New TSA Exemptions: Pilots and Congressmen, But Not Flight Attendants
If you're hoping to see changes in the heightened TSA security protocols that require you either to go through the new backscatter machines or be aggressively patted down, including your genitals, you're not likely going to find a lot of support from Congress. Turns out, they're exempt from the alleged inconvenience or humiliation of the new regime.
“Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on a commercial aircraft,” [Future Speaker of the House, Republican John] Boehner said at the time, “and I am going to continue to do that.”
And so on Friday, he did. But not without the perquisites of office, including avoiding those security pat-downs that many travelers are bracing for as holiday travel season approaches.
But the politicians aren't the only ones who are now being allowed to bypass security. Pilots, after expressing grave concerns over the amount of radiation coming form the machines and the effect an overly invasive patdown would have on their mental state before going off to man an aircraft, can now skip the process, too. Flight attendants, on the other hand, are not exempt, even though they would be exposed to the radiation of the backscatter machines just as often as the pilots would.
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
Why is America in this mess? Bush and 9/11 triggered the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. Lies, lies, lies took this country into a "forever" war against the rest of the world and now we are hated for ceaseless aggression, crimes of war, stealing other nations resources and murdering innocent families... we (meaning TPTB that make these decisions for the US) are exactly like the megga corp and mercinaries who are portrayed in the movie AVATAR.
There are more of us then them.. but they have a strangle hold on media, the government and the people of this country. The sad thing is I can now see where John Titor, time traveler spoke of civil war in the US because that is a very likely scenario that will likely pay out as the noose gets tighter. Take away football and budlight and there would be an instant revolution. Yet take away civil rights and many still stay dumbed down. This is so sad and quite pathetic. My genration actually did something during the Vietnam War with some major a.ss kicking dissent. Where are the spiritual warriors now? Who are they? Will they wake up and know themselves to be free or will they walk into the pit asleep and not know what they do?
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
TSA Refuses to Release Inspection Reports about X-ray Machine Safety
'Airports have become a minefield of health hazards, and an investigation into airport safety has revealed that radiation emitted from various scanning machines is sometimes much higher than intended, putting workers and passengers at serious risk.
And while the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) insists that the machines are safe, the agency refuses to release the actual safety inspection reports to back its claim.
Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) has introduced legislation criminalizing the distribution or recording of revealing images taken by airport full-body scanners. Violators would be subject to penalties of up to a year in prison and fines up to $100,000, or both. Although the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has said that images cannot be stored, transmitted, or printed and are deleted after being reviewed, it did admit in a February 2010 letter to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) that the machines have some capability to store, print, record and export images “for testing, training, and evaluation” that is done at facilities away from airports.
Further, the US Marshall's Service admitted last summer in a letter to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, that it had saved over 35,000 images recorded with a Brijot Gen 2 scanner at a security checkpoint of an Orlando, Florida courthouse. The letter also stated that “the USMS also tested a Millivision machine in the Federal Courthouse in the District of Columbia. However, that courthouse is no longer using the machine, which has been returned to Millivision; any images that may have been stored on that machine are therefore no longer under the agency's control.” (emphasis added).
Senator Schumer's bill is yet another attempt by the government to assure people that this invasion of privacy is really not that serious and is outweighed by the need for greater security at airports. But the legislation misses many important points in the public's objection to “naked” scanners.
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
A California woman is suing the TSA following an incident at Albuquerque International Sunport where she was subjected to an invasive breast groping in full public view by the TSA, despite making it known that she had been forced to undergo a mastectomy last year.
Adrienne Durso describes how a female TSA officer pulled her out of line after she had gone through the metal detector and proceeded to pat her down, “Heavily concentrating on my breast area” in a search that “just seemed to go on and on”.
Relating her story to KOB Eyewitness News 4, Ms. Durso explained how she was made to feel humiliated in front of her seventeen year old son and the rest of the queuing passengers. “I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso said.
Feeling violated and embarrassed, Ms. Durso asked to speak to a TSA supervisor.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, when the supervisor arrived and Ms. Durso’s son asked why he had also not been subjected to the body search, the TSA agent told the boy “well you don’t have boobs”.
California computer programmer John Tyner attracted national attention recently when he posted a video shot from his cell phone in which he is heard refusing to allow a security officer to probe his groin area during a frisking at San Diego Airport on Nov. 13.
Tyner did this despite the fact the officer threatened him with a $10,000 lawsuit if he did not comply. The video was viewed by tens of thousands of people and has now spurred mass citizen outrage over “big brother” invasions of privacy.
Pennsylvania activist Aaron Bolinger is a staunch opponent of these types of security tactics, which include full body scans at airports and the development of identification cards and drivers licenses loaded with personal data on the card holder. Under federal standards, these cards would become a new type of trackable ID card (REAL ID) capable of containing sensitive, private financial and medical information as well.
Love Always mudra
Last edited by mudra on Sat Jul 23, 2011 7:46 am; edited 1 time in total
Under the new DHS program, VIPER, we will continue to see more and more Nazi style checkpoints in America. Basically Americans are being subjected to invasive/illegal searches all in the name of protecting us from the boogiemen known as Al Qaeda.
These checkpoints are essentially the same thing as the checkpoints that everyone in America were against during World War 2. Notice as the news anchor announces the checkpoints like they are wonderful.
If there is anything that will set off a civil war in the US it will be the continued harassment and sexual assault of TSA along with increase gas prices at the pump. The anger is building and whoa to Obama when more and more citizens realize he is the imposter that he is not even a legal representative of the people but instead and coporate groomed clone.
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
Austin Woman Thrown To Floor, Arrested, For Refusing Pat Down
Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.
Early Wednesday morning, a computer glitch shut down a security checkpoint for a couple of hours at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The line snaked out the door as many travelers waited for more than an hour and some missed their flights. One of the first people in line after that shutdown never made it through. She was arrested and banned from the airport.
Congress to demand answers from TSA in airport security flaws
SACRAMENTO, CA - It looks like he may have succeeded at his mission.
Exactly one month after Chris Liu posted videos to YouTube showing what he calls "critical security flaws," the new chairman of a House subcommittee said he will call Transporation Security Administration (TSA) leaders to Capitol Hill for an explanation.
The videos, captured by Liu's cell phone camera, show ground crews entering and exiting secure areas while never going through a screening process.
Liu posted the videos hoping Congressional leaders would address "gaping holes in airport security."
"We're spending of millions of dollars on technology, but we're not doing the basics," said Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who will chair the subcommitee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. "We've got to be doing the basics to secure the airlines."
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
"Alexander Petersen was passing through security to board a domestic flight to Florida with his wife and three children. After the backscatter x-ray machines were turned on, TSA staff started corralling passengers to go through the naked body scanners. Petersen’s family escaped selection but when he was told to submit to a scan, Peterson declined and opted for the invasive pat down instead.
“They then called for an “opt-out” pat down and still told me I had to go through the machine,” writes Petersen. “I said no, and reiterated that I opt for the pat-down. They said that I just have to walk through the machine and that they won’t turn it on. I said “how do I know it’s not on, just because you say so?” Then, one of the other workers stood inside of the machine where the footprints were and waived for me to go through. With that, I assumed that it was indeed off, and proceeded through the machine for my enhanced pat-down molestation.” After receiving his advanced grope down, during which a TSA worker felt his crotch and backside, much to the confusion of Peterson’s young son who asked, “what is that man doing to you?,” Petersen reflected on being forced to walk through the machine with assurances that it was “switched off,” even though he had declined to be body scanned.
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
Ventura Strikes Back with Lawsuit Against TSA The Inside Story from Alex Jones About the Former Governor’s Humiliating Pat-Down Experiences that Included ‘Touching, Gripping & Rubbing of the Genitals’ at the Hands of TSA “Ventura accuses the agencies of violating his ‘basic rights to privacy and dignity, and his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures’.” [...]
“Ventura.. alleges the pat-down included ‘warrantless, non-suspicion-based offensive touching, gripping and rubbing of the genital and other sensitive areas of his body,’ which, the lawsuit contends, met ‘the definition for an unlawful sexual assault’.” ormer Governor Jesse Ventura has taken steps to sue the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, naming their chiefs John Pistole and ‘Big Sis’ Janet Napolitano in a lawsuit that will take on invasive airport pat-downs [READ LAWSUIT]. Ventura first told Alex Jones of his intent to sue the TSA privately back in November while traveling for the making of TruTV’s “Conspiracy Theory,” expressing grave concern about what he viewed as his country’s transformation into East Germany.
As far back as September, Ventura confided in Jones that his career was under threat and that he was considering abandoning travel altogether because of the fact that he was being harassed by TSA agents every single time he went through an airport security checkpoint.
Jones recalls Ventura’s outrage at the TSA’s harassing old people in wheelchairs with the invasive new pat-down procedures. The former governor himself is routinely sent to secondary screening due to a hip replacement in 2008, and Jones witnessed him undergo repeated humiliating searches during pat-downs at the hands of TSA. Worse, at airports across the country, even those presenting medical cards describing special needs or equipment from a doctor are routinely ignored as TSA agents demand that medical patients remove urostomy bags, prosthetic breasts or that TSA be allowed to grope a pacemaker patients’ breasts.
“That’s why I want to leave the United States,” Ventura had told Jones at the time. “This is why I go down to Mexico– this is wrong.” Ventura indicated that he was most concerned about the destruction of the 4th Amendment and passing of the America he once knew. During one TSA pat-down procedure on Ventura that Jones witnessed at Atlanta International Airport, Ventura loudly proclaimed his disgust that the United States had turned into East Germany and that the America he loved and served in the military was dead, while TSA agents conducting the pat down merely smiled. They knew who Ventura was and that he was a public figure, but still subjected the former Governor to an 8 minute-plus invasive body search.
Ventura filed his lawsuit Monday, January 24, 2011 in Minnesota and news reports have named David Olsen as his lawyer. The former governor has indicated that his suit will include violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 4th Amendment, arguing that he and others with disabilities have been discriminated against and unduly singled out by TSA despite presenting no threat and warranting no reason for lawful search. Further, Ventura has argued that his ability to travel freely has been infringed, hampering his ability to work.
_________________ What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol
My wife and I recently travelled to Mexico. We flew out of Toronto and landed in Cancun.
Prior to going, my wife and I had decided that we did not want to travel to the US because we did not want to go through the harassment of the scanners versus pat down.
Just in case they were using the scanners for trips to Mexico we did everything to avoid having to go through one.
Well I am embarrassed to tell you that we were chosen at random to go through!!!!
It is one thing to read and talk about these things, but it is a much different thing to be given a choice of one or the other!
My wife and I looked at each other in dismay. What to do! The thought of someone groping us was totally repulsive. So we both chose to get x rayed. We couldn't believe it.
Now here is the part that really makes one annoyed. By mistake we had gone through security, with a carry on bag that was supposed to have been in the bag that was checked at the counter. The bag contained gels and liquids. (tooth paste, nail polish remover, vicks vapo rub and a couple of other things. Security was much more interested in messing with our minds than they were anything else! The bags got through with no problem. It was an honest mistake btw.
Sidenote. I am feeling better now, but for 2 weeks my nerves have been a wreck. I blame it on the scanner. Flying days are over!
No problems in the Mexican airport. They have security but no scanners.
This is the first " first hand " news we have. It's precious Micjer. Thank you for sharing. I am sure it's not easy when they take you by surprise, when you have a plane waiting for you and time is running. That does'nt give much latitude .It's a real trap !!!