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

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by rtsy, Nov 17, 2010.

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jo mama Member

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how much longer are we going to tolerate this crap?

#361 jo mama, Apr 13, 2011

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rhadamanthus said: ↑

This is just ****ing gross. I'm flabbergasted a TSA employee would even be willing to do this. Perverts.

Ky. parents: TSA frisked our 6-year-old daughter

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – A Kentucky couple wants the TSA to change how it screens children after their 6-year-old daughter was frisked at the New Orleans airport.

Selena Drexel told ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday the family was returning home from a vacation earlier this month when their daughter Anna was selected for a pat-down.

The couple posted a video of the search on YouTube.

The girl's father, Todd Drexel, says Anna was confused by the search and started crying afterward because she thought she'd done something wrong.

Selena Drexel says such searches are inappropriate for children because they're usually told not to let adults touch them in sensitive areas.

In a statement, the Transportation Security Administration says the officer followed proper procedure but that the agency is reviewing its screening policies.
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Cavity searches are fair game?

/pedobear

#362 Invisible Fan, Apr 13, 2011
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TSA security looks at people who complain about ... TSA security

link

Washington (CNN) -- Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job? You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

TSA officials declined to comment on the list of indicators, but said that no single indicator, taken by itself, is ever used to identify travelers as potentially high-risk passengers. Travelers must exhibit several indicators before behavior detection officers steer them to more thorough screening.

But a civil liberties organization said the list should not include behavior relating to the expression of opinions, even arrogant expressions of opinion.

"Expressing your contempt about airport procedures -- that's a First Amendment-protected right," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who now works as legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We all have the right to express our views, and particularly in a situation where the government is demanding the ability to search you."

"It's circular reasoning where, you know, I'm going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that's evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it's simply inappropriate," he said.

The TSA says its security programs are informed by real-world situations and intelligence. Indeed, the immigration agent who refused to let the alleged "20th hijacker" into the United States in 2001 later testified that the man's arrogant behavior contributed to his suspicions.

Agent Jose Melendez-Perez told the 9/11 commission that Mohammed al-Qahtani "became visibly upset" and arrogantly pointed his finger in the agent's face when asked why he did not have an airline ticket for a return flight.

But some experts say terrorists are much more likely to avoid confrontations with authorities, saying an al Qaeda training manual instructs members to blend in.

"I think the idea that they would try to draw attention to themselves by being arrogant at airport security, it fails the common sense test," said CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen. "And it also fails what we know about their behaviors in the past."

The 9/11 commission's report says that "none of the checkpoint supervisors (on September 11th) recalled the (successful) hijackers or reported anything suspicious regarding their screening."

But, it says, an airline ticket agent that checked in hijacker Mohammed Atta says Atta "reacted negatively when informed in Portland (Maine) that he would have to check in again in Boston." Atta "clenched his jaw and said ... with some irritation, 'They told me one step check-in,'" he recalled. The ticket agent recommended the United States hire "behavior profilers ... the way they do overseas," the report says.

Rafi Ron, former director of security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, said an arrogant complaint about security is a legitimate factor to consider. But officials also should be suspicious of effusive praise, he said.

"The other end of the spectrum is almost as bad, although it is maybe less offensive," he said.

The TSA is expanding the behavior detection program, formally known as SPOT, for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique.

Currently, some 3,000 uniformed behavior detection officers are deployed at about 175 airports. President Obama is calling for an additional 175 such officers in his 2012 budget proposal, and the TSA is expected to spend a total of $1.2 billion on the program over the next five years.

In recent years, the TSA has also expanded the scope of the program. Originally intended to look only for suspected terrorists, the program now also seeks to ferret out possible criminals in airports.

Many details of the program are publicly available. According to a Government Accountability Office report, uniformed behavior detection officers typically work in two-person teams at airport checkpoint lines, looking for behaviors that are on the SPOT checklist, each of which is assigned a numerical value.

The officers sometimes initiate casual conversations with passengers, particularly if a passenger is exhibiting behaviors on the SPOT checklist.

In most instances, the Accountability Office said, the conversation resolves the suspicion.

But if both behavior detection officers agree that observed indicators exceed a predetermined numerical threshold, the person is referred to additional screening, which can involve more questioning and physical searches of a person or property.

If the person's behavior escalates, accumulating more points based on the SPOT checklist, the officers can refer the person to local law enforcement for investigation. After the law enforcement investigation, the TSA officials determine whether to allow the passenger to board the flight.

The Department of Homeland Security says the program is successful, telling Congress last week that, in a recent test comparing behavior detection officers to random screening procedures, the officers were 50 times more likely to refer people they checked to local law enforcement, and about 4.5 times as likely to identify people with prohibited items or fraudulent documents.

Taken together, such officers are nine times more likely to identify "high risk" passengers than random screening, the department said.

"SPOT identifies high-risk travelers at a significantly higher rate then random screening," Larry Willis of the department's Science and Technology Directorate testified.

But one member of the study's Technical Advisory Committee said the study did not establish the program's scientific validity.

"The advisory committee has not been asked to evaluate the overall SPOT program, nor has it been asked to evaluate the validity of indicators used in the program," Philip Rubin testified to Congress last week.

Advisory committee members were not shown the list of behavioral indicators, he said.

"My concern is that if I'm a member of the public and I hear (Willis') testimony, it sounds like the SPOT program has been validated," Rubin told CNN.

He said that while large numbers of people were screened, very little criminal activity was detected, and the numbers may not be statistically significant. "The hit rate is so low on this, it could turn out to be a random glitch," he said.

The Government Accountability Office also criticized the study, saying TSA's records are incomplete and the study is not designed to answer the big question people have about the program: Does it work?

The study "is not designed to fully validate whether behavior detection can be used to reliably identify individuals in an airport environment who pose a security risk," the agency said.

Members of Congress also expressed concern about the number of "false positives" -- people flagged for additional screening that resulted in nothing being found. For every person correctly identified as a "high risk" traveler by (the behavior detection officers), 86 were misidentified, Willis said. At random screening, for every person correctly identified, 794 were misidentified.

The TSA does not track the number of arrests, convictions or exonerations of people that are referred to law enforcement, he said.

The ACLU's German, who has not seen the behavioral indicators list, said he fears the indicators "are being used simply as a proxy for racial profiling or other inappropriate police activities." The number of people arrested at airport checkpoints for immigration violations suggests the behavior detection officers are profiling, he said.

Thirty-nine percent of the 1,083 people arrested during the first four and a half years of the program were arrested because they were illegal aliens, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Experts agree that the fact that there is an extremely small number of terrorists makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral observation programs. The Accountability Office said it looked at 23 occasions in which 16 individuals -- people later charged with terrorism-related activities -- passed through high-threat airports. None is known to have been identified. But it is not known if the behavior detection officers were working at the time, the agency said.

Stephen Lord of the Accountability Office is recommending the TSA study airport videos of those instances.

"We believe such recordings could help identify behaviors that may be common among terrorists, or could demonstrate that terrorists do not generally display any identifying behaviors," Lord said.
Click to expand...

#363 rhadamanthus, Apr 18, 2011
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jo mama said: ↑

how much longer are we going to tolerate this crap?
Click to expand...

Salon answers:

Ten years after 9/11, airport security still not getting it
When my safety scissors were taken away, it hit me: We're stuck with this nonsense permanently, aren't we?

By Patrick Smith

At the Bangkok airport they took my scissors. This was the second time they took my scissors in Bangkok. I should have learned my lesson.

They were safety scissors, the kind you'd give to a child, about two-and-a-half inches long with rounded tips. (The photo at the top of this column shows an identical pair that I bought as a replacement.) Highly dangerous -- at least as the BKK security staff saw it. My airline pilot credentials meant nothing to them.

It's funny, but not really, when you stop to consider how easy it would be to fashion a sharp object -- certainly one deadlier than a pair of rounded-end scissors -- after boarding an airplane, from almost anything within your reach: a wine bottle, a first-class juice glass, a piece of plastic molding, and so on and so forth. Heck, if you're seated in first or business class, they give you a metal knife and fork.

But more to the point, pun intended, why do we still care so much about pointy objects?

When it came right down to it, the success of the Sept. 11 attacks had nothing -- nothing -- to do with box cutters. The hijackers could have used anything. They were not exploiting a weakness in luggage screening, but rather a weakness in our mind-set -- our understanding and expectations of what a hijacking was and how it would unfold. The hijackers weren't relying on weapons, they were relying on the element of surprise.

All of that is different now. For several reasons, from passenger awareness to armored cockpit doors, the in-flight takeover scheme has long been off the table as a viable M.O. for an attack. It was off the table before the first of the twin towers had crumbled to the ground. Why don't we see this? Although a certain anxious fixation would have been excusable in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks, here it is a decade later and we're still pawing through people's bags in a hunt for what are effectively harmless items.

* Continue reading

There in Bangkok it hit me, in a moment of gloomy clarity: These rules are never going to change, are they?

How depressing is that, to be stuck with this nonsense permanently? Not only the obsession with sharps, but the liquids and gels confiscations, the shoe removals, etc.

These policies aren't just annoying, they're potentially self-destructive. Self-destructive because they draw our security resources away from more useful pursuits. Imagine if, instead of a tiny pair of scissors, I'd had a half-pound of explosives in my luggage, shaped into some innocuous-looking item. Would the Bangkok screeners have caught it, or are they too busy hunting for pointy things and contraband shampoo? And what of passengers' checked luggage? Are the bags down below undergoing adequate scrutiny for explosives -- a far more potent threat than somebody's hobby knife?

Making a bad situation worse, airline fees for checked luggage have resulted in unprecedented numbers of carry-on bags being dragged through concourse checkpoints. All bags undergo mandatory screening, it's true, be they carry-ons or checked bags. But what's changed is where and how these inspections are taking place. Unfortunately, more carry-ons means greater emphasis on pawing through people's roll-aboards looking for benign implements. Frankly there should be a call to scale back the screening of carry-ons, or at least revise the kind of screening they currently undergo. Guards should not spend two seconds worrying about a pilot's -- or anybody else's -- safety scissors.

And what ever happened to that IATA proposal to develop a multi-tiered screening strategy that divides passengers into different risk groups, some receiving a higher level of scrutiny than others?

And have you heard, meanwhile, about Transportation Security Administration's new "freeze drills"?

The New York Times' "On the Road" columnist Joe Sharkey recently published a story describing an encounter with this odd and somewhat troubling procedure. Ostensibly it's a practice maneuver that helps TSA guards learn how to deal with checkpoint breaches. Guards begin yelling, "Code Bravo, freeze!" effectively scaring passengers into remaining motionless.

Of course, as Sharkey deftly points out, TSA doesn't really have the authority to make anybody remain motionless. TSA guards do not have law enforcement power -- much as the agency has done a good job at fooling people into believing otherwise. Screeners are now called "officers" and they wear blue shirts with badges. Not by accident, the badges look exactly like the kind worn by police.

Thus the cynics out there see the freeze drills as a means of control and intimidation. They probably feel the same way about the recent revelation that "arrogant complaining about airport security" is an indicator used by screeners when looking for criminals and terrorists.

In both cases that's probably unfair, though TSA is, at times, prone to bullying and guilty of a certain mission-creep. At the airport, TSA's job is to keep dangerous items and dangerous people away from planes, end of story. We can argue over the definition of dangerous, but TSA holds the authority -- legitimately enough in my opinion -- to inspect your belongings and prevent you from passing through a checkpoint. However, it does not have the authority to interrogate you, make you stand in one place, recite the national anthem or otherwise compromise your rights.

Joe Sharkey describes being upbraided not by a TSA guard, but by another passenger when he opted not to remain perfectly still during a freeze drill. Honestly, it's not the drills themselves that concern me so much as the idea of a fellow citizen so willing to concede his freedom. Welcome to America, 2011.

Just how rampant and self-defeating is our security mania? Let's step outside the terminal for a moment, into the fresh air. Here in Boston, the Massachusetts Port Authority is fighting a proposed nature trail that would run along the northern perimeter of Logan International Airport. Massport fears the greenway would come too close to a bus depot it is building in the same area.

"They don't want the greenway anywhere near the proposed bus depot," wrote the Boston Globe's Lawrence Harmon in an Op-Ed piece on April 10, "for fear that terrorists could penetrate the area and sabotage buses."

You read that correctly. Enough said. I'll just end it right there, and let that quote drift off into the air.
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#364 rhadamanthus, Apr 19, 2011
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My balls.

#365 parmesh, Apr 20, 2011
jo mama Member

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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/29/texas-make-invasive-pat-downs-felony/

Texas Bill Would Make Invasive Pat-Downs a Felony

Published April 29, 2011

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A former Miss USA's claims of being groped during a pat-down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport could be a felony under a bill gaining momentum in the Texas Legislature.

The bill would make it illegal for a security officer to intentionally touch someone's private areas -- even atop clothing -- unless they have probable cause to believe the person is carrying something illegal.

Bill sponsor State Rep. David Simpson says the searches are removing people's dignity.

Last fall the Transportation Security Administration started a new pat-down procedure.
Susie Castillo, crowned Miss USA in 2003, said she was "molested" during a pat-down last April.

TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball says the agency doesn't comment on pending legislation. He says current security measures are the best ways to mitigate the risk of terrorism.

#366 jo mama, Apr 30, 2011
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jo mama said: ↑

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/29/texas-make-invasive-pat-downs-felony/

Texas Bill Would Make Invasive Pat-Downs a Felony

Published April 29, 2011

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A former Miss USA's claims of being groped during a pat-down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport could be a felony under a bill gaining momentum in the Texas Legislature.

The bill would make it illegal for a security officer to intentionally touch someone's private areas -- even atop clothing -- unless they have probable cause to believe the person is carrying something illegal.

Bill sponsor State Rep. David Simpson says the searches are removing people's dignity.

Last fall the Transportation Security Administration started a new pat-down procedure.
Susie Castillo, crowned Miss USA in 2003, said she was "molested" during a pat-down last April.

TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball says the agency doesn't comment on pending legislation. He says current security measures are the best ways to mitigate the risk of terrorism.
Click to expand...

So you just have to go through the x-ray machine

#367 da_juice, Apr 30, 2011

rhadamanthus Member

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The house is trying to eliminate more funds for scanners from next years budget. Good news.

#368 rhadamanthus, May 17, 2011
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jo mama said: ↑

The bill would make it illegal for a security officer to intentionally touch someone's private areas -- even atop clothing -- unless they have probable cause to believe the person is carrying something illegal.
Click to expand...

It's a good thing someone finally came up with this law! How did it not occur to the founding fathers that we needed protection against this sort of things?

I googled and found this hypothetical version of what this law would sound like if written by the founding fathers:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
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If only this had made it into the Constitution...

#369 justtxyank, May 17, 2011
jo mama Member

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call me a conspiracy theorist, but i would suspect that if this passes we will see a wave of "terrorist attacks" that will make people beg to have the scanners and sexual molesting reinstated.

#370 jo mama, May 17, 2011
rhadamanthus Member

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jo mama said: ↑

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/29/texas-make-invasive-pat-downs-felony/

Texas Bill Would Make Invasive Pat-Downs a Felony

Published April 29, 2011

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A former Miss USA's claims of being groped during a pat-down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport could be a felony under a bill gaining momentum in the Texas Legislature.

The bill would make it illegal for a security officer to intentionally touch someone's private areas -- even atop clothing -- unless they have probable cause to believe the person is carrying something illegal.

Bill sponsor State Rep. David Simpson says the searches are removing people's dignity.

Last fall the Transportation Security Administration started a new pat-down procedure.
Susie Castillo, crowned Miss USA in 2003, said she was "molested" during a pat-down last April.

TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball says the agency doesn't comment on pending legislation. He says current security measures are the best ways to mitigate the risk of terrorism.
Click to expand...

Update:

Justice Department Threatens To Ban Flights Out Of Texas If Texas Makes TSA Groping Illegal

We've already covered the proposal in Texas to make TSA airport gropings illegal, and we've already noted that the TSA insists that it can safely ignore such a law (an argument that some dispute). However, now the Justice Department is apparently telling the Texas legislature that if it passes the law, flights out of Texas could be banned:

If HR 1937 were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute. Unless or until 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.
Click to expand...

That's a mighty big stick the feds are pulling out there. The sponsor of the bill says the whole thing is ridiculous. He notes (quite craftily) that the bill clearly exempts TSA officials from being liable for criminal prosecution under the bill, if they can show the Constitutional reasons that allow them to grope anyone's private parts:

"The bill clearly states that an agent is exempt from prosecution as long as a constitutionally sanctioned federal law directs them to perform the invasive, indecent groping searches-including touching breasts, sexual organs and buttocks," noted State Representative David Simpson (R-Longview), the bill's author.

"Instead of threatening to shut down flights in Texas, why doesn't the TSA just show us their statutory authority to grope or ogle our private parts?" asked Simpson.

"All that HB 1937 does is require that the TSA abide by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution," Simpson continued. "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."
Click to expand...

Things certainly could get interesting. In the meantime, perhaps don't plan too many trips that involve flying out of Texas in the near future.
Click to expand...

#371 rhadamanthus, May 26, 2011
pgabriel Educated Negro

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jo mama said: ↑

call me a conspiracy theorist, but i would suspect that if this passes we will see a wave of "terrorist attacks" that will make people beg to have the scanners and sexual molesting reinstated.
Click to expand...

so you believe the government will kill its own citizens in order to keep the right to grope passengers at the airport

I knew it was a reason i stopped coming in this thread

#372 pgabriel, May 26, 2011
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It's a shame that Simpson's bill got sunk by a bunch of cowards. Really, the only way out of the TSA attack on our civil liberties is going to come from a game of brinkmanship like this one - and some of our state legislators dropped the ball.

p*****s.

#373 thadeus, May 26, 2011

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thadeus said: ↑

It's a shame that Simpson's bill got sunk by a bunch of cowards. Really, the only way out of the TSA attack on our civil liberties is going to come from a game of brinkmanship like this one - and some of our state legislators dropped the ball.

p*****s.
Click to expand...

It never had a chance.

#374 CrazyDave, May 26, 2011
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pgabriel said: ↑

so you believe the government will kill its own citizens in order to keep the right to grope passengers at the airport

I knew it was a reason i stopped coming in this thread
Click to expand...

It's not about groping passengers at the airport. It's much bigger than that. The government is trying to take our rights away. They can't do it too quickly because it would spark a revolution. However, their time table has been disrupted.

#375 bigballerj, May 27, 2011
jo mama Member

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pgabriel said: ↑

so you believe the government will kill its own citizens in order to keep the right to grope passengers at the airport
Click to expand...

i believe that if the states started banning sexual molesting and naked body scanning (ie: upholding the 4th amendment) the government would stage something to get people to accept the TSA perverts.

the contracts for the body scanners were already purchased before the "underwear bomber" incident.

just like on 9/11, if procedures already in place were property utilized the "underwear bomber" would have never even made it to the gate, let alone board the plane. he was able to pay cash for a one way ticket, had no passport, didnt have to go through any of the 19 body scanners at the airport, his father had reported to the u.s. embassy that he had been "radicalized" and several witnesses said they saw the "underwear bomber" being escorted by a well dressed indian man. and at no point did anyone raise a red flag on this guy?

it sure was convenient that they already had those body scanners purchased and ready to roll out right after the "underwear bomber".

pgabriel said: ↑

I knew it was a reason i stopped coming in this thread
Click to expand...

did you?

#376 jo mama, May 28, 2011
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Quit sucking the government's dick. What comes out of it all isn't pleasant. The federal government will keep growing as it has since the early years of the last century, and people will continue to defend this encroachment of our rights in the name of safety and security, things that our federal government has done a "swell" job of giving us. /thread

#377 parmesh, May 28, 2011
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Link:
http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=119078&article=8731718

Lawmakers to Reconsider Criminalizing Airport Pat Downs
Governor places item on special session agenda

Jim Forsyth
Monday, June 20, 2011

Texas lawmakers will reconsider a bill that would criminalize ‘enhanced pat downs’ by Transportation Security Administration agents at the state’s airports, after Gov. Rick Perry placed the item on the agenda for the current special session of the legislature following intense pressure from conservatives and tea party groups.

“I am grateful that the governor heard the calls of the people demanding that lawmakers stand up for the liberties of Texans,” said Wesley Strackbein, a conservative activist and founder of' TSA Tyranny.com'. Strackbein Saturday traveled to New Orleans to confront Perry at a book signing event and demand that the item be placed on the legislative agenda.

The bill would make it the crime of official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison of a $4,000 fine, for a TSA agent to ‘touch the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person, even thought that person’s clothing’ for the purpose of ‘granting access to a building or a form of transportation.’

The measure passed the Texas House during the regular session but was pulled off the floor without a vote during the regular session after U.S. Attorney John Murphy circulated a letter to Senators warning that the TSA has the authority to prevent airplanes from taking off from Texas airports if the agency cannot certify that they are safe.

The bill’s chief sponsor, freshman State Representative David Simpson, says he has the support needed to pass the bill, pointing out that 121 of the 181 members of the Texas Legislature, Democrat and Republican, have signed on as co sponsors.

“This is your opportunity to show America that you have what it takes to lead this state and the nation by enforcing the Constitution of this state and the United States which both protect innocent people from unreasonable searches of their person by their own government,” Simpson said in an ‘open letter’ to Perry.

Murphy said in his letter to Senators that if this bill were passed, the ‘supremacy clause’ of the U.S. Constitution would require that the courts void it.

Under Texas law, only the governor can place items on the agenda during a special called session.

The issue has taken on greater magnitude as Perry is emerging as a potential Republican Presidential candidate who is speaking to GOP groups nationwide to criticize what he sees as the ’overreach’ of the Obama Administration into the affairs of states and of private citizens.

Strackbein confronted Perry about the issue as he was signing copies of his book, entitled, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington.”

“Texans don’t want to see their wives and their mothers and their children groped without probable cause,” Strackbein said. “In the name of safety, we have thrown liberty out the window. It’s a fool’s bargain, and we don’t want to play the fool.”
Click to expand...

#378 rcoleman15, Jun 20, 2011

jo mama Member

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the fact that we even have to debate this is just so f***ed up. its already a felony to do what the tsa does - why does the state of texas have to create a law to reinforce it?

i never thought i would live in a country where federalized mall security guards can sexually molest innocent americans.

#379 jo mama, Jun 21, 2011

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I think everyone should go through the scanner, pat-downs abolished, and punitive measures dramatically increased for breaching policies relating to the scanners.

It's just logical. Why give a terrorist two options when you can focus far more easily on one option? As long as the punishment for doing inappropriate things reflects the disgusting nature of the crime, all should be ok.

If people were regularly passing through these scanners, and I was sitting there all day everyday staring at it, I can't imagine that I would have any interest in your privacy as much as preserving my job/career.

It's the same with doctors. They have a responsibility, and in exchange for that responsibility, they are held to a higher standard of professional conduct. A higher standard of proffesional conduct doesn't require a PhD. All you need to do is ensure that the conduct is heavily weighted in performance appraisals.

... and there will be f***-ups. No doubt. There are screw up doctors, massesseuses, chiropractors, professors, charity workers, religious figures, engineers, everything.

As long as the acceptable rate of "screw-ups" is decided beforehand, is monitored closely, and is punished adequately.

It's not like you have a choice when you're rushed to the hospital in an emergency either, but a doctor has got to do his/her job, and sometimes that's in dangerous territory.

We're quick to say "it's not making us any safer" but that's just not something we can determine very easily until we can quantify:

1) The interest in committing terrorist acts.
2) The number of attempts.
3) The level of success when taking into account "succesful" as a portion of attempts.

For all we know, there are just as many terrorist attacks now as ever, but attempts are shooting through the roof. That's good news.

One last thing about cost and time: I'm pretty sure that each scanner reduces the need for employees and the time each search takes, so there is a cost-balancing and time-balancing effect to think about as well.

#380 Mathloom, Jun 21, 2011

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