911, Terrorism and the TSA

Stop-and-Frisk at the Airport Checkpoint
by ALAN FARAGO

I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports lately as a retail traveler. A lot of time waiting in lines to pass through TSA security checkpoints. Time watching a heavy-handed, cumbersome, Department of Motor Vehicles mentality that is the insistent marker of TSA checkpoints.

It is time to change how Americans are being herded into a national security landscape on the retail level, that seems hopelessly driven by a down-market bureaucracy.

True, there have been no airline hijackings in the US since 9/11/2001. But there would have been no 9/11 if our elected officials had been vigilant.

It was all there: the information, the data, the intel that al Qaeda was coordinating a major attack on US soil, as a New York Times editorial on the 9/11 anniversary, reminds us.

The other day my wife was singled out for a random security check at LAX. My wife is in her sixth decade. The check involved a TSA screener not only feeling her body, but also putting fingers along inside the waist hem of her blue jeans. Excuse me?

The 9/11 OPED in the New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald reminds that it was political incompetence in the months leading up to 9/11 that changed America. Today, what worries is that there is no road map for dialing back the unprecedented assault against American freedoms. Also, on the retail level, every time I travel through an airport I am reminded by the TSA how America became captives of its own political incompetence.

I am saying a couple of things. The explosion of domestic surveillance by the US national security apparatus has a very high likelihood of identifying terrorist plots within the United States before they are executed. Hopefully, top elected officials are more clued in than the Bush White House in the early months of 2001 when the signals were clear and ignored.

Meanwhile, the chance of the TSA stopping a determined and sophisticated terrorist attack is, in my opinion, very small. So why are we all being herded in long lines like cattle in chutes?

The probability of identifying every plot against citizens may never be better than predicting the weather. So why do we behave as though we can, under the bureaucratic gaze of the TSA?

The problem that overshadows even those threats that are real and present is that a ponderous, wealthy and cosseted security infrastructure is now self-sustaining. How do Americans back it down? I am waiting for Congress and the White House to say, “We’ve proved our point with the TSA: now it is time to be vigilant and focused on airline security, but no more waiting in lines at airports.”

Is it even possible to ratchet back, when every vested interest in national security spending and infrastructure has set its alarm bell to ring, at the first hint, scent or indication of a calamity averted or caused?

I don’t mean to minimize the facts of 9/11, the desperate costs, and tragedy imprinted on families and nation. But every time I travel, part of me surveys the TSA security checkpoints and thinks, the bad guys won.

The bad guys not only put us on the defensive, they have apparently done so permanently. Al Qaeda used box cutters to rearrange the playing field so our democratic freedoms now conform with the same instinct that organizes their hatreds. We are victims, too, taking off our shoes, belts, and removing all coins from our pockets.

On the one hand, I understand that the TSA security checkpoints are a price we pay for a world made small by technology and freedom of access and movement to anyone with an airline ticket and identification. How would I like being on a passenger flight commandeered by terrorists because we “let down our guard”? Not at all. On the other hand, we are fully invested in the dark arts of identifying and killing terrorists around the world.

Tear down those TSA checkpoints, Congress.

Keeping America safe from terrorism depends, in the end, on a few elected officials paying attention and not falling asleep or declaring the wrong missions, accomplished, when they weren’t even identified to being with. Stopping the next 9/11 is consuming billions if not hundreds of billions of tax dollars. TSA security checkpoints are as effective as putting your seat in the upright position on take-off and landing. They make us do it so we will be conditioned to accept the next words of authority. It is the same, with the TSA whether we know it or not.

Woman claims TSA molested her during pat-down

And watch how the TSA threatens the guy filming the whole thing.

How the US Uses Sexual Humiliation as a Political Tool to Control the Masses

Friday, April 6, 2012 by The Guardian
by Naomi Wolf

In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.

Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to "turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks." He said he felt humiliated: "It made me feel like less of a man."

In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices' decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven't been introduced into a prison population.

Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner".

Believe me: you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.

The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.

One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium – where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as this are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.

I have watched male police and TSA members standing by side by side salaciously observing women as they have been "patted down" in airports. I have experienced the weirdly phrased, sexually perverse intrusiveness of the state during an airport "pat-down", which is always phrased in the words of a steamy paperback ("do you have any sensitive areas? … I will use the back of my hands under your breasts …"). One of my Facebook commentators suggested, I think plausibly, that more women are about to be found liable for arrest for petty reasons (scarily enough, the TSA is advertising for more female officers).

I interviewed the equivalent of TSA workers in Britain and found that the genital groping that is obligatory in the US is illegal in Britain. I believe that the genital groping policy in America, too, is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state – at any moment.

The most terrifying phrase of all in the decision is justice Kennedy's striking use of the term "detainees" for "United States citizens under arrest". Some members of Occupy who were arrested in Los Angeles also reported having been referred to by police as such. Justice Kennedy's new use of what looks like a deliberate activation of that phrase is illuminating.

Ten years of association have given "detainee" the synonymous meaning in America as those to whom no rights apply – especially in prison. It has been long in use in America, habituating us to link it with a condition in which random Muslims far away may be stripped by the American state of any rights. Now the term – with its associations of "those to whom anything may be done" – is being deployed systematically in the direction of … any old American citizen.

Where are we headed? Why? These recent laws criminalizing protest, and giving local police – who, recall, are now infused with DHS money, military hardware and personnel – powers to terrify and traumatise people who have not gone through due process or trial, are being set up to work in concert with a see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. A facility is being set up in Utah by the NSA to monitor everything all the time: James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine that the new facility in Bluffdale, Utah, is being built, where the NSA will look at billions of emails, texts and phone calls. Similar legislation is being pushed forward in the UK.

With that Big Brother eye in place, working alongside these strip-search laws, – between the all-seeing data-mining technology and the terrifying police powers to sexually abuse and humiliate you at will – no one will need a formal coup to have a cowed and compliant citizenry. If you say anything controversial online or on the phone, will you face arrest and sexual humiliation?

Remember, you don't need to have done anything wrong to be arrested in America any longer. You can be arrested for walking your dog without a leash. The man who was forced to spread his buttocks was stopped for a driving infraction. I was told by an NYPD sergeant that "safety" issues allow the NYPD to make arrests at will. So nothing prevents thousands of Occupy protesters – if there will be any left after these laws start to bite – from being rounded up and stripped naked under intimidating conditions.

Why is this happening? I used to think the push was just led by those who profited from endless war and surveillance – but now I see the struggle as larger. As one internet advocate said to me: "There is a race against time: they realise the internet is a tool of empowerment that will work against their interests, and they need to race to turn it into a tool of control."

As Chris Hedges wrote in his riveting account of the NDAA: "There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011."

This enormous new sector of the economy has a multi-billion-dollar vested interest in setting up a system to surveil, physically intimidate and prey upon the rest of American society.

Now they can do so by threatening to demean you sexually – a potent tool in the hands of any bully.

Feds threaten to ground Texas airplanes if anti-groping bill becomes law

(The federal govt is being ridiculous. What a surprise...--jef)

By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

 

 

A bill that would criminalize TSA agents who conduct airport patdown searches was scuttled last night after the federal government threatened to ground all flights out of Texas.

The proposed law would have levied misdemeanor charges against security agents who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly [touch] the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of the other person, including touching through clothing, or touching the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person."

An earlier version of House Bill 1937 would have made such action a felony.

"If [the legislation] passes, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute," a letter from the Department of Justice explained (PDF). "Unless or until a such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew."

As a result, the bill's co-sponsor in the Texas Senate withdrew the legislation. It had cleared the Texas House by unanimous vote.

"All that HB 1937 does is require that the TSA abide by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution," State Rep. David Simpson, the bill's author, fired back in an advisory. "We aren‘t even prohibiting the pat-downs, per se. We're just saying you can't go straight to third base. You have to have a reason -- you have to have probable cause -- before groping someone‘s sexual organs."

Simpson was unavailable for comment at time of this story's publication. He'd previously told Raw Story that if states do not stand up to the TSA on airport security, similar security measures would start appearing at sporting events and even in the general public.

State Sen. Dan Patrick (R) ultimately gave in and withdrew the bill, but only after insisting that he would not "cave" to "heavy handed threats by the federal government."

Texas to make TSA pat-downs felony crimes

Thursday, May 05, 2011 by J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) - Well, it was bound to happen. Someone has finally gotten so tired of the X-rated pat-downs at airports they are trying to criminalize it.

Tired of waiting for the federal government to do the right thing and uphold Americans' Fourth Amendment right to privacy and protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, Texas lawmakers are moving to make invasive pat-downs by Transportation Security Administration screeners a felony.

A bill moving through the state Legislature would make it illegal to intentionally touch a person's private areas, even above clothing, unless the screener had probable cause the passenger was hiding something - and by that, it means something dangerous.

Rep. David Simpson, R-Austin, said the measure - HB 1937 - aims to restore some dignity to the act of traveling. A second proposal, HB 1938, seeks to prohibit the use of full-body scanners in Texas airports. A vast majority of Texas state lawmakers support the legislation.

Few Americans doubt the need for increased security at airports, given the tragedy of 9/11. Most reasonable people understand the government's interest in preventing similar attacks. But feeling up 6-year-old girls? Molesting a former Miss America? And what about the TSA agent in Philly who was recently arrested on charges he was in possession of child pornography? That's not even the first time that's happened.

The Texas legislation may just be the beginning. There is a backlash growing against the overly invasive TSA pat-down procedures. Both pilots - who are also subject to such searches - as well as passengers, in growing numbers, have had enough. Even airports are opting out of using the TSA for airport "security."

The legislation in Texas may not hold up to a constitutional challenge from the U.S. Justice Department, which is sure to come if state lawmakers pass it and Gov. Rick Perry signs it into law. But the point is clear: People have had enough, and it's time for the government to listen.

There are better ways to provide airport security other than violating the constitutional rights of young passengers, beauty queens and everyone else in between.

TSA Agent's Invasive Security Search of a 6 year old girl

(Sorry if you've already seen this a thousand times...

And she'd already gone through an airport body scanner. Really? This is the face of the enemy? A little girl? This is insane. This is paranoia of the nth degree. I would be livid were I there in person watching this. Shit!--jef)

The Bizarre Tale of Graft and Sleazy Political Opportunism That Brought Us the 'Porno Scanners'

How we got to the point of full body scans, the massive personal intrusion that represents, and the tens of millions spent for machines that irradiate us. 

By Michael Collins, Smirking Chimp
November 18, 201

How did we get to the point of full body scans at airports, the massive personal intrusion that represents, and the tens of millions spent for machines that irradiate us as a consequence of merely flying from here to there?

The proximate cause is the attempted bombing of a December 25, 2009 Northwest airlines flight. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, an engineering student, attempted to mix, then detonate a bomb as Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam made its descent to Detroit's Metropolitan Airport. Mr. Abdulmutallab somehow got on the flight with the chemicals undetected, hidden in his underwear. (Image)

There was furor followed by calls for tighter airport security. Specifically, Michael Chertoff, former Bush Homeland Security chief, claimed full body scanners were the solution. One thing led to another and here we are today. Full body scanners are in 68 airports and planned for 1,000 across the United States by the end of 2011. Those who refuse the full body scans will be subject to "pat-downs, which include searches of passengers' genital areas."

The Missing Link

Right after the Christmas 2009 bombing attempt, two United States citizens, frequent world travelers, spoke up about what they'd both witnessed prior to the flight departing from Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport. Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori, attorneys from Taylor, Michigan, were sitting near the ticket counter waiting to board Flight 253. They saw two men approached the counter and speak with the agent on duty. One of the men was later identified as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who would later haplessly try to blow up the Northwest flight. The other was a well dressed man in his 50s (the sharp dressed man) who they took to be an Indian national:

"While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit," Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. "The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'"

Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.

The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn't see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane.

The Haskell's told their story to U.S. agents investigating the bombing attempt while they and other passengers were held at the Detroit airport. Shortly after being released from the airport, Kurt Haskell posted a comment on a MILive.com news thread. This was the first of a number of media encounters where the story was told consistently.

A summary article in Wikipedia provides the narrative of the official response to the Haskell's story. "The Dutch counter terror agency" reviewed 200 hours of airport security tapes and announced their conclusion that Abdulmutallab had no "accomplices," effectively questioning the accuracy of the Haskells' report. Security officials claimed  the Haskells' report by claiming that the video tape at Schiphol showed no one assisting Abdulmutallab at the ticket counter or anywhere else. The Haskells responded by saying, Show us the tape. At that point, "Federal agents" spoke to ABC's Brian Ross and said, Well, maybe there was a sharp dressed man and here's what he did.

This rejoinder by "Federal agents" is an endorsement of the reasonableness of the account by Kurt and Lori Haskell and, by implication, an admission that their account is correct.

Would Scanners Have Stopped Abdulmutallab?

We know that federal law enforcement quietly allowed the Haskell's story to stand through the statement to Brian Ross. Since key elements of the story have not been formally investigated, we don't know if Abdulmutallab went through normal check-in or if, as witnessed and indicated, he somehow bypassed normal security requirements. We don't know who the sharp dressed man is. We don't know the full extent of the system breakdown that allowed all of this to happen.
We do know that the bomber's father, Umaru Mutellab, one Africa's wealthiest individuals, told U.S. intelligence authorities that his son was a terrorist a month before the bombing. We also know that Abdulmutallab's name was placed in a terrorism database a month before the Christmas flight. However, his name was not transferred from that database to a watch list of 14,000 essentially nominated for the no-fly database, nor was the name transferred to the 4,000 member official no-fly list.

In the furor over the event, a clear voice emerged with a solution to future problems like that presented by the underwear bomber. Michael Chertoff, long time Bush national security official offered these unqualified assertions on December 27 in the Washington Post and December 28 in the New York Times:

Washington Post, Dec 27: "This plot is an example of something we've known could exist in theory, and in order to be able to detect it, you've got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at," Chertoff said. "It's either pat-downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven't figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out." 

New York Times, Dec. 28, 2009: "In recent days, Kip Hawley, the former T.S.A. director, and Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, have called for the rapid installation of a new generation of whole-body scanners that can look underneath clothing to search for hidden weapons or explosives, which officials consider the single most significant aviation threat today..."

From that point forward, the focus on preventing future terror threats to air travel focused on full body scanners. On January 15, 2010, the New York Times appended the December 28, 2009 article with this statement:

"Articles on Dec. 28, 29 and 30, about the apparent bombing attempt on a flight to Detroit, discussed the use of full-body scanners for airport security. They cited Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security, as supporting wider use of the scanners. Mr. Chertoff has confirmed in several recent interviews that a manufacturer of the devices is a client of his consulting company. That connection should have been noted in the articles."

Chertoff was caught red handed shilling for full body scanners in behalf of a company that was a client of Chertoff's consulting company. He was busted in public by the New York Times editor.
What was the outcome? Chertoff's original, self-interested assertion prevailed. We have full body scans headed for 1,000 airports and, for those who don't want the radiation, the national security grope, invasive searches of the passenger's genital area.

Never mind the first hand eye witness accounts by Kurt and Lori Haskell. Never mind the report by one of the most prominent public figures in Nigeria, the bombers father, that his son was a terrorist and the lack of decisive action on that tip off. Never mind the never released 200 hours of Dutch security footage that could have proven without a doubt the existence of a facilitator, the sharp dressed man who accompanies the bomber.

All of this reveals a systemic defect in anti-terrorism activities, one that, if corrected, could have more efficiently and effectively prevented future terror threats everywhere by logical changes in policies and practices. Instead of decisive action on this clearly documented problem, we now have full body scanners proposed by a Bush era security official with a clear conflict of interest.

Perpetual 9/11

The underwear bomber incident is, in some ways, 9/11 writ small. A credibly identified terrorist is allowed to board U.S. commercial airliner with little scrutiny. There is a tragic outcome. Clear breakdowns in security are exposed, breakdowns that make no real sense to citizens -- failure to put Abdulmutallab on the no-fly list, for example. Congress and others fail to truly examine any of this, while the public is whipped into a fury. Instead of a real solution, a serious, unflinching investigation into who was responsible and why crazy policies are in place that appear to coddle identified threats, we end up with a solution that makes little, if any sense -- full body scanners.

Full body scanners share a common trait with the misdirected solutions to avoid a future 9/11 -- the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, torture, etc. The scanners represent a major intrusion into our lives, a violation of our rights, a likely health hazard, and a major diversion from the real issue at hand -- incompetence and/or deception in the handling of identified threats to the nation, individuals who somehow bypass the very security protections put in place to stop their attacks.

Airport Security: The Invisible Hand Cops A Feel

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
by Karl Zeeuw

"If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested."

John Tyner's line lacks the elegance of "Give me liberty, or give me death" - but it doesn't lack the weight. We've got to pick it up and run with it, now, while the momentum is ours.

The California software engineer's challenge to an airport Transportation Security Administration agent, who wanted to prod Tyner's genitals before he got on a plane, could - if we act now -- become a long-overdue shout heard round the world. It's a rare moment when we call all speak, confidently and assertively, as one people with one voice.

"The Terrorists Have Won," announces the top headline on today's conservative Drudge Report, over a photo of a TSA agent groping a nun.

"Are TSA Screenings Too Much?" wonders liberal MSNBC's website.

No ambiguity, for once. Nearly all Americans - Tea-partiers and radical feminists and investment bankers and Raging Grannies and soccer moms and church groups - can get behind this one. How often is that going to happen? The daily violation at our airports has finally hit the "national conversation" in a big way - and so has the discussion of what the TSA's attitude toward passengers really means, and really is.

"It's all about everybody recognizing their role," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explains, helpfully, referring to the full-body scans and pat-downs.

Could it get any plainer? Do you need it spelled out? Sure, she ostensibly meant the ordinary citizen's "role" in cooperating to Keep Our Skies Safe.

But the harder truth slipped out with the puerile platitude, and now it's there in a pile on the floor. We all see it, and smell it. She really means it's all about learning and remembering our place in a world where anyone in a uniform Always Knows What's Best. Oh and so does your Boss, by the way - you know, the person the folks in uniform ultimately work for. As do Napolitano, and Barack Obama, and Congress, and the Supreme Court, and the military, and CNN and Fox News. They're working for rich people who want you to have a lower opinion of yourself so you'll do more work for less money. They want you to believe that sacrifice is noble, that they're making you poorer for our own eventual good, and that resistance is futile.

Last weekend, John Tyner happened to have his brain tuned to what the TSA agent's words really meant, saw them translated in the ugly subtitles of reality: "Your body - your balls, which we're about to cup -- belong to us. Oh, and if you argue about that, we can step into that little room there, and you can bend over, and then something else of yours will belong to us, too."

Because as we all know, sexual predation is about personal power. If that predation is institutionalized, as it is now in our airports, it's about social power, political power, and - most importantly - economic power.

The original motive for these extreme measures was security, but any opportunity for such a fundamental form of control is eventually seized by those who stand to make a buck, and by outright perverts - often in an alliance.

That is the case now, and now that we have this window of truth, we have to point it out to all those we know - your redneck brother-in-law, your vegan neighbor girl, your Tea-party aunt, your college professor uncle. We need to demand dignity in travel and freedom of movement in our own country without a disgraceful trade-off. We need to write to our local newspapers and elected officials, and to talk about this at work and in church, at the drum circle or the hunting camp, around the dinner table and at school _ spread the word now.

"You should never have to explain to your children, 'Remember that no stranger can touch or see your private area, unless it's a government employee,'" say the organizers of National Opt Out Day - Nov. 24, 2010 - when they're urging all U.S. air travelers to refuse to be body-scanned. Check them out here http://www.optoutday.com/.

Right now, while we're all paying attention, we have to say no, loudly, on this one. Because this is what we're being told: "We own your lives. We own your bodies. We own your private parts. They are ours to look at, and to touch - not even sexually, not even lasciviously - but clinically, institutionally, as part of work - like the hand of a farmer, say, on the udder of a cow, or that of a butcher on the neck of a pig."