Slipping even further

So it's an odd world where the Huffington Post, WorldNetDaily, and the Drudge Report are all on the same side. If you thought that TSA couldn't sink any lower, then check out this video of TSA assaulting a shirtless little boy. About twenty-one seconds in, the TSA agent feels up the boy's crotch. Of course, earlier this week, the head of the TSA, John Pistole, claimed in his testimony to the Senate that children under twelve were exempt from these patdowns.

Continuing on the TSA topic

The three year old daughter of a Houston reporter was felt up by a TSA official at the Chatanooga airport. I can't believe that the reporter just shrugged it off. I would definitely have not made my plane if some pervert did that to my kid.

Resisting the TSA

It is starting to look as if there are lots of other people who resent the abuses of our civil liberties by the TSA. There have been lots of articles in the news over the past few days and TSA is probably desperately hoping that Lindsay Lohan does drugs again. I guess people don't like getting groped up by the TSA if they don't want to walk through the naked body scanner. And as it turns out, TSA is groping up people even if they do walk through the naked body scanner. Apparently, if there is the slightest bit of fuzziness on the images generated by the body scanners, TSA will grope the breasts and genitals of the passengers being screened. And for women that happen to be wearing sanitary pad, the scanner will detect it, and that may be grounds for TSA staff to grope them - the TSA refuses to say whether automatically grope all women with a sanitary pad.

Recently, a passenger was escorted out of the screening area because he refused to let the TSA sexually assault him. And then after he was escorted out and was about to leave the airport, the TSA attempted to force him back into the screening area to still be groped up, and threatened him with a $10,000 civil suit if he didn't comply.

Don't forget that November 24 is National Opt-Out Day!

The fall of our society

Over the past year, the TSA has deployed X-Ray backscatter machines and millimeter wave scanners at security checkpoints across the country. A significant number of passengers, myself included, were opting out of the scans and asking for the pat-down instead. But at the end of October, TSA changed the rules in order to "encourage" use of the scanners. According to news reports, instead of just checking for weapons, TSA personnel will now deliberately grope passengers genitals and breasts.

Given that I am flying tomorrow, I now have to make the choice between having naked pictures of me taken by TSA, and possibly stored forever despite TSA's denials (see EPIC's lawsuit against TSA and the United States Marshals), or being sexually assaulted by some guy who would otherwise be working at Burger King. What kind of society have we become that it is acceptable for the government to degrade its citizens like this?

In my mind, TSA has become the real terrorists that this country needs to prevent. The 9/11 attacks killed 3000 people, but in doing so, changed the rules of the game such that hijacking an airplane is no longer a significant threat. However, TSA violates the rights of millions of people every day. I wonder if this is how Germany slowly made its slow slide in the 1930's...