Introducing the American Traveler Dignity Act
paul.house.gov
paul.house.gov
Text of the bill:
SECTION 1. NO IMMUNITY FOR CERTAIN AIRPORT SCREENING METHODS.
No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a Federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives Federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), x-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual's body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual's parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.
This puts enormous emphasis on airports and/or security organisations to make absolutely god damn sure that no such misbehaviour happen, unless they want to be wide open to lawsuits that will tear them to shreds.
If an underage teenager texting a naked picture of themselves qualifies as a child pornographer, a TSA employee storing pictures of a naked child certainly does too.
The example of that unfortunate hentai collector comes to mind.
Of course you could still buy the album in the shops
I have to go have a little lie-down now, the grar is melting my brain.
In other words, it's not about outlawing "misbehavior" by TSA employees, it's about outlawing the bulk of their job, as performed recently.
One intermediate form of a state is a rule-of-law state which regularly trades significant power for increased legitimacy - examples are chartered government agencies that have a goal (source of core legitimacy), are governed by public legislation and regulation, and who are restricted in the the types of power they may wield in all situations and who are subject to an independent administrative, judicial or political review which may be triggered by aggrieved members of the populace. They gain additional legitimacy by the fact that they may only use the least force or power that is considered by the populace as necessary to achieve their legitimate goals.
I quite like rule-of-law states, and find the current rebalancing of minimum power/legitimate goals very interesting in a historical context, viz. security theatre and traditional concepts of civil liberties.
I was not advocating anything, merely describing what often goes undescribed. Further, I wasn't arguing from where the legitimacy emerges, only that it exists, and that that extant legitimacy, coupled with the extant power and willingness to engage in otherwise-criminal acts is what makes a government a government. Take away one or the other and we wouldn't call it a government.
>I quite like rule-of-law states
Here ya go, a long but rather good piece written by a former professor of mine:
Thanks for the article, it was quite interesting as I don't have a US background. I was a bit surprised that the author thought that people might assume that a system of explicit rules, judgements and binding agreements could be anything other than political in practice.
We use language to create these legal instruments, and interpret them as language users in a community, each of us with our own interests. Politics is what we call this interpretation, negotiation and transformation process. But the fact that there is a political process (whether you agree about the current scope of these state-sanctioned instruments, or whether you'd prefer that civil society manintains them instead) is a classic marker of a rule of law society: totalitarianism, as the extremis case you describe, has very little of this political process and for very good reasons - it's not necessary in the broad.
The easiest examples would be with children. A TSA employee could be charged for viewing the image of a child produced by the new imaging scanners on the grounds that it could be considered pornographic. Or if a TSA employee pats down a child, it could be considered molestation. Again, though, it's really difficult to say what effects, if any, this bill would realistically have, especially if that's all there is to it (it's not available on THOMAS yet).
In any event, I can't see this bill getting through the House, not to mention the problem of trying to find a sponsor in the Senate.
Come January, I assume that Dr. Paul's son Rand would be happy to sponsor it.
In the case of airport screenings, it's pretty clear that cost >> benefit. Cost = sleazy govt employee looking/touching at my balls, and maybe saving the photos. Benefit = risk of death reduced by an amount less than 1 extra gym session per year.
In the case of the assorted wars, it's not as clear. Cost = visible casualties of real war in Afghanistan. Benefit = preventing the invisible casualties of 10-15 years more living under the Taliban + invisible civil wars that would have eventually overthrown the Taliban.
(Fun fact: on 9/12 or 9/13, shortly after Osama was labelled as the culprit, an Afghani friend IMed me. "I'm very sorry for what happened to your country, but this could be the greatest thing that ever happened to mine." He then expressed a hope that we wouldn't "pull a somalia".)
His general perspective was that you have war/tyranny regardless of US involvement, but at least with US involvement there is hope for the future. He was also pretty critical of western anti-war types - he thought they cared more not seeing war on TV than actually about the actual victims of war/tyranny.
(Note: his perspective was a little unusual by Afghani standards. He wasn't Muslim and only part of his family escaped to US (in 1996) on refugee visas, fleeing persecution. )
You're probably correct that there should be greater public outcry over civilian casualties in war, but that doesn't mean we can't rally against privacy-invading things like full body scanners.
On the other hand, most people would be bothered if I touched their balls or viewed nude pictures of them on my computer.
Apparently some people feel similarly about homeland security doing these things.
I think part of the reason for the lack of outrage over The Patriot Act was the timing. When the Patriot Act was created, it was a short enough time after 9/11 that the US was still strongly emotionally effected by it. It was easier to say "This will prevent terrorism" and be believed.
Years later, it's become easier to take a rational look at the risks and benefits, and see that it's unlikely that such measures will prevent enough terrorism to outweigh the costs.
Is there a record of how many bills Ron Paul has gotten passed? Because if he's as loony as his son, this is never going to get serious attention (anyone can introduce a bill and anyone else can put a hold on it too).
This seems to me to target the wrong people. Most of the screeners are just doing their jobs. They are not the ones who decided to use these machines or implement the groping policy.