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PEOPLE RISE UP AGAINST TSA
By Keith Johnson
Though it has been a slow and often arduous task, American populists leading the revolt against the intrusive pat-downs and cancer inducing body scanners of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have made significant headway in recent months. What began as a grassroots insurrection against governmental abuse has now attracted the support of state and federal legislators:
• The Texas House of Representatives attempted to push through legislation that would make it a crime for federal authorities to conduct searches of a passenger’s private areas without sufficient probable cause.
• A bill that is now making its way through the New Hampshire state assembly takes it one step further by making the “touching or viewing with a technological device of a person’s breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault.”
• Lawmakers in Utah are also working on a bill that would eclipse both Texas and New Hampshire by imposing a complete ban on pat-down groping.
• Michigan is the latest to join in on this fight with plans to introduce similar legislation, though not quite as ambitious as the other aforementioned states.
• At the federal level, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced a bill in April that would require parental consent before minors were subjected to pat-downs. This came in response to public outrage over a video that showed a six-year-old girl being groped by TSA screeners at a New Orleans airport. TSA caved to criticism and has modified its policy to reduce—but not eliminate— the invasive pat-downs of young children. Then, on June 26 TSA officials frisked a 95-year-old wheelchair-bound
woman and reportedly requested that she remove her adult diaper.
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Ever since the Bush administration introduced the TSA into our lives, its unconstitutional practices have become a nightmare for air passengers, slowed commerce to a near crawl, and devastated America’s tourist industry. And Americans have obviously had enough.
We’re told that it’s being done in the best interests of national security, despite the fact that TSA has yet to identify or capture even one terrorist. All TSA has managed to confiscate are thousands of personal property items that are later sold at state surplus stores. According to an article in Austin’s American-Statesman, one store in Texas alone generated more than $300,000 in revenue during 2010. Some of the items sold were snow globes, stuffed animals, belts, cell phones, watches, sunglasses and even a couple of bowling balls.
The level of TSA’s absurdity has reached epic proportions and, finally, government officials started to take notice—but only after massive pressure from U.S. citizens.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) summed it up during a recent Senate hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. After listening to TSA administrator John Pistole defend the frisking of children, the Republican senator responded with these choice words: “It makes me think you’re clueless.”
Keith Johnson is an independent journalist and the editor of “Revolt of the Plebs,” an alternative news website that can be found at RevoltofthePlebs.com.
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(Issue # 28, July 11, 2011)
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