TSA's VIPR Bites Rail, Bus, and Ferry Passengers 658
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA's VIPR program may be expanding. According to the Washington Times, 'TSA has always intended to expand beyond the confines of airport terminals. Its agents have been conducting more and more surprise groping sessions for women, children and the elderly in locations that have nothing to do with aviation.' In Tennessee earlier this month, bus passengers in Nashville and Knoxville were searched in addition to the truck searches discussed here previously. Earlier this year in Savannah, Georgia, TSA forced a group of train travelers, including young children, to be patted down. (They were getting off the train, not on.) Ferry passengers have also been targeted. According to TSA Administrator John Pistole's testimony before the Senate last June, 'TSA conducted more than 8,000 VIPR operations in the [previous] 12 months, including more than 3,700 operations in mass-transit and passenger-railroad venues.' He wants a 50% budget increase for VIPR for 2012. Imagine what TSA would do with the extra funding."
This is out of control (Score:5, Interesting)
We have become consumed by the fear of a mosquito bite, are we going to continue to give up our freedom for what amounts to a non-issue?
Illegal Search (Score:5, Interesting)
Every TSA pat-down, especially those outside an air terminal, are illegal searches. There is no probable cause for agents of the government to initiate a search, even in air terminals, hence is a violation of 4th Amendment Rights. Every time Pistole is questioned about this by Congress, he insists that Air Travelers (and all travelers, by VIPR assumptions) are guilty until proven innocent, and that American children are all bomb carrying agents of Terrorism, because terrorists have used children and women in other parts of the world.
I wish they would... (Score:5, Interesting)
..try to search me before I get off the train.
If I refuse? are they going to prevent me from getting off the train?
isn't that kidnapping? I mean they can search me before I get on with the threat that if I'm not searched, I can't board, but can they really keep me from getting off at a domestic stop?
If they touch me with out my permission isn't that assault?
I know that my response to it will be classified as assault.
It's bad enough that they have made air travel unbearable, do we need to let them mess up this too?
I'm sure that it will help create jobs by discouraging americans from traveling at all.
That's it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a Canadian sysadmin. I love -- LOVE -- the LISA conference (http://www.usenix.org/lisa11/ [usenix.org]). It's wonderful, informative, and fun; I've made great friends there, learned an incredible amount and generally enjoyed myself enormously.
Last year was the third time I went. The conference was in San Jose. I took a bus and a train -- which took over 24 hours -- from Vancouver to San Jose, rather than fly and go through a naked body scanner. I figured if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.
I'd already decided to skip this year's conference; it's in Boston, which is a long way to go by train or bus. I didn't want to be away from my family for that long. But I had been thinking about going next year, when it's going to be in San Diego.
I'm not going now. Not if this crap keeps up. I'll watch the video on my workstation, I'll listen to the MP3s on the bus, and I'll stay here in Canada. We have problems of our own -- but random searches and "papers, please" for the crime of taking the goddamned train are not one of them.
I'll miss y'all.
Re:Illegal Search (Score:5, Interesting)
The TSA just needs to go away. I am a firm believer that it has outlived its usefulness and now is just a money sink for federal taxes. Not to mention the fact that their entire existence is just Washington wiping their ass's with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
An attack like 9/11 will not occur again, plain and simple. The people on the airplane will do what they can to keep some random jack asses from doing anything stupid that would keep them from landing safely since the passengers now know that death is a possibility for them if they allow the hijacker/terrorist to have control of the airplane or execute their plans.
Re:This makes my skin crawl (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that Fienstien and heckle, jeckle, and Chuck of New York figured prominantly in this legislation.
Re:Illegal Search (Score:5, Interesting)
I know rules can be bend, and even dodge, etc, so what kind of strategy is being used to keep on doing something illegal to the people of the USA without receiving any consequences?
It's very simple, really: Although there have been rumblings about this sort of thing going back at least as far as Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, the various top political elites have an unwritten but very real agreement to never prosecute each other no matter how heinous the crime. They've also generally had agreement to protect their top financial contributors, which is why practically no executives are in jail for fraud regarding worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Here's where the flaws appear to be:
1. The politically appointed (or in some cases elected) prosecutors can choose whether or not to zealously prosecute a defendant regardless of the strength of the evidence against that defendant. So when Lloyd Blankfein commits fraud on a massive scale, but contributes to the president's campaign, the president tells the AG to tell the US attorneys to ignore any evidence of his crimes.
2. In states with elected judges, it's not uncommon for judges to trade favorable decisions for campaign contributions.
3. And of course, if all else fails and somebody is convicted of a crime, elected leaders can override court decisions with pardons and commutation (e.g. Scooter Libbey).
The trouble is, there's no obvious solution to any of these. Forcing prosecutors to do their jobs won't work because they're the ones responsible for enforcing the rule that says they have to do their job. Appointing judges won't completely work because you'll just get the governor's or the president's cronies. And there's really no way to stop a president from letting somebody go even if they've been convicted of a crime.
Re:Well, so much for... (Score:2, Interesting)
It only sounds appealing on the sound bite. It's like people who think that if we just got rid of the IRS that we wouldn't have to pay taxes. I contracted for the TSA when they were just being formed and got my share of experience with the screeners that came before the TSA. Let's just say the TSA's standards were /much/ higher than private industries standards.
Private industry just might be cheaper, but this is one area where cheaper is not necessarily better. As a point of reference you can google places that outsource their police force to private industry and see how that worked out for the populace. Some things naturally lend themselves to be government work instead of private industry work and this is one of them. All that being said, if you don't like how they are doing things, than get the people in charge to make the changes.
Personally I'm of the opinion we put Bruce Schneier in charge of the TSA and let him have his way with it. Get rid of the security theater and implement some real security in it's place.
Re:This is out of control (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be noted that that part of thing isn't going to plan: A number of returning US Marines have volunteered to help protect Occupy protesters from the police.
Re:And? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you view votes only based on aggregate two-party breakdown, you can justify nearly any ridiculous argument. You have to look at individual votes to accurately see what's going on. Most of the Republicans who voted against the Patriot Act were Libertarian- and Tea Party-affiliated.
Re:Ron Paul 2012! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to admit it, but his crazy ideas start looking a little less crazy every day. I do respect him for sticking to his ideals but he takes a sledge hammer to things that really need a little more precision.
My impression is that he is well aware that he will not be elected president or even vice-president. Given that reality, when he runs for president what he is really doing is using the race as a way to inform the public about libertarianism in the hope that some of it will make its way into the general american consensus. If he were to take less of an absolutist position all it would do is dilute the end result even further.
As support for this belief consider his position on the Federal Reserve - that it should be abolished. He's now the chair of the Federal Reserve Oversight Committee and yet he hasn't killed the Federal Reserve because he realizes that doing so would be impractical, if not impossible, at this point in time. However he has been trying to reel it in, proposing bills to publicly audit it and make it more accountable - which sounds like the kind of precision versus sledge-hammer approach you are advocating.
Re:This makes my skin crawl (Score:5, Interesting)
This is pretty far removed from the Land of the Brave I pledged allegiance to in gradeschool
You pledged allegiance to a flag, actually. What most people do not know is that the original solute during the pledge was to extend your right hand, like these children (note that this was taken in 1941):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Students_pledging_allegiance_to_the_American_flag_with_the_Bellamy_salute.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Re:And? (Score:2, Interesting)
Collectives falsely usurp and exceed the power of individuals, even though no group should be able to claim greater rights than any its individual constituents possess.
Re:This is out of control (Score:5, Interesting)
Personal theory follows, ignore, comment, whatever. This is just a musing on general trends.
I've known a handful of cops. Their reasons for becoming one are varied, but the one constant is a rules-based view of the world. There are rules, and if you break the rules, you must be punished. The soldiers I've known tend to be more focused on harm: if you broke the rules, but nobody got hurt, then let it slide; conversely, if you followed the letter of the law but ended up fucking people over, they'd as soon kill you as look at you.
Cops can't really be any other way, because we can't let law enforcement be completely whimsical and subjective. But I know which group of people I'd rather hang out with.
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is an assumption that holds true of a few pseudo-unions (things which are called "unions" but aren't, the same way that many dictatorships have "democratic" in the name) but which simply doesn't hold true of unionism in the historical context. Historical unions don't depend on membership and historically it was unions that fought to keep incompetents OUT of jobs, forcing employers to hire people who were skilled at the job.
True, historic unionism is highly progressive and helped boost profits for the businesses (it turns out that cheap labour produces poorer-quality products and has higher accident/disability rates, inflating net costs in the long-term) and boost the members (since members weren't so subject to office politics and therefore were more likely to be promoted according to merit).
Re:Well, so much for... (Score:4, Interesting)
Example: According to the TSA site [tsa.gov], rules prohibit a passenger from carrying more than 100ml of liquid through a security checkpoint. I have no idea how much explosive liquid it would take to cause a serious problem aboard a plane, but I would assume a liter of something would achieve a terrorist's goal. This could easily be accomplished under current rules by having ten terrorists each bring a 100ml bottle of explosive fluid through the security checkpoint, then combining the volume once inside the plane. Even easier would be for one terrorist to simply make ten trips through security, each time bringing in another 100ml bottle of explosive fluid and stashing them somewhere within the gates area to then be combined into a 1-liter explosive bomb.
Security theater is for Europeans, too! (Score:5, Interesting)
How about just getting your government to make the TSA behave like most other western country's airport security? I've yet to see Canadian and European airport security turn up in a railway station and start frisking passengers.
I agree that the German security krewe that screwed with me aren't likely to show up at the Bahnhof by mistake, but this is an international show, Mr. Moore; you can buy your tickets with Euros, too!
On my last trip to Germany (last year), I made the mistake of bringing my reading light. The trip before that one, I had gotten an airplane seat with a broken light, and I wasn't going to suffer through another 10 hours of boredom if I could help it. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat modded LED headlamp: I had one headlamp that had an OK headband and mount, and another one with really neat optics and a broken mount. So I combined them. Unfortunately, aesthetics are not usually my prime concern when I make gadgets for myself—the thing has a largish lump of black epoxy on top where the wires come out. Yeah, it occurred to me that it might confuse people if I stuck this into my pocket, but I couldn't find anything else, and hey, it's obviously a flashlight. How much trouble can that cause?
And in fact, I got through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport just fine. None of the National Security Goons said a thing about it, even though I had my usual snarling match with the dumb f*cks. Ah, but on the way back through the Frankfurt airport, the guy running the carry-on X ray machine literally danced on his tippy-toes, holding my ugly duckling light up high in the air for all to see, calling for a "Sonderuntersuchung". Yep, special handling for the Doctor.
They took me to the Room For Bad Boys (at this point, a certain amount of Reality Skew had already set in, and I was getting junior high school flashbacks). What I thought was really weird is that none of these people understood why I would want a reading light. I tried to explain to them that reading was fun, but was met by looks of blank incomprehension. This was not some sort of language problem, as the Doctor's native language is German. (Well, OK, with a heavy Bavarian accent, but I think even these damn Prussians could understand me just fine!) They kept shining my light on the ceiling (after I showed them how to turn it on); I remember apologizing several times about how dim it was, and offering to change out the nearly dead batteries. Maybe this wasn't a smart thing to say to people who probably can't tell a flashlight from a Klingon phaser. But eventually, they gave me back my reading light, and let me go.
I had taken no more than three steps when I felt a hand on my arm. I was notified (in English) that I had been selected for a "special security check". It was like the scene you've seen in 50 movies where the prisoner is released, thinks the ordeal is over—and is instantly re-arrested by hard-faced guys wearing the 20th century's most snazzy uniforms with those jagged lightning bolt runes. There were at least five of these guys, and two of them were women. Evidently, this somewhat confused paunchy 60+ year old guy with the fuzzy white beard sent the danger meter into the red zone. The woman who was seated behind a desk said, "Empty your pockets please." Further Reality Seepage followed.
I can explain why I lost control. You see, I was wearing my Vest of Many Pockets, and every pocket was filled with things I considered interesting or useful (like reading lights, books, interesting rocks, you know, the usual stuff). I had a mental image of myself emptying out a nearly infinite multitude of pockets, drawing forth who knew what (I certainly had very little memory of what I had collected in the past weeks), a process that, with the accompanying explanations, would clearly consume months. I started laughing. I couldn't help it, I was bent over in paroxysms of laughter, holding on to Frau Schnipperschnapps' desk for support, for what seemed like a