Ron Paul Responds to TSA: Introduces 'American Traveler Dignity Act'

just like the nazis were only "following orders", right?

in my experience, the average TSA employee acts like a power-tripping dick when doing their job. this goes back long before the body scanners and sexual molestation came in. my first negative experience w/ them goes back to 2004.

any TSA employee w/ any sense of honor would have quit that job by now. id sooner clean toilets or live under a bridge than do that kind of america-killing work.

who says i havent?

they are prejudging me when the treat me like a criminal for no reason.

actually, ive found that when i am nice and polite to them is when they really act like dicks...its a dog mentality - if you show subservience they take it as a sign of weakness and jump on you. the worst treatment by them came when i was nicest to them. when i am short and unfriendly towards them they generally leave me alone.

yes it is, and in my opinion, these new rules are totally 'unreasonable', immoral and unnecessary. you seem to agree too, but you have been terrorized into accpeting it. you let the terrorists beat you, but i have not.

i never said you couldnt bring up constitutional grounds - i just said yall are focused solely on that as the basis of your argument when there is so much more to it. although i do feel that it is indeed a violation of our 4th amendment rights.

and yall keep ignoring the fact that the tools were already inplace to stop the underwear bomber and the 9/11 attackers - how about instead of making us get naked body scanned and groped, the government utilize the tools already at their disposal when it comes to fighting 'terrorism'.

how about if when a nigerian national shows up and pays cash for a 1 way ticket and doesnt even have a passport and his father had reported to our embassy that he had been radicalized we think about giving him a secondary screening?

 

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Really you are going to compare TSA employees to Nazis?

I travel relatively frequently and while I have encountered some dicks I ahve also encountered some very friendly and professional ones but most of them fall in the middle. My own experience is if you don't act like a dick they usually don't act like one either.

Considering we have a very bad economy right now you are going to advocate that people who might have families should quit jobs that are legal and at the moment are still favored by the majority of the public. I might not like what they do but at the same time I can understand why someone would take a job like that especially with +9% unemployment.

They are not because you can refuse to go through any of that by not flying. You are not being taken into custody. For example if I go to visit a nuclear power plant and they search me and do a background check on me are they treating me like a criminal for not reason? No, because I am voluntarily visiting that facility. They aren't arresting me and forcing me to go there.

That may be your experience it certainly hasn't been mine.

Terrorized into accepting it? I have said several times I don't like the policy and would like to see it gone. My argument is regarding the Constitutional questions.

As I said before I agree with you on most of the issues but not regarding the Constitutional questions which are the ones that interests me most. We could have a thread of all of us agreeing with each other and papering over differences but I don;t think that would be very interesting.

 

naked body scanning and sexual molestation of american citizens seems pretty damn nazi-esque to me.

in my experience when i was polite and accommodating to them is when they got more rude and disrespectful towards me. when i was nice and polite was when they would do stuff like take my digital camera and spend over 5 minutes looking through all my vacation photos or taking books and work papers and pouring through them page by page or taking all my clothes and throwing them all over a table and tearing through them and not even saying "thank you" or helping repack when they are done or giving me physical pat-downs b/c they thought i was wearing multiple pairs of pants/socks/shirts and hiding things. all of these things happened to me back in 04-06, so the idea that the TSA is only now getting out of hand is wrong - they have been like this for awhile.

again, i would live under a bridge before i took the job of a TSA guard. and considering that we do have a bad economy right now, should we really be spending all this money on a program which not only infringes on our basic rights and dignity, but as you agree, is ineffective? are naked body scanners and sexually molesting american citizens cost effective measures when it comes to fighting "terrorism"? i say no.

have you visited a nuclear power plant? if so, why?

and in your analogy it would be more appropriate if your visitor had to be naked body scanned and sexually molested to visit the nuclear power plant. but why would anyone need to visit a power plant and what does that have to do with flying? its a total apples to oranges comparison.

so as long as it hasnt happened to you its "ok".

its sure seems like it. you are against it and know its wrong, but continue to defend it. seems to me like that would be the textbook definition of 'terrorized'.

and ive said several times that the crux of that argument is regarding the definition of "unreasonable". i cant believe we even have to argue whether or not naked body scanning and sexual molesting everyone is 'reasonable', but this is the america we live in now...i never thought about leaving while bush was president, but im seriously thinking about it now - the precedent here is very scary - next its going to be bus and train stations, then you will have to get naked body scanned to go to the mall or the grocery store. if you think its going to end here you are a fool.

and as ive said several times, there are many other reasons to be against naked body scanners and federal molesters such as the radiation, which needs further study, the fact that the government lied about not saving the images, chertoff and his involvement w/ the body scanner company, the fact that the tools were already in place to stop this, but were not properly utilized, the safety issue of having minimum wage security guards messing with peoples life sustaining medical equipment, the fact that not even this stuff will stop a potential terrorist, ect.

i think we already have that.

 

"You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear."

 

the nazis were forcing more clothing on the jews while the TSA wants to see underneath ours.

 

This is a good issue for Dr. Paul. He should stay away from self studied subjects like econ.

 

Let me know when they start concentrating people.

I don't doubt that happened to you but that has never happened to me and I don't recall seeing anything like that happen when I have traveled. My own experience that has happened to me and what I have witnessed to others is that if you act calm the TSA employees reciprocate.

Probably not but the program exists and if you have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay I'm not going to fault someone for taking a job that pays well, has benefits and for now is completely legal.

Yes I have. In school I took a field trip to a nuclear power plant.

People have all sorts of reasons to visit a nuclear power plant. Education, work, and research. The comparison comes from that in both nuclear power and air transit the amount of damage that could be caused by a terrorist act is catastrophic. In determining what is "reasonable" the consequences of a failure of security is considered. That is why getting a HAZMAT license is going to be more inconvenient than getting a driver's license.

I never said its OK just that from my own observations it doesn't seem to be the norm. At the same time though should policy just be based only on negative experiences?

You are mistaking debate over a narrow set of issues with an overall defense of the program.

And I agree with those.

Not really.

 

naked body scanning and sexually molesting people is really not that many steps away from concentrating people.

so are you saying it should be more inconvenient to fly than to visit a nuclear power plant?

this whole analogy w/ the power plant is really a stretch - dont be like samfisher - you are better than this judoka!

for the record though, i think requiring a background check to visit a nuclear power plant is not 'unreasonable'. naked body scanning and sexually molesting someone who wants to visit a nuclear power plant probably is. but trying to compare it to flying is silly - millions of american citizens fly every day - how many need to visit a nuclear power plant? that being said, it would have been pretty silly of them to require background checks on your elementary school when yall got to go.

i have a family member who works for the FAA - part of the hiring process was an FBI background check on him and his immediate family. i dont think that is 'unreasonable', but if they had wanted to naked body scan and sexually molest him for the job than it probably would be.

no, the policy should be primarily based on the effectiveness of said programs and the cost:benefit ratio of said programs. are there potential health risks to travelers from body scanners or untrained people handling medical equipment? are there other measures already at our disposal which we are not properly utilizing?

 

Adam Savage goes through a scanner with 12 inches...of razor blades.

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How anti-climatic. Hobby does not have the nudie scanners yet so there was nothing for me to opt out of. My balls were not fondled; I feel ripped off lol.

 

I am very glad I am not flying today. Its going to be a madhouse with a major storm bearing down on the Midwest and with this protest. It will not surprise me if a fight breaks out between someone engaging in the opt out protests and someone rushing to make a flight.

 

did you wear your kilt?

No body scans necessary when you leave the material plane.

 

so is this whole outrage a scam to get airports to opt out of using the tsa?

 

Here are the facts....

700 complaints logged since the start of the scanners/pat downs

During that time, 28 million people have boarded an airplane

Thats about the equivalent of one of Jordan Hill's dreads complaining about the shampoo he uses

I guess Im not the only one who thinks these out of work protesters need to find something else to do and get a life

 

Most people are cattle, and are too pansy to even put down a complaint.

 

apparently, Most people agree with me....not u...they just dont see this as such a huge invasion of privacy. They are more concerned with getting where they are going rather than complaining about scanners


so now u are not only upset that others dont mind being scanned....now u have a problem with others not complaining as much as they should? Have u gone thru a scanner? Have u logged a complaint?

 

San Diego had the nudie scanners.. The line was crazy and there was some fuss going on with a older man in his 60's. He made a scene and was asked to step aside. I really just wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible... get on a plane and be on my way so I just followed orders. I just went through the scanners since it seemed to be quicker. I was in and out in a minute. I was observing the pat downs and they do put your their hands between your legs where your groin is. Most of the TSA officers looked pissed or bored while a few were smiling and joking at some comments people were making while being felt up.

Anyways my personal feelings is that this is all just a show and it's a waste of time, resources and money and just makes traveling that much worse. I do not feel any safer, just feel inconvenienced and more annoyed at traveling. Doesn't make sense to me that they have everyone run through the same procedures. A 90 year old man or woman or a 5 year old girl is not going to take over the plane and blow it up. Not sure if they need to do profiling but this whole thing just doesn't make any sense. Oh well.. time to enjoy the Holidays and hopefully everyone else does too.

 

Thanks for the info as I am flying to SD in two weeks.

 

Is profiling worse than what they are doing now? I just feel this kind of treatment is going to lead to a further resentment of Muslims. They already listen to phone calls and breach private emails, why would profiling be such a big step in the negative direction?