Nov 30 2010
TSA Official Exposes Truth About Pat Downs
While we experience Wikileaks’ form of ‘transparent government’, it is a good time to also consider what has not been told to the traveling public regarding the new, lame TSA infringements on individual freedoms. Everyone after 9-11 was more than happy to have their luggage groped and their bodies scanned for weapons. That seemed reasonable at the time and without undue infringement. In fact, for some of us, that was actually a bad assumption as they became the targets of unfair searches and wasted resources diverted from to stopping terrorist attacks.
But some at TSA question if the new rules are making anyone safer.
“I myself would be just as confident flying before these new procedures took place as I would be flying right now.”
The irony is that the person most likely subjected to an enhanced pat-down is not someone acting suspiciously.
It’s America’s seniors that are most often the targets of a pat-down, says this local TSA officer.
“These are your mother, your father, your grandparents. They’re the ones who have to put up with this every time they fly.”
And it breaks the heart of some local TSA officers.
“Just the looks on their faces, some of them, the fear.”
I know this to be a fact from personal experience. Both from the side of my parents now in their late 80’s and my mother sporting more hardware than Batman. But I also know it from our son, who before he was a Marine was a TSA agent. The people tripping this so called security net are those least likely to be a terrorist.
Proof in fact – every terrorist we have caught or who succeeded on 9-11 got through TSA security. And what TSA does find is due to ignorant passenger who still don’t get the fact you cannot carry a gun or knife on a plane (though the latter would never be capable of taking over a plane these days). They are stopping tons of dumb people who apparently live in blessed isolation from the real world.
They are not stopping terrorists:
The ones who are least likely to be terrorists, the elderly, are the most likely to get the pat downs?” KDKA’s Jon Delano asked a local TSA officer.
“Correct. And that’s the big problem with this system.”
…
“It goes back to, ‘Do upon others as you would wish others to do upon you.’ And I would not want that done to me, or my family, or my mother, or my grandmother.”
Because the current plan is ineffective and targets the wrong people for harassment, it is NOT ‘undue’ searching. It is degrading and abusive and ignorant. Which seems to be the moniker this administration is going to wear in the annals of history.
And to go on, because the current plan is ineffective and targets the wrong people for harassment, it is in fact WORSE than no federal security at all Failed, incompetent plans are always worse than nothing at all, because they waste resources and divert attention from true threats.
If there were no TSA, then airlines and airports themselves would have to implement security procedures, in order to assure the public.
We are now at the point where the BEST and most effective way we have to improve security on American flights is to abolish the TSA immediately.
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