Orlando Gets Approval to Dump the TSA

The Disney company must have some serious pull - wouldn't surprise me if they had some influence on this decision since so many of the tourists passing through Orlando are coming to Disney resorts:

The Transportation Security Administration has given preliminary approval to a plan that would allow Orlando Sanford International Airport to use private security screeners.

Screeners employed by private companies are already used at 16 airports under the agency’s Screening Partnership Program. Republicans have pressed for greater use of private screeners and welcomed last week’s announcement.

“I hope this opens a new era of reform for TSA operations, not only at Orlando Sanford but across the nation,” said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “It’s critical that TSA get out of the business of running a huge bureaucracy and human resources operation and refocus its attention on security, analyzing intelligence, and setting the highest risk-based security standards. TSA needs to focus on going after terrorists — not little old ladies, veterans and children.”

Democrats and the union representing TSA officers, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), have opposed privatization of the workforce that screens people and luggage at the nation’s airports.

Federalizing airport screening was a huge mistake and the stories of passenger abuse are legion. It's time to turn things around. Private companies are completely able to handle this without government unions and oppressive polices.

Government Sponsored Terrorism Headlines of the Day

From Drudge:

EPA OFFICIAL: 'CRUCIFY' OIL & GAS COMPANIES

Agency defends patdown of sobbing 4-year-old girl...

Family Misses Flight after TSA Gives Pat-Down to 7-Year-Old -- with Cerebral Palsy!

REPORT: Congressman groped by T&A...

Both the TSA and EPA are completely out of control. I'd love to hear Romney say his goal is to privatize airport security again and shut down the EPA.

Today's Paulnut Conspiracy Theory - Rand Paul Was Targeted by Janet Napolitano and the TSA

No, he wasn't, though some folks on Facebook clearly think that's what happened.  I saw this note from one guy:

Napalitano's TSA clearly targeted Rand Paul and other conservatives. Don't lie TSA jackboots.

In case you missed it, Sen. Rand Paul, son of personality cult leader Rep. Ron Paul, had a run-in with the TSA at the Nashville Airport yesterday.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul told The Daily Caller that being “detained” by the Transportation Security Administration at the Nashville airport Monday was a major ordeal that underscores flaws in TSA’s procedures that affect tens of millions of passengers every year.

“It was a big headache,” Paul said in a phone interview. “I missed my speech here. I was supposed to speak to the Right to Life March, probably the biggest audience I’ll get to speak to, and I missed it.”

The White House, through spokesman Jay Carney, defended the TSA’s actions during Monday’s press briefing by arguing that Paul wasn’t technically “detained.”

“Let’s be clear,” Carney said. “The passenger was not detained. He was escorted out of the area by local law-enforcement.”

But Sen. Paul told TheDC that he certainly felt like he was detained. “If you’re told you can’t leave, does that count as detention?” Paul asked.

“I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

He clearly was detained by the TSA and that poses a number of problems because according to the Constitution members of the House or Senate cannot be arrested or detained (except under very specific circumstances) while en route or returning from a session of Congress. Paul was on his way back to a Senate session scheduled to begin that afternoon, and also was to speak at the March for Life in Washington. His detention caused him to miss that speech.

The Paulnuts are claiming he was targeted by Janet Napolitano to either keep him from the anti-abortion march, or just to harass him for his anti-big government policies. Neither are true. Paul simply exercised what he felt were his rights against an overly intrusive government and hilarity ensued.

I'm glad this happened because it's helpful when a prominent citizen can so eloquently point out the fallacy of our current airport security system, one that treats every passenger like a terrorist...except those most likely to be terrorists.  However, had this happened to a Dem Senator I don't think the White House would have been so quick to give the TSA a pass.

The Ever Encroaching Police State

Is this really necessary?

The Transportation Security Administration had quite a year of free publicity in 2011, including headline-grabbing news of agents groping grandmas, fondling supermodels, joking about passengers’ “junk” while virtually disrobing them and pilfering possessions from luggage.

In 2012, the agency is planning to expand its operations at train stations, subway stations, ferry docks and other transportation hubs.

Special TSA teams conducted 9,300 surprise inspections at non-airport facilities in 2011 alone. The Department of Homeland Security is pressing Congress to pay $24 million more for 12 additional roving units next year.

The Los Angeles Times reports that these teams — called “viper” units, with 25 currently operational — drop in at transportation facilities and conduct random inspections.

Not everyone is convinced that the teams are necessary, with critics referring to the operations as “security theatre.”

“It’s a great way to make the public think you are doing something,” Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, told the Times. “It’s a little like saying, ‘If we start throwing things up in the air, will they hit terrorists?’”

In 2011, a variety of libertarian, progressive and tea party advocates vented about the intrusive nature of TSA procedures, also referring to them as “political theatre.”...

TSA officials told the Times that the mobile “viper” units have not foiled any known terror plot.

People who are used to taking trains know they can arrive just a few minutes before the train gets there and easily get aboard and make their trip. The TSA has probably done more to promote train travel than anything else they've accomplished, but should one of these teams show up at a train station, they're guaranteed to make a whole host of people miss their trains while continuing their record of never having stopped or even detected a terrorist threat. This is completely unnecessary and I wish a candidate not named Ron Paul would vow to end this mess.

Felony Charges Turned Down for TSA Tit Twister

No matter what you think of the story, how often do you get to write a headline with "TSA Tit Twister" in it?

No felony charges will be filed against the Colorado woman who allegedly sexually assaulted a Transportation Security Administration agent in Phoenix.

On Tuesday the Maricopa County district attorney decided to turn the case of Yukari Miyamae, 61, of Longmont over to city prosecutors. She could still be charged with a misdemeanor.

Police say Miyamae grabbed the female agent’s left breast, squeezed and twisted it with both hands on July 14 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Miyamae was getting ready to board a flight from Phoenix to Denver.

Miyamae’s attorney Judd Golden says his client was violated, endangered and threatened by the actions of TSA agents. She denies doing anything wrong.

Golden released a statement Tuesday, saying Miyamae is a self-employed translator, author and radio producer. He used the following words to describe how the situation unfolded:

Ms. Miyamae says she told TSA agents she wanted to be screened by the metal detector gate. She did so out of concern for excessive radiation exposure from the full-body scanners, as she is a frequent business traveler.

Her request was denied. She was soon surrounded by TSA agents. One TSA agent, a tall woman, approached Ms. Miyamae, who is only five feet tall.

Ms. Miyamae felt panicked and experienced a volatile aversion to the TSA personnel violating her personal physical space. She felt endangered and threatened based upon prior traumatizing security pat-downs, repugnance at the prospect of being touched again in such a violent and undignified manner, and instinctively pushed the female TSA agent away.

Anyone groped by the TSA can probably related to what this woman did.

Dumb Carmageddon Tweet of the Day

I just saw this on the Metrolink Twitter feed:

RT @elimprocess: If the #405 closure taught us anything, it was that we do not need cars to get around. We need a better transit system...

Absolute baloney. The only thing the 405 closure taught us is if you hype something hard enough everybody will stay home.  The reason we "didn't need cars to get around" is because nobody was going anywhere yesterday.  The contributions from LA's transit system were minimal.

Let's look at the traffic situation again next Saturday and tell me again how we don't need cars to get around.

By the way, I bet JetBlue is feeling a little silly today.  They bought into the hype and decided to offer $4 flights from Burbank to Long Beach (or back).  Given the cost of operating an Airbus jetliner, they probably burned up more money in fuel just taxiing to the runway than they made in airfare sales.

As it turns out, if you wanted to go from Burbank to Long Beach yesterday you could have easily driven it in less than an hour and wouldn't have had to go through a TSA groping to get there.  I bet they don't do that again in 11 months when we go through Carmageddon II.

TSA Headlines of the Day

From Drudge:

MOTHER ARRESTED AFTER REFUSING TO LET TSA GROPE HER DAUGHTER...

Didn't want her 'touched inappropriately or crotch grabbed'...

OFFICER: Mother used 'very stern voice, quite a bit of attitude'... 

For the record, having a "stern voice" or any amount of "attitude" is not illegal.  If the TSA decided to punish this woman for either of these issues, they're not a professional organization.

And a bonus headline:

Wheelchair Couple Tells of Being 'Search Raped'...

Fun With the TSA

First, this headline:

Kirkland 6-year-old patted down by TSA agents

The kid was apparently patted down twice. Is there anyone with any common sense at the TSA? I'm beginning to wonder.

I've been embarking on my own fun little TSA project and you too can play along if you like. If you have the Facebook app for your mobile phone, there's a feature called "Places" that allows you to tag your location. When you hit the "Check-in" button a list of local places pops up and you can tag yourself in one of those locations. If your location isn't in the list, you can add a new one.

That's where the fun comes in. Whenever I go to an airport I add a location called "TSA Groping Station" and the airport name. From then on every time a Facebook user hits "Check-in" that location will show up in the list. It's kind of a private protest against an increasingly intrusive agency.

Since I can only get to a few airports a year, please feel free to play along at your local airport or wherever you fly. I'd love to see a "TSA Groping Station" location in every airport in the country.

No Valid Boarding Pass, No Passport, No Problem!

A major TSA fail:

CBS News has confirmed that authorities are looking into a shocking security breach that took place at John F. Kennedy International Airport last week.

Investigators say Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a Nigerian, boarded Virgin America Flight 415 to Los Angeles without a valid passport or identification, using an expired boarding pass for a flight the day before that belonged to someone else.

Officials say Noibi got through security and was able to board the plane. No one noticed until the flight was airborne when a flight attendant realized Noibi was sitting in a seat that was supposed to be vacant.

He showed the attendant the expired boarding pass that was in someone else’s name and then showed him a University of Michigan identification card with his picture on it.

Maybe if this guy had only been a 95-year old woman with terminal cancer the TSA would have checked him out.

TSA Headline of the Day

If you run the TSA you can't be happy seeing this at the top of Drudge:

TSA: WE DIDN'T TAKE OFF HER DIAPER

Unfortunately, the TSA has quickly become the classic government bureaucracy, and with it soon to be unionized, it won't get any better. The organization has a set of rules and policies and nobody...NOBODY...is to depart from them under any circumstances. That makes for an organization where common sense is no longer common and rigid fealty to arbitrary rules becomes the expected norm. Employees are not allowed to think for themselves, because the penalty for doing so is to become out-of-step with the rest of the robots, and we can't have that.

Put all that together and you get TSA agents demanding a terminally ill 95-year old woman take off her adult diapers...after a 45 minute search process.  The agency should be horribly embarrassed...but I'm not sure they have the capacity anymore.

Today's TSA Outrage

Common sense is official dead:

An elderly woman in the late-stages of leukemia was forced to undergo 45 minutes of additional screenings last Saturday when she tried to board a flight out of Northwest Florida Regional Airport, her daughter told FoxNews.com

Lena Reppert, 95, was to say her final goodbyes to her daughter before she made what would most likely be her last flight to her native Michigan. After eight years of battling leukemia, doctors say she doesn’t have much time to live.

“She said she wanted to be closer to her grave,” Jean Weber, her daughter, told FoxNews.com. “I knew it would probably be the last time I ever see her.”

But when Reppert made it to the check-in line, Transportation Security Association agents singled her out because she was in a wheelchair. Wheelchairs require other security measures to be employed since they don’t go through metal detectors.

“So they brought my mom to the side, and two agents just started patting her,” Reppert said. “Eventually they found something that appeared to be hard and they said could be a concealed weapon.”

She said two female agents wheeled her mom into a private room where they performed a more thorough inspection, and found that Reppert was wearing a Depend adult diaper.

“It was hard because the underwear was bunched up,” Weber said, adding that she was not in the room as her mother was patted.

After 45 minutes, the mother and daughter were given two options: either don't fly, or lose the Depend. The women chose the latter.

“I ran with her to the bathroom and stripped her down,” Weber recalled. “I got back to the line and just started bawling.”

Weber said the emotional toll was too much. From perhaps seeing her mother for what could be the last time, to having to see her mother go through all the security measures, “I just cried and said, ‘Please can you let her through, she’s just so sick,” she said.

Chances are while the TSA agents were messing with this poor old sick woman, three other women in hijabs walked through the screening unmolested.

Perry Still Pushing TSA Anti-Groping Bill

Gov. Rick Perry is not backing down from threats made by the TSA:

Gov. Rick Perry announced he had added legislation that would make it illegal for TSA agents to engage in “intrusive touching” at airports security checkpoints without probable cause to the list of items for the legislature to consider during the special session.

The measure had previously failed to pass in the Texas Senate after the Justice Department wrote a scathing memo against the bill that threatened legal action against the state and the bill became enmeshed in Senate politics.

There are questions about what affect the legislation might have since airport security is a federal matter.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was accused of lobbying against the bill in May said he was “pleased” by Perry’s decision.

“I’m very pleased that Governor Perry agreed to add this legislation to his Special Session call,” Dewhurst said. “Addressing unreasonable and unlawful searches of innocent travelers by some TSA employees is an issue that affects all Texans who use air travel, and it should not wait until next Session.”

Before the Senate took up the bill initially, the Justice Department sent a letter to state advising that passage of the bill would result in immediate legal action by the federal government and that it could result in airline flights to and from Texas being delayed or cancelled.

I think Texas is spoiling for a fight with the Feds and that will further enhance Perry's image with many voters across the country. Anyone who travels by air can relate to the intrusiveness of TSA searches and nobody likes being treated like a terrorist, especially when our laws are supposed to treat us as innocent until proven guilty.

The political correctness that infests the TSA and the lack of common sense in the screening process just makes Perry's stand more attractive.

Political Quote of the Day

From Texas Rep. David Simpson (R) regarding the Texas bill that would restrict the TSA's invasive groping techniques and the TSA's threat to cancel all flights in Texas if it's enacted:

"175 years ago in the first battle of the Texas Revolution against Mexico, a small band of Texans stood in defiance at Gonzalez, turning back the attempt to deprive them of their weapon of defense, a single cannon," he wrote in a letter to Perry, Dewhurst, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus and Attorney General Gregg Abbott.

"Gentlemen, we find ourselves at such a watershed moment today," Simpson continued. "The federal government is attempting to deprive the citizens of Texas of their constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution. If we do not stand for our citizens in the face of this deprivation of their personal rights and dignity, who will?"

The TSA thinks they'll win this via the supremacy clause of the Constitution. I'm not so sure. A challenge on 10th amendment grounds might be successful. And there's nothing in the Constitution that gives the TSA the right to ignore 4th amendment protections.

And if the TSA actually banned flight in Texas, I think you'd see a revolution unlike any other very, very quickly.

TSA Headlines of the Day

From Drudge:

TSA Threatens To Cancel All Flights Out Of Texas If 'Groping Bill' Passed...

TEXAS CAVES IN...

CHARGE: TSA Pats Down Child, Little Old Lady, Ignores Man in Arab Garb...

REPORT: US to store passenger data for 15 years...

If Texas ever decides to secede from the Union, I'm going with them.

TSA to Try Trusting Travelers?

Maybe:

Upset with being frisked and having a naked image taken of you at airports?
Increasingly, stringent air security screening methods such as these are under question. And they're not just being questioned by travelers upset at being groped. A consensus is building among the airline industry, business and leisure travel groups and even top government officials that something needs to change.

The alternative they're looking to: traveler verification systems akin to trusted traveler programs, in which people's backgrounds are checked beforehand, and they verify who they are when they get ready to board a flight.

The Transportation Security Administration and airlines already are testing a verification program for airline crews, which could end aggressive screening of them. It's time, airlines around the world say, that similar programs — and tiered programs — should be extended to trusted or known travelers.

I've got an idea - how about if you're not Middle Eastern and between the ages of 18-40 they quit messing with you?

TSA Headlines of the Day

There's a fight brewin' in Texas:

BIG SIS REBUKE: Texas House Passes Bill Banning Pat-Downs Of 'Anus, Sex Organ, Buttocks, Breast'...

TSA: Back off, Constitution says we can...

The guy at the TSA basically says the Supremacy Clause means the Federal government can do anything it wants. I don't think he's going to be correct about that.

Assault With a Deadly Juice Bottle

The ever vigilant TSA is on the case:

At a Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport security checkpoint, the Tsa confiscates juice box and baby food due to the items allegedly testing positive for trace amounts of explosive materials.

I had my own run-in with the Dallas Fort-Worth TSA back in 2003, a story I mentioned in a post a couple of years ago:

I was in Dallas for some quartet work and on a Sunday afternoon was headed back to Orange County. I was carrying my quartet briefcase with me, and as I went through the checkpoint they asked if they could run my briefcase through their explosives screener. The guy wiped the case with a special cloth and put that cloth in the machine. The thing lit up like Christmas and suddenly I was the center of attention.

Now I knew something they didn't know. I knew there was nothing dangerous in that case, but the way they acted you'd have thought I had a bomb in there.

I spent about 25 minutes or so being interviewed by the supervisor while they searched my case. As I was sitting there, mildly amused by the whole thing, it hit me what had probably happened.

That morning I had gone to church with my friends and had walked across some grass that had been recently fertilized (I could smell it as I walked through). I later changed shoes, handling the dress shoes that must have had fertilizer residue on them. Fertilizer is made largely out of nitrogen, and that's one of the ingredients the bomb sniffing machines are looking for.

I probably transferred that residue to the briefcase, and there you go - alarm city.

They let me go.

Back in the pre-TSA days and right after 9/11 I was on another quartet trip and while sitting in Dallas waiting for a connecting flight, the four of us struck up a conversation with a college girl who was complaining about the treatment she had gotten from the security people during several flights she'd taken that day. At that time security was required to randomly pull people out of line and search them and their carry-ons. This poor girl had been searched four times.

As we lined up to get on our flight I told the guys to get in line right behind that girl. My theory was that because she was attractive the security guy would naturally grab her for screening and while they're dealing with her we'll be able to walk right on the plane without problems.

And that's exactly what happened. I guess the only way these security guys could talk to a pretty girl was to pull her out of line and put her through a search. Thanks to her a bunch of old guys like us weren't bothered at all.

I would guess the baby food incident above was caused by something similar to what happened to me. Moral of the story - wash your hands before you go through security.

Bin Laden Had His Sights Set on Amtrak

Interesting:

Holed up in a compound in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden was scheming how to hit the United States hard again, according to newly uncovered documents that show al-Qaida plans for derailing an American train on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Details of the plan emerged Thursday as some of the first intelligence was gleaned from the trove of information found in bin Laden's residence when Navy SEALs killed the al-Qaida leader and four of his associates. They took his body and scooped up computers, DVDs and documents from the compound where U.S. officials think he had been living for as long as six years.

The confiscated materials reveal the rail attack planning as of February 2010. One idea outlined in handwritten notes was to tamper with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall off the track at a valley or a bridge. Counterterrorism officials said they believe the plot was only in the initial planning stages, and there is no recent intelligence about any active plan for such an attack. The FBI and Homeland Security issued an intelligence bulletin with details of the plan to law enforcement around the country. The bulletin, marked "for official use only," was obtained by The Associated Press.

What's particularly interesting about this is they haven't found (at least so far) plans to go after an airliner again. That door has been pretty effectively closed, and after 9/11 I was pretty sure that airliners would be off the terrorist menu. Although the TSA would like the credit for that, I think the thing that ensures that airliners are not going to be a preferred target was the action of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11.  They stopped that hijacking and I can't image another group of passengers allowing a successful hijacking.  Won't happen.

The attack on railroads apparently did not involve suicide bombing, but simply sabotage of railroad equipment that might cause a destructive crash.  Spectacular if successful, but nothing like what the terrorist network pulled off on 9/11.  It sounds like we've pretty much gutted their organization and crippled their ability to be very effective.

While I wouldn't advocate a complete stand down of airport security, couldn't we at least stop treating everybody like terrorists?

Seattle Restaurant Bans TSA

The citizens fight back:

A restaurant near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is so tired of the way the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been treating their customers that they've actually banned agents from eating at the establishment.

KC McLawson, a worker at the restaurant, told journalist Christopher Elliott exactly how far her boss had taken the ban.

"We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that they aren’t allowed to come into our business," she said. "We have the right to refuse service to anyone."

"My boss flies quite a bit and he has an amazing ability to remember faces. If he sees a TSA agent come in we turn our backs and completely ignore them, and tell them to leave."

"Their kind aren't welcomed in our establishment," McLawson continued. "A large majority of our customers -- over 90 percent -- agree with our stance and stand by our decision."

"We even have the police on our side and they have helped us escort TSA agents out of our cafe. Until TSA agents start treating us with the respect and dignity that we deserve, then things will change for them in the private sector."

If I was this restaurant I'd do things a little different. I wouldn't deny them service, but simply make them stand in line for 30 minutes and then be groped by Ethel the he/she waitress before they get a seat.

And then after going through all that the only food they'd get is a little bag of peanuts and a cup of soda.

TSA Will No Longer Allow Airports to Opt-Out of TSA Screeners

Apparently the program was becoming too popular and threatened to reduce the number of federal workers:

A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was "neutral" on the program.

TSA chief John Pistole said Friday he has decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports, saying he does not see any advantage to it.

Though little known, the Screening Partnership Program allowed airports to replace government screeners with private contractors who wear TSA-like uniforms, meet TSA standards and work under TSA oversight. Among the airports that have "opted out" of government screening are San Francisco and Kansas City.

The push to "opt out" gained attention in December amid the fury over the TSA's enhanced pat downs, which some travelers called intrusive.

Rep. John Mica, a Republican from Florida, wrote a letter encouraging airports to privatize their airport screeners, saying they would be more responsive to the public.

At that time, the TSA said it neither endorsed nor opposed private screening.

"If airports chose this route, we are going to work with them to do it," a TSA spokesman said in late December.

But on Friday, the TSA denied an application by Springfield-Branson Airport in Missouri to privatize its checkpoint workforce, and in a statement, Pistole indicated other applications likewise will be denied.

"I examined the contractor screening program and decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports as I do not see any clear or substantial advantage to do so at this time," Pistole said.

With the TSA about to unionize it appears Pistole followed the Obama pro-union line and will no longer allow airports to privatize their screening workforce. I guess they've decided the uproar over the nakie scanners and genital groping has died down enough they can go back to a hardline attitude towards airport and fliers.

After all, we can't have more responsive service or fewer federal workers...