Protest the TSA. Nov 24 is National Opt-Out Day.

[.Shane.]

@Daveshack, if you have time, I'd appreciate a reply to my response the last page...

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More TSA goodness.

Source

My patience wears thin and I start crying. It is hard to see on this video, but real tears wouldn’t stop streaming down my face. About 10 minutes into all this, a Phoenix PD comes to calm me down. I explain to him that there is no reason I should be treated this way and I have every right to be upset.

He then says “they” (aka TSA) saw me coming, have it out for me (from my complaint against TSA the week before when they didn’t know the breast milk rules then either), and I should travel out of a different gate in future weeks.

He said TSA wants me to play along with their horse and pony show and if I don’t then TSA can have the Phoenix PD arrest me! Well, I wanted to get home to my baby and my flight was 30 minutes from departure so I ‘played along.’ Three Phoenix PD watched in the background…I could tell they all knew this was a waste of their time but I was happy to have them standing by in case TSA continued to act out of line.

One police officer actually came up to me later during my second screening asking if I was okay and if he could let anyone in my party know I was going to be late. A class act compared to the TSA actions.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Good point- we should waterboard all passengers. It's the only way to be sure!

No I didn't say that. Torturing someone when you don't even have proof of their guilt is as bad as you can get.

 

[Ajidica]

No I didn't say that. Torturing someone when you don't even have proof of their guilt is as bad as you can get.

Wait. Is this the same person who said that we should torture anyone suspected of being a terrorist if it might possibly save American lives?

 

[GhostWriter16]

Wait. Is this the same person who said that we should torture anyone suspected of being a terrorist if it might possibly save American lives?

Never said that. I said if we have PROOF that they are terrorists, and prove them guilty in court, then I am OK with it if it will save American lives.

 

[Formaldehyde]

In other words, none of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people US or our "allies" have torutured so far should have been victims of this practice?

 

[Traitorfish]

No I didn't say that. Torturing someone when you don't even have proof of their guilt is as bad as you can get.

Pfft, bleeding-heart liberal.

 

[GhostWriter16]

In other words, none of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people US or our "allies" have torutured so far should have been victims of this practice?

If I recall correctly, SOME of these people have been proven guilty first. Those who haven't though, no they shouldn't.

Pfft, bleeding-heart liberal.

 

[Formaldehyde]

If I recall correctly, SOME of these people have been proven guilty first. Those who haven't though, no they shouldn't.

Nope. Not a single one has ever been found gulity in a court of law prior to being tortured and even killed. In fact, most of them were apparently completely innocent of any crimes, much less acts of terrorism.

 

[Tacitusitis]

More TSA goodness.

This comparison is probably politically incorrect on multiple levels, but you know what this is like? The Catholic Church.

People are abused in near-silence for years. There are "breakthrough cases" (like the woman with the breast milk, or the poor man whose urostomy bag got popped by a TSO) where finally some kind of wider consciousness is born that this stuff happens all the time all over the country.

And for ONCE there are people speaking out in the media saying "If this happened to you it is NOT okay. Even though they are 'officers,' even though they are 'keeping us safe' this is NOT supposed to happen."

Then, all the horror stories start pouring in in an unstoppable flood and there is a realization that the corruption is not "bad apples" it is endemic abuse.

The TSA relies on the spiral of silence to enforce compliance. The current situation, from their POV, is well out of hand.

 

[JollyRoger]

No I didn't say that. Torturing someone when you don't even have proof of their guilt is as bad as you can get.

If they refuse to confess before being tortured, it means they are obviously guilty of something.

 

[Mise]

This comparison is probably politically incorrect on multiple levels, but you know what this is like? The Catholic Church.

People are abused in near-silence for years. There are "breakthrough cases" (like the woman with the breast milk, or the poor man whose urostomy bag got popped by a TSO) where finally some kind of wider consciousness is born that this stuff happens all the time all over the country.

And for ONCE there are people speaking out in the media saying "If this happened to you it is NOT okay. Even though they are 'officers,' even though they are 'keeping us safe' this is NOT supposed to happen."

Then, all the horror stories start pouring in in an unstoppable flood and there is a realization that the corruption is not "bad apples" it is endemic abuse.

The TSA relies on the spiral of silence to enforce compliance. The current situation, from their POV, is well out of hand.

Funny thing is, it was alright when it was just brown people that got screwed over by the paranoid burger-flippers at airport security.

Shane's link quite perfectly describes a really bad power trip.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Funny thing is, it was alright when it was just brown people that got screwed over by the paranoid burger-flippers at airport security.

I think you've got it backwards actually.

There was TSA opposition before for years, from the right, and it had really racist overtones. Like "Why don't we just only profile Muslims!!!!!?!?!?!?" There were various pictures of obviously East-African-immigrant TSA workers screening and searching White passengers with captions like "THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON" and so on.

Yeah, the Right continues to object to the TSA for basically those reasons: White Americans are above suspicion, shoe-bomber notwithstanding.

What has changed is the Left (and Center) added their voices based on objection to violation of privacy rights.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm pretty sure Mise was referring to pre-9/11 when only minorities typically had difficulty with the rent-a-cops at the airports, because they wanted to still have jobs the next day.

And my own personal views have never changed. I have always thought of it as security theater which does little to actually change anything. After all, how many actual hijacking have the TSA foiled at the gates so far, outside of Homer's magic rock hypothesis?

 

[.Shane.]

Funny thing is, it was alright when it was just brown people that got screwed over by the paranoid burger-flippers at airport security.

Shane's link quite perfectly describes a really bad power trip.

I get that for some people they see this as a bit of a Brooks Brothers Riot. In fact, many on the left see this (incredibly) as some kind of Tea Party-driven anti-Obama thing. In fact they very much went after the "Don't touch my junk" guy as having some kind of ulterior agenda.

However, Salon did a very nice piece de-constructing that argument.

I spoke with Tyner several days ago and he was very worried that his public stance would jeopardize exactly the ordinariness which The Nation claims is fake: his job, his family, his reputation, and the cost from government recriminations. This highly irresponsible, evidence-free Nation attack demonstrates how valid those concerns were. It may be that several vocal opponents of the new TSA process are Koch-funded -- that wouldn't surprise me -- but that has absolutely nothing to do with Tyner, and The Nation, for which I have high regard, owes him an apology and retraction for the innuendo it smeared on him without a shred of evidence. It's difficult enough for ordinary citizens to take a principled stand like this against the Government; knowing that they're going to be subjected to this sort of baseless hit job makes it less likely that other citizens will be willing to do so.

...

UPDATE: The ACLU by itself has received over 900 complaints this month alone about the new TSA procedures, many of which are chronicled here. The ACLU's Laura Murphy today said that "[t]he new 'enhanced' security methods are far more intrusive than other methods but have not been shown to be any more effective. Nobody should be forced to choose between 'naked scans' and intrusive groping by strangers to keep our airplanes safe." It strikes me as unlikely that all -- or most -- of the 900 people turning to that group are astroturf "fakes" being funded by right-wing billionaires. Quite the contrary: as BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow wrote today, "I remember when being anti-authoritarian, pro-dignity and pro-freedom were values of the progressive left. Some of us still embrace them."

 

[Karalysia]

The ACLU is awesome.

 

[Tacitusitis]

I get that for some people they see this as a bit of a Brooks Brothers Riot. In fact, many on the left see this (incredibly) as some kind of Tea Party-driven anti-Obama thing.

Yeah I have read these people on Kos and man... they worry me...

It's one thing to have disagreements about where the Obama Administration stands in relation to the Left. But to defend this essentially means "I will defend anything Janet Napolitano dreams up because she serves this Administration." Even if it goes against every liberal value.

The lefties who see this as astroturf believe that the Right is trying to gin up populist outrage. Well that's exactly correct, the Right is trying to gin up populist outrage and the reason they're succeeding is because the Obama administration is so fervently anti-populist. Compromising, capitulating, negotiating, triangulating and finessing with every single damn thing they do. Bush's attempt to sell Social Security 'reform' was 10x more populist and effective at using the bully pulpit than anything Barry has done so far. He's going to "negotiate" with the Republicans on tax cuts? What the f is this? Even Bill Clinton would have gone on a media tour, "no extra handout for millionaires," take a STAND.

Obama has a structural misunderstanding of the Presidency if he thinks the President "negotiates" with Congress. The President has no power in that situation - and that leads to exactly what has happened - Congress doesn't even vote on the President's proposals, it passes whatever and the President signs it just to have a notch in his achievements belt. The way the Presidency really WORKS is the President takes his case to the people and FORCES Congress to debate the issues on his ground and vote on his proposals. This is what Bush did over and over with media campaign after campaign. For all that people complain Obama is "overexposed" he has not taken public stands for his agenda the way Bush did.

Obama leaves massive room for the right to claim the mantle of populism by failing to claim that role himself like he did so well in the 2008 campaign. And then he compounds the problem by taking his few firm stands on things that are vastly unpopular like the bailouts and TSA gate rape?

Far from being a Brooks Brothers Riot, the TSA thing is genuine, spontaneous, nonpartisan populist rage - just like the Dubai deals. Responding to that with what amounts to "simmer down" is such a bad political move.

 

[Mise]

I know nobody suggested that I was, but just for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not one of those people who thinks this is a Tea Party scam or dig at Obama or whatever. I just meant by my earlier comments that these intrusive, invasive methods have been employed on swarthy foreigners with beards and turbans for nearly a decade now. We liberals (in the "freedom-loving" sense, rather than in the American-partisan sense) knew that this would slowly creep into use on everyone, and therefore should be nipped in the bud. Indeed, that's kind of the point of living in a Liberal Democracy - to avoid that scope creep by having hard lines that the government can't cross. In otherwords, what I'm saying now is a big "I told you so" to all those who believed the right wing scaremongerers when they said that those hard lines needed to be bent and blurred out of fear of attack. We knew it would happen, we knew it was just a matter of time before the government crossed lines we thought they couldn't cross - we knew it because we let them do it.

 

[Bill3000]

 

[Tacitusitis]

I just meant by my earlier comments that these intrusive, invasive methods have been employed on swarthy foreigners with beards and turbans for nearly a decade now. We liberals (in the "freedom-loving" sense, rather than in the American-partisan sense) knew that this would slowly creep into use on everyone, and therefore should be nipped in the bud.

You are extremely right. By not pushing back when we should have it is now possibly too late. The TSA is impossible to control or bring to account.

And the truth is the American government has crossed so many lines under both Bush and Obama - corporate bailouts, secret war powers - that simply doing nothing is setting a disastrous precedent that this is ok.

We may look back on 2000-2012 as an even more disastrous period of American history than 1972-1980 when the consequences of Nixonism were not dealt with firmly enough. And look what we got for that, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld.