TSA Tyranny » Relevant Articles

TSA-style Searches Move to the Streets of New York City

thorn — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:25:19 +0000

The NYPD Commissioner says department will begin testing a new high-tech device that scans for concealed weapons.

The device, which tests for terahertz radiation, is small enough to be placed in a police vehicle or stationed at a street corner where gunplay is common.

By Rocco Parascandola / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

January 23, 2013

Get ready for scan-and-frisk.

The NYPD will soon deploy new technology allowing police to detect guns carried by criminals without using the typical pat-down procedure, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday.

The department just received a machine that reads terahertz — the natural energy emitted by people and inanimate objects — and allows police to view concealed weapons from a distance.

“If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object,” Kelly said.

A video image aired at a Police Foundation breakfast Wednesday showed an officer, clad in a New York Jets jersey and jeans, with the shape of a hidden gun clearly visible under his clothing when viewed through the device.

The department will begin testing the high-tech device for use on the street. The device is small enough to be placed in a police vehicle or stationed at a street corner where gunplay has occurred in the past.

TSA Continues to Flex Its Muscles Away from Airports

thorn — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 02:36:10 +0000

TSA ‘Viper’ Team Makes Appearance in Emeryville

ABC7 News - KGO-TV San Francisco, CA

Watch the news report:

U.S. Airports to Remove Naked-Image Scanners

Liberator — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:19:50 +0000

Editor’s Note: Vigilance in defending constitutionally protected rights – 4th Amendment, and others – must persist. The promise of removing scanners from public transportation facilities which reveal images of citizen’s nude bodies is a step in the right direction – in a “free” society, it is nonsense that this has even been controversial. However the erosion of American citizens’ freedom appears precipitous, and the rise of a tyrannical state has growing momentum. Continue to urge your local legislators to draft, sponsor, and support bills such as Texas Representative David Simpson’s H.B. 80, which may be read here: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/83R/billtext/pdf/HB00080I.pdf#navpanes=0.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing.

Download Copy of Rep. Simpson’s H.B. 80: Texas House Bill 80

Airport Security, Nakedness, and Authority—Part 2

Liberator — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:00:18 +0000

Airport Security, Nakedness, and Authority—Part 2

Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a 2-part article series by Lael and Sarah Weinberger that discusses the Bible’s perspective on shameful nakedness and summarizes how nakedness has been used by despotic regimes as an intimidation tactic. This discussion is of heightened relevance, given the TSA’s recent invasive screenings practices. Click here to read Part 1.

By Lael and Sarah Weinberger

Part one of this article discussed the Biblical foundation upon which the traditional Jewish and Christian views of nakedness, modesty, and decency were built. In the Bible, nakedness is considered inappropriate, and it is also associated with humiliation and captivity. The book of Isaiah describes Ethiopian prisoners being led away naked by their Assyrian captors. Stone reliefs depicting naked captives suggest that this may have been a real practice among the Assyrians. However, these sorts of practices were not left buried in the sands of ancient history. In this second part of the article, we will proceed down the historical timeline to examine more recent examples of tyrannical authorities who used nakedness as a means of asserting their authority over those under their control. Examples can be drawn from a diverse collection of cultures and a variety of historical episodes.

In his book, The Principles of Sociology, nineteenth century sociologist Herbert Spencer discussed the correlation between nakedness and authority:

The conquered man, prostrate before his conqueror, and becoming himself a possession, simultaneously loses possession of whatever things he has about him; and therefore, surrendering his weapons, he also yields up, if the victor demands it, whatever part of his dress is worth taking. Hence the nakedness, partial or complete, of the captive, becomes additional evidence of his subjugation.[i]

To illustrate his point, Spencer offers examples from various cultures where nakedness was a sign of submission. Interestingly, nakedness in the presence of authorities was not a practice associated solely with war and conquest, but actually became “a complimentary observance” in several cultures. To show their respect and submission, underlings would remove some or all of their clothing in the presence of their ruler or those of higher position than themselves. Spencer says that in Fiji, stripping became a ritual part of paying tribute money.[ii]

The principle that Spencer identified may not have been practiced in quite the same way in western cultures. But westerners were certainly equally capable of exercising tyrannical authority over others by requiring nakedness when it suited their fancy.

The Atlantic slave trade is a classic example of human rights violation in history. Not surprisingly, nakedness played a part in this horrible trade; the “owners” exerted their authority to require nakedness whenever it suited their convenience. Before the African captives were loaded onto the ships that would take them across the Atlantic, a “surgeon” would examine their naked bodies, checking for disease.[iii] When the ship reached its destination, those slaves who had survived the inhuman conditions of the voyage were sold at auction—often with little or no clothing on.[iv] In North America, eyewitness accounts of slave auctions record that the bodies of the slaves were exposed so that the potential buyers could see what they were getting.[v] Regardless of the slaves’ cultural background regarding nakedness, the fact is that they were being treated like animals, not men. They had no rights; they were completely at the mercy of those buying and selling them.

After the end of the legal slave trade in the west, some of the most obnoxious totalitarian regimes employed the same dehumanizing use of nakedness. Fast-forwarding to fairly recent history, we find a tyrannical power using nakedness as a tool of humiliation and intimidation—Nazi Germany. When prisoners arrived at Nazi concentration camps, they were required to strip, leave all their personal belongings behind, and proceed to the shower rooms. In many cases, these “shower rooms” were not showers, but gas chambers where millions met their deaths. Those whom the Nazis had selected to work in the concentration camp would be sent to the real showers. Corrie ten Boom, a political prisoner at Ravensbruk concentration camp, recorded her experiences in the well-known book, The Hiding Place. She describes the humiliating process of stripping, waking past a row of SS guards into the shower, selecting a prison dress from a heap on the floor, and then waiting in line to be patted down by the guards, who wanted to make sure that no one was smuggling anything into the camp.[vi]

Corrie ten Boom also relates how the prisoners were subjected to another humiliating Nazi practice every Friday—“medical inspection.”

The hospital corridor in which we waited was unheated, and a fall chill had settled into the walls. Still we were forbidden even to wrap ourselves in our own arms, but had to maintain our erect, hands-at-sides position as we filed slowly past a phalanx of grinning guards. How there could have been any pleasure in the sight of these stick-thin legs and hunger-bloated stomachs I could not imagine…Nor could I see the necessity for the complete undressing: when we finally reached the examining room a doctor looked down each throat, another—a dentist presumably—at our teeth, a third in between each finger. And that was all. We trooped again down the long, cold corridor and picked up our X-marked dresses at the door. (p. 178)

Clearly, the purpose of these medical inspections was more psychological than medical.

Communist regimes also used nakedness to further their purposes. There are accounts of “enemies of the state” being stripped naked and tortured in order to get them to confess their guilt.[vii] Natan Sharansky, a prisoner in Soviet Russian for nine years, describes the search he was subjected to after his arrest.

Three sergeants were already in the room, along with an elderly female paramedic. Politely but firmly, they ordered me to undress. They began a personal search, looking over my things and carefully examining my body as if it, too, were just another object…the search came as a rude reminder of my new status. From now on, nothing belonged to me—not my clothes, not my watch, not my wedding ring, not even my own body. I was a prisoner. At any moment they could empty my pockets, tear off my clothes, and poke their fingers into my mouth…. During my nine years in captivity, I met men who had survived years in the Gulag and had been searched hundreds of times. But in spite of all they went through, they could never get used to the searches. With each new search they felt humiliated all over again.[viii]

So what do all these historical examples have to do with the TSA? It is not our intention to compare TSA agents to slave traders, Nazis, or communist officials. Our point is not to say that the TSA is “as bad as…” any particular historical tyrant. Our point instead has to do with the lessons we can learn from this history.

What lessons? Some readers might think that the TSA body scanners are the exact opposite of the tyrannical examples of the manipulation of nakedness that we have considered in this article. After all, the body scanners were designed to minimize the public’s feeling of being strip searched. You can walk into the body scanner fully clothed and be photographed essentially nude without feeling at all awkward about it.

So what’s the point?

Nakedness is a vulnerable condition. The power to command nakedness is a symbolic power, representing the complete command over the individual. The person subject to such a command is subordinated to the individual, institution, or agency that is issuing the command. This kind of plenary power over the lives and bodies of people can be wielded in a draconian, dehumanizing manner. Or it can be wielded in a less obnoxious manner as a ritual representation of authority. Either way, the power to make people naked is a total-control power.

When the TSA installed scanners to do a technologically-sophisticated virtual strip search, many Americans were annoyed. But it is more than annoying. It’s an affront to the rights of American citizens at a deep level. Our constitutional government is a limited government because no imperfect, fallible human or human institution can be trusted with total authority. If we can be stripped naked on the whim of a government bureaucrat, where are the limits? We must think closely about the implications of a government that claims the authority to strip us naked without regard for our constitutional

[i] Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Vol. II (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1883), pp. 128-29.

[ii] Spencer’s discussion of nakedness and authority is worth reading in full.

Hence the nakedness, partial or complete, of the captive, becomes additional evidence of his subjugation. That it was so regarded of old in the East, there is clear proof. In Isaiah xx 2-4, we read—‘And the Lord said, like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot these three years for a sign . . . so shall the king of Assyria lead away prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot.’ And that the Assyrians completely stripped their captives is shown by their sculptures. Nay, even our own days furnish evidence; as at the beginning of the Afghan war, when the Afreedees were reported to have stripped certain prisoners they had taken. Naturally, then, the taking off and yielding up of clothing becomes a mark of political submission, and in some cases even a complimentary observance. In Fiji, on the day for paying tribute –

“’The chief of Somo-Somo, who had previously stripped off his robes then sat down and removed even the train or covering, which was of immense length, from his waist. He gave it to the speaker who gave him in return a piece large enough only for the purposes of decency. The rest of the Somo Somo, chiefs each of whom on coming on the ground had a train of several yards in length, stripped themselves entirely, left their trains, and walked away . . . thus leaving all the Somo-Somo people naked.’

“Further we read that during Cook’s stay at Tahiti, two men of superior rank ‘came on board, and each singled out his friend . . . this ceremony consisted in taking off great part of their clothes and putting them upon us.’ And then in another Polynesian island, Samoa, this complimentary act is greatly abridged: only the girdle is presented.

“With such facts to give us the clue we can scarcely doubt that surrender of clothing originates those obeisances which are made by uncovering the body more or less extensively. All degrees of uncovering have this meaning. From Ibn Batuta’s account of his journey into the Soudan, Mr. Tylor cites the statement that ‘women may only come unclothed into the presence of the Sultan of Melli, and even the Sultan’s own daughters must conform to the custom;’ and what doubt we might reasonably feel as to the existence of an obeisance thus carried to its original extreme, is removed on reading in Speke that at the present time, at the court of Uganda, ‘stark naked full grown women are the valets.’ Elsewhere in Africa an incomplete though still considerable unclothing as an obeisance occurs. In Abyssinia inferiors bare their bodies down to the girdle in presence of superiors; ‘but to equals the corner of the cloth is removed only for a time.” The like occurs in Polynesia. The Tahitians uncover “the body as low as the waist in the presence of the king;’ and in the Society Isles generally, ‘the lower ranks of people by way of respect strip off their upper garment in the presence of their” principal chiefs.’”

[iii] Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Crowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Viking, 1962), p. 46.

[iv] Mannix and Crowley, p. 128.

[v] Mary E. C. Drew, Divine Will, Restless Heart (Xlibris, 2010), pp. 27-28; James Walvin, Questioning Slavery (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 35; T. Lindsay Baker and Julie Phillips Baker, The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), p. 216. Daniel E. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 78.

[vi] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Carmel, NY: Guideposts, 1971), pp. 175-176.

[vii] Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 659; Milton Rosenburg, An American Trapped in a Communist Paradise (Ontario, Canada: Moose Enterprise, 2003), p. 117; Fred Coleman, The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 172-173.

[viii] Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), p. 7.

Houstonians Revolt Over TSA On Buses!

Liberator — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:17:47 +0000

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, April 27, 2012

Dozens of outraged residents attended a Houston METRO board meeting yesterday to express their disgust at how TSA workers were used to interrogate passengers on buses during a so-called “anti-terror” exercise last week.

Complaining of how their fourth amendment rights were violated, residents were joined by several prominent lawyers in an extraordinary backlash against the federal agency and local authorities.

The meeting was dominated by more denials on behalf of METRO that warrantless bag searches had occurred during the drill, labeled BusSafe, which was billed as a counter-terror exercise yet only managed to snag alleged prostitutes and drug users.

Former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley Speaks Out!

Liberator — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 19:57:01 +0000

Why Airport Security Is Broken— And How To Fix It

By KIP HAWLEY

Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids and focused on disrupting new terror plots. A former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, on embracing risk.

As former administrator of the TSA, Kip Hawley helped administer the security measures aimed at preventing terror attacks in U.S. airports and on flights. He talks to WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro about his new book, “Permanent Emergency,” in which he outlines why airport security needs to change. Photo: AP.

Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years—from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009—I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

You know the TSA. We’re the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We’re the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We’re the ones who end up on the evening news when someone’s grandma gets patted down or a child’s toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If you’re a frequent traveler, you probably hate us.

More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has plainly failed to achieve.

The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple.

A TSA agent watches as a traveler undergoes a millimeter-wave scan.

Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles:

First, the TSA’s mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it’s simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene.

Second, the TSA’s job is to manage risk, not to enforce regulations. Terrorists are adaptive, and we need to be adaptive, too. Regulations are always playing catch-up, because terrorists design their plots around the loopholes.

Senator Seeks Passenger Advocates at Airports

Liberator — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:43:29 +0000

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Charles Schumer is introducing legislation this week that will mandate that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) post Passenger Advocates at every airport in the country who can be summoned by passengers to hear their concerns if they feel they’ve been inappropriately treated by transportation security officers. Schumer’s call comes on the heels of the latest reports of yet more allegedly inappropriate behavior by TSA officers, particularly with respect to female passengers.

Senator Rand Paul Has Been Detained By The TSA At Nashville Airport

Liberator — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:15:07 +0000

On the list of stupid things the Transportation Security Administrationcould do for their public image: detaining Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the politician most anxious to abolish them, is probably right near the top.

But that’s exactly what just happened, his Communications Director, Moira Bagley has confirmed it in a tweet.

Kelly O’Donnell is reporting that aides say Paul was detained when he refused a full-body pat-down, after the scanner went off. Paul lifted his pant-leg to show he had no metal, and asked to be re-screened. He was denied this request.

O’Donnell further reports that U.S. officials say that they didn’t ‘detain’ him, though that is the word Paul’s office is using.

Bagley has now told Politico, “I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely… The image scan went off, he refused patdown.”

UPDATE: 11:33 AM: CNN’s Dana Bash is reports a response from the TSA, saying Paul walked away willing.

“When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport,” TSA spokesman Greg Soule said. “Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.”

A TSA official said Paul was “not detained” and left the checkpoint willingly. The official was not authorized to speak for attribution.

TSA’s VIPR Teams Now Conducting ‘Suspicionless Searches’ at Train Stations

Liberator — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:54:01 +0000

Editors Note: With increased invasion of privacy, breach of constitutional rights, and abusive action, new arguments are being offered to set citizens at ease and persuade us that forfeiting our constitutionally projected rights is a necessity. Now, we are to accept the proposition that we forfeit “reasonable expectation of privacy” when we travel via plane, train, or automobile. Public appearance in any location may leave us suitable to invasive body searches and investigation without probable cause. Our liberties and constitutional rights are continually being eroded. Speak up. Speak out. Engage with your civil servants and representatives. The pot continues to boil.

January 6, 2012 at 2:22 PM | by Omri

Since the rest of this post is going to be a mix of straight news and borderline paranoia revolving around the increasing creepiness of TSA VIPR teams, let’s start with some balance. Here are the TSA’s top 10 good catches of 2011 and here is how they tried to help holiday travelers with medical conditions. Fair’s fair. We also want it noted that we decline to create separate posts for each and every negative TSA story that crosses our desk (e.g. this annual holiday nonsense about hostility to pastries or this brutal Vanity Fair article on the uselessness of security theater). That would be obsessive.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s proceed with the unpleasantness. Last November we told you about the increased tempo with which TSA has been deploying its so-called VIPR teams, which conduct anti-terror monitoring outside of airports. The program’s actual scope is vague and arguably designed to expand, with different government sources and politicians having “differing descriptions of VIPR’s exact mission.” Critics ranging from mainstream civil liberties groups to batshit crazy conspiracy theorists have specifically picked out VIPR teams—which do their work at highways, ports, bus stations, tunnels, rest areas, etc—for violating the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Recently LA local news picked up on how 25 TSA VIPR teams have been rotating through train stations, including Union Station, since last summer. The reason the story is getting play again is because TSA announced plans to deploy 12 more teams across the country over the coming months. So people naturally wanted to know what the existing teams have been doing all of this time.

It turns out that in LA they’ve conducted over 9,300 “suspicionless” searches of travelers and commuters, and in Savannah they at one point randomly screened people who weren’t even going into the station.

TSA Screenings Aren’t Just for Airports Anymore

Liberator — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:44:24 +0000

Roving security teams increasingly visit train stations, subways and other mass transit sites to deter terrorism. Critics say it’s largely political theater.

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau (Photo Credit: Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times / December 11, 2011)

December 20, 2011, 5:03 p.m.

Reporting from Charlotte, N.C.—

Rick Vetter was rushing to board the Amtrak train in Charlotte, N.C., on a recent Sunday afternoon when a canine officer suddenly blocked the way.

Three federal air marshals in bulletproof vests and two officers trained to spot suspicious behavior watched closely as Seiko, a German shepherd, nosed Vetter’s trousers for chemical traces of a bomb. Radiation detectors carried by the marshals scanned the 57-year-old lawyer for concealed nuclear materials.

When Seiko indicated a scent, his handler, Julian Swaringen, asked Vetter whether he had pets at home in Garner, N.C. Two mutts, Vetter replied. “You can go ahead,” Swaringen said.

The Transportation Security Administration isn’t just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.

85-Year-Old Woman May Sue TSA After Being Strip Searched at JFK Airport

Liberator — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:32:23 +0000

‘I really look like a terrorist,’ 110-pound Long Island grandmother says

BY Nicholas Hirshon
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport.

Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.

“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”

But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.

TSA Checkpoints Now On Tennessee Highways!

Liberator — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:43:43 +0000

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security on Tuesday partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and several other federal and state agencies for a safety enforcement and awareness operation on Tennessee’s interstates and two metropolitan-area bus stations. They are randomly inspecting vehicles on highways in Tennessee.

The random inspections really aren’t any more thorough normal, according to Tennessee Highway Patrol Colonel Tracy Trott who says paying attention to details can make a difference.

“People generally associate the TSA with airport security…but now we have moved on to other forms of transportation, such as highways, buses and railways,” said Kevin McCarthy, TSA federal security director for West Tennessee.

To increase national security, the TSA created Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, known as VIPR, teams, which consist of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detention officers and explosive detection canine teams.