask: Why are transportation methods where the passengers control deadly vehicles subject to less security? Clearly that doesn't make sense, so one of the next steps will be to enhance "security" for the road network.

By that point the only way to avoid "security" will be walking, say from CA to MA. Of course people walking along highways and private property and sleeping in public (to avoid state ID requirements for innkeepers) are violating the law, so they'll have to be subject to "security".

Those who chose to never leave their homes might have died or be suffering from a mental illness, so that will be sufficient cause to investigate, i.e. search their homes.

That reminds me, what was the 4th change to this old document we used to talk about? I think it was judged a "security" threat. :(

Sorry, Mike G., but it is Ike's fault
 

I think their main goal is to make up for lost time. Only recently has DHS realized how much work it is going to be to make up those 57 lost years they could have been stomping on the constitution if only that d**ned Ike had not shut down their perfect role model the Geheime Staatspolizei.

Hmm, I wonder what TSA's next ID-related move will be. Requiring "verification" for no-ID passengers in June, what next?

I think, if all this comes to pass, the Beatles will become very popular again.

You say you want a revolution...