Documents Reveal TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers
forbes.com
forbes.com
Well, it ain't. But it's not under assault by people with different-colored skin in foreign lands.
The people who want to fuck us out of our freedom are people we keep electing, or are appointed by the same. Can't believe no one's ever written a country song about that.
People want to rag on OWS for being unfocused or whatever. But you know what? I'm glad to see a few comfortable first worlders step up and provide a sustained cry that they're not comfortable with the status quo.
I don't know what the long-term solution is for this power- (and genital-) grabbing nonsense. But I'm pretty sure it starts by getting pissed off and is continued by saying so, out loud, in public, in numbers.
EDIT: The bit about rich being Marxists is apparently Chomsky
"""I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist - they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. And they understand. They’re instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it."""
-John Steinbeck
A big part of the problem is that, no, they aren't elected. Not a single position in the TSA is elected. Nor the EPA, or OSHA, or IRS, or any of twelve dozen other agencies who heap mounds and mounds of their own productivity-sapping laws on everybody. Who votes for that garbage? I didn't and nobody else did.
Electing Congressional representatives is too far indirectly removed from this process. Each vote for a representative is the amalgamation of dozens or hundreds of other issues. Congress functionally has free rein to do anything it wants with the TSA and all the other bureaucracies, because they just aren't important enough to cast your precious single vote compared to hotter-button and directly life-relevant issues (abortion, Social Security, immigration, take your pick.)
How can we vote down a TSA action like this with such an indirectly removed vote? What if I like the rest of my representative's opinions but abhor the TSA, how can that be expressed in a single vote? It's a frickin year until the next election, do you think even 1%, never mind 50%, of voters in my district will remember and care about this then?
In some sense, representatives are obsolete. The technology certainly exists now for a much more direct form of interactive democratic government, where we could individually vote on things like the TSA. But how would the current system of elected representatives ever yield to direct democracy? How would even one, never mind 220, representatives ever be in favor of eliminating their own power and positions? Remember that the districts themselves are drawn by the two parties in power (there's no difference) to keep those two parties in power. It's 1984, the governmental structure has created and warped the system to keep itself in power for perpetuity. Overturning it is literally not possible. The system itself, like Newspeak, prevents even the expression of doing so: How do I vote to not have a Congress anymore?
(Dang, I hope this isn't one of pg's honeypot karma-eating politics threads.)
(Edited a few times to phrase myself better, especially about those indirect votes.)
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_...
Just having recall elections on all elected representatives and recall referendums on specific issue should be enough. I realise some states like California have something like this.
Case in point : my local representative just switched political sides because the current government threw them some inducements to do so. This ends up so I voted for a person who now supports the people I explicitly didn't want in power. There is nothing I can do about this except wait for the next election. If I had a recall vote I could organise a recall election - but, more importantly, it's unlikely they would have even contemplated the move if they knew a recall was a possibility.
Similarly for the TSA if sufficient opposition was found via petition (say, 10% of registered voters) then an online referendum could be undertaken - ie Disband TSA, yes/no.
This type of thing is dangerous because you could easily end up with deadlock and inertia, but hopefully the mere threat of being overridden or recalled would prompt more representatives to think about representing and listen more.
But I think the key is to lower the cost of voting. But then I'm also very wary of electronic voting systems, so it would have to be extremely secure. Probably two-factor authentication secure.
This is false and I have photo evidence.
One year ago I noted that the TSA was doing naked scans (looked like mm wave) on everyone in the tunnel between the Chicago subway and the O'Hare airport, just outside the train platform in a non-sterile area and hundreds of yards away from any actual airport terminal (if you have ever gone to O'hare via the train, you will know once you get off the train it's about another quarter mile walk through a tunnel to get to the airport). I spoke to an agent that was there on site and he confirmed they were "doing tests." Told me they were not stopping anyone that day based on what they saw in the scans, but I would have guessed they would radio intelligence to the airport personnel if they saw anything suspicious.
Here's the photo[1] I took of the scanning station- there were two set up on either side in the tunnel such that you could not exit or enter the subway station without passing in front of it.
“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,”…says [Joe Reiss, Vice President of Marketing at backscatter developer American Science and Engineering, Rensselaer '85, Northeastern MBA '91].
In that case, Joe, it sounds as if you're a bit too ignorant and/or selfish to be making that call.
I'm sure thousands of peeping toms have said the same thing to a judge and got a jail sentence anyway.
IMO if a "vice president of marketing" says anything about a product, then the opposite is the truth. It's very easy to claim there's not a problem when you have a six figure paycheck and will never have to walk through one of these machines in your life.
I'll be keeping my eyes open for these. It seems surprising that this can be permitted, bearing in mind the radiation being broadcast from these machines, in order to produce the backscatter for imaging.
Any in Texas, are likely trolling 59 in and out of the main border crossings for drugs.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/09/tsa-nev...
The DHS was totally dishonest with me in their comments on the initially story, and less than fully honest even in their subsequent follow-up response to my questions. I was disappointed that only a fraction of the readers who read the first post noticed the second, so I'm glad hammock below was able to point out the DHS's contradictions.
Thanks to everyone for reading.
The permanent fear culture of security theater is now far too entrenched among moneyed interests. It will take a massive effort by the public and by Congress to even begin to uproot it.
I know, this has been said time and again already, but venting your frustration on the internet is counterproductive — it assuages an urge to actually do something — and do something you should, because TSA won't dissolve by itself. But there's another side to the endless discussions on the Internet — by illuminating legal specifics of the situation you could effect a slow, incremental progress in public awareness.
I guess I kind of assumed that software engineers would be natural skeptics, and predominantly liberal to boot.
Well, nope, that wasn't a safe assumption at all. I had 2-3 people agree with me enthusiastically, 4-5 argue passionately about how the terrorists would win if we let up, and the rest of the bus just stared like me like I just transmogrified into Osama himself for daring to suggest such a thing.
So yeah, if the a supposedly scientific, data-driven, skeptical population broke down like that, I'm not surprised that this sort of thing is happening without much resistance. And it's for this reason I hold nearly no hope that any of these abuses will ever be curbed.
The only question I really want answered is: when did America turn from being such a badass, never running away from a fight, to such cowards, willing to do anything, give up anything, for one iota of perceived safety?
This was in 2009 FWIW...
It is not remotely hard to see why we have the TSA and it has nothing to do with cowardice; it has to do with rational actors and their incentives. To wit: there is no incentive whatsoever for anyone in authority to dial back airport security. It's the same reason you have to "turn" "off" your iPod at takeoff and landing.
This isn't some scary new trend. Our whole system of government is designed with the assumption that stuff like this is going to happen. The Constitution isn't an electric fence. It is the constraints provided to a stochastic and inefficient algorithm to get it to eventually converge on an answer John Locke might have approved. 10 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. Give it another few decades.
Meanwhile, it is simply people's job to hypothesize about "harmlessly" "scanning" mass transit passengers. I guess it's good that we freak out about it, to quash it earlier in the process than later. But nationwide deployment of strip search scanners at train stations isn't imminent.
The job of the people at the TSA will always to be to ensure the TSA not only continues to exist, that it continues to grow and become more important. Any actual security outcomes will be a side effect, not the primary goal. At no point will the management say 'know what? We're actually wasting money here, let's recommend to congress that we be disbanded'.
It's madness when creating these institutions not to put a self-destruct clause in them. Ie, In when created in 2001, it would be decreed that in 2011, a review will be organised to see if the TSA has actually materially affected terrorism activities.
Of course, the review would be a whitewash, but at least it would keep people remembering that this was a temporary solution to a temporary problem.
Better yet, a sunset clause, where the agency is automatically disbanded 10 years later unless explicitly renewed by Congress for another ten years. Slightly better chance of it getting disbanded then.
At most stations the platform is at least locked most of the time (even if it's only with a gate and a chain-link fence), but at some (like Raleigh) anyone can walk up to the platform at any time. Yet despite all this I can't recall ever hearing of a violent act of terrorism being committed on a train.