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

We have a winner!

 

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I've read through the whole thread now and I fully agree that the TSA has gone too far, this isn't making us any safer and the extra hassle is not worth it. That said I find some of the rights arguments that Rep Paul and others are presenting to be off base.

Paul's argument that the government shouldn't be protecting private property, in this case I presume he means the planes, ignores that the planes fly in a public airspace and the damage caused by a terrorist attack on a plane is potentially far greater on the ground than to the property of the plane itself. I think given the nature of air travel that it takes place within the shared commons it is government's job to provide for security.

In regard to this argument that was posted alluded by Paul and posted by rhadamanthus.

[rquoter]WTF is up with this "flying is not a right" "driving is not a right" "the internet is not a right" stuff?

The Constitution doesn't tell us what our rights ARE, it tells us what the government CAN'T do. Just because it doesn't mention airplanes, cars, or the internet doesn't mean we shouldn't have the freedom to make up our own damn mind about what we want to do. The right to fly on a plane (if the plane is yours or agrees to carry you) is a part of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to drive on taxpayer-funded roads is part of the right to life, liberty, and happiness.

The government doesn't tell us what our rights are or aren't. The founding fathers espoused the belief that our rights are inherent to our humanity, that they transcend governmental decisions, and that they cannot be taken away without due process of law. The Constitution is also very clear about limits on what "due process of law" means - you can't be searched, and you can't have your papers (including computers, documents, or files) searched either, not without a warrant. They aren't allowed to mass-print warrants without evidence that a crime has occurred or is about to occur - *evidence*, not suspicion.

The TSA's actions are completely, utterly, and without recourse illegal under the laws described in the US Constitution. Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn't provide average citizens with any way to punish the people in power who perform these illegal acts or who mandate that these illegal acts be performed. Treason doesn't apply here, as much as I wish it did. We can't bring criminal charges against them, because a) courts won't hear cases brought by private citizens. Only a prosecutor can bring charges, and none of them will. b) any court cases involving these acts will be refused on the basis of national security, which is also illegal to do. [/rquoter]

The problem with this argument is that it would do away with practically every preventive security measure that the TSA took. This would mean that luggage couldn't be searched or X-rayed without a warrant since those are our private property and effects. While the 4th Amendment establishes that protection the Constitution also authorizes the US Government to provide for common defense and given the known threat of an commercial airplane being used as weapon against the US it has an obligation to take steps to prevent that. Further the 4th Amendment has two built in loopholes regarding "probable cause" and "unreasonable". Both of those are subjective terms so a cop can pull you over and search you if he believes he has probable cause to believe you have contraband on you and a one could argue that a scan of your body when you fly is reasonable given the stakes of what could happen.

Also arguing this under the right of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" ignores the fact that those rights are not in the US Constitution and while they have a philosophical meaning to the nature of the US government are not legal.

I personally am against these scans and pat downs but I don't think there is a of clear Constitutional basis to say these are violations of our rights.

 

I don't like the policy but this is petty, childish and disrespectful of people who do have a tough job to do. They guy working at the airport isn't the guy making policy and is probably working there for a variety of reasons. Maybe he is there because it is a tough economy and this is a job that pays OK and has benefits. Maybe he is there because he really thinks he is doing something to help make the country safer. I won't rule out that there might be a pervert among the TSA but this is a policy that just came into effect relatively recently so most TSA employees were already employed before they even knew that they might have to be patting down or looking at people through scanners.

 

It's awesome that you don't even disagree. You just seem to apparently calculate that "feeling safe" with no appreciable gain in security is worth it to you.

And don't worry, I won't be flying anywhere anytime soon. I consider it again when your draconian kabuki is inevitably overruled, and you are forced to cower in to corner of every flight you take out of fear.

 

How are you going to compare a microwave to xray equipment?

 

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful

It's safe... Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, did his own calculations and found the exposure to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray.

The controversial technology works by bouncing an X-ray beam off a person to create a full-body image that reveals contours, including natural curves as well as any bumps and protrusions from potential weapons that might escape a metal detector such as plastics and ceramics.

^^ I jumped the gun on this one, I actually thought the scanners would be powerful enough to see your bones, but only minimal to see the contours of your skin/muscle.

 

Heres an article on comparing Israeli airport security to ours. Profiling is the obvious problem here, theres going to be a lot of vocal opposition to it. Another big problem is getting qualified people to do apply the new techniques, I just don't see a good outcome resulting from your average TSA drone using his\her brain on a daily basis, multiple times a day.

[rQUOTEr]The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
December 30, 2009

Cathal Kelly

While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.

"It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport."

That, in a nutshell is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

"Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"

Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.

"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela.

You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?

"The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.

Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far.

At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?

"I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is 'Bombs 101' to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, 'What would you do?' And he said, 'Evacuate the terminal.' And I said, 'Oh. My. God.'

"Take Pearson. Do you know how many people are in the terminal at all times? Many thousands. Let's say I'm (doing an evacuation) without panic — which will never happen. But let's say this is the case. How long will it take? Nobody thought about it. I said, 'Two days.'"

A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.

First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.

"This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said.

Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — the body and hand-luggage check.

"But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.

"First, it's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

This doesn't begin to cover the off-site security net that failed so spectacularly in targeting would-be Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — intelligence. In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies.

"There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States," Sela said. "Absolutely none."

But even without the intelligence, Sela maintains, Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben Gurion Airport's behavioural profilers.

So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?

Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves.

"We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept."

And rather than fear, he suggests that outrage would be a far more powerful spur to provoking that change.

"Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable

"But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don't know any different."
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother
[/rQUOTEr]

 

I don't get why they just don't profile the people who are in the high risk club. It's already being done, its just not admitted in public, there is no randomness about it.

There is no need to bug everyone else.....

 

the difference is that my reaction is based off of my governments 4th amendment-killing response to "the terrorists", rather than "the terrorists" themselves.

 

ever heard of the bill of rights?

no, you let them win by allowing yourself to be terrorized into compromising the principles that your country was founded on, which is exactly what we have done. when you become some scared coward who thinks this will actually keep you safe than you have lost.

ill be driving, thanks though!

 

Why is looking through your bags for bombs without you present - including breaking locks - not an unreasonable search, but scanning you for bombs is an unreasonable search?

 

a couple years ago the idea that you would have to go through this to board a plane was silly and ridiculous too.

 

I've been to Israel. Its pretty but I would hate to live there. The security is a pain in the ass. It took me over an hour to get through security in an Airport no larger than the one in Austin and it was not busy. If I had to deal with Israeli type security, I would freaking leave the country.

 

i already said the exact same thing in post #66...

there are many of us "civil liberties a-holes" who will not be flying and many of us have said as much already...pay better attention next time.

in the "muslim community center" thread u came out against freedom of religion and private property rights and now u come out against the right against unreasonable search and seizure. these are all fundamental principles of america so if u dont like them u can git out.

 

why do u give a damn?

just like we are all "civil liberties aholes" bc we disagree w u. hypocrite.

 

It still is because you don't have to go through that. You can easily walk through a scanner instead.

 

i didnt have a problem with any of that. metal detectors are a good idea and everyone should have to go through them. it started to get ridiculous when they made us start taking our shoes off and the banning of liquids over 3 oz was asinine, but i tolerated it - but naked body scanning and groping is a whole other universe...is that really a difficult concept to grasp?

none of the other procedures take a picture of your naked body and store it and none of the other procedures douse you in a low level or radiation and none of the other procedures require you to get sexually molested...is that really a difficult concept to grasp?

than why support them?

the idea that you dont think they violate your privacy is nonsense.

 

Only if there is a scanner. Not all airports have scanners.