Abolish the TSA
By Anthony Gregory • Thursday August 19, 2010 1:38 PM PDT • 6 Comments
This latest outrage just reminds us of the folly of government airline security. Supposedly there to protect us against terrorists, the TSA works with police and law enforcement agencies when it detects behavior it deems suspicious—which in many cases can lead to crackdowns on victimless crimes or invasions into the private lives of travelers. Kathy Parker for Maryland was scrutinized, and her checks questioned by police, all because they were allegedly almost sequential. Accusing her of fraud and embezzling and then calling her husband to warn him of a “divorce situation,” these government officials had no compunctions about overstepping the boundaries of Parker’s family and financial life. She felt “humiliated.” Well of course she did, and bigger and smaller incidents of humiliation occur many thousands of times a day in America’s airports, thanks to the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats who pushed for nationalizing airport security in the aftermath of 9/11.
Meanwhile, the new X-ray scanners appear to subject passengers to 20 times the radiation previously estimated, which could cause problems for up to 1/20 of the population — children and those with gene mutations, especially. Government, as always, is hazardous to your health. Yet another reason to let airline security, as with everything that’s important, be handled by the private sector.
Tags: Civil Liberties, Privacy 
I tend to focus more on (philosophical) principal rather than on pragmatic considerations. So, I avoid traveling on taking commercial airlines whenever possible, no matter how more convenient it may be to use commercial airlines. Hence, I have not flown on commercial airlines ever since this TSA nonsense started. (If you know someone with a private plane, and it is for “recreational” purposes only, if you agree to pay for 1/2 the fuel and maintenance costs, you may get a recreational ride in a private aircraft, that may just happen to coincide with where you need to go for a business trip).
So, I have no direct experience of what nonsense the TSA is pulling, other than what I read about, but I refuse to be treated like that.
If more people had the freedom/non-slave mindset and refused to be treated like this, then the airlines lobbying interests would, likely, remove the TSA, and I’d start flying commercial aircraft again, providing that they let me salt the Earth after they raze the TSA headquarters to the ground.
Kevin Benko | Aug 21, 2010 | Reply
“Your papers please”
I can think of at least a half dozen ways to commandeer or destroy a commercial airliner in flight which current TSA measures do nothing to prevent.
To begin with, the weakest link is all of the personnel who service aircraft – any of which may be susceptible to bribery. Considering that an airport has a radius of several miles at minimum, with hundreds of thousands of people entering and leaving daily, no level of practical security will prevent bombs or weapons being placed on board. Consider that prisons have a much smaller defensible perimeter, much stricter security and far fewer visitors – and yet weapons and drugs are routinely smuggled in.
Airport “security” as provided by TSA is at best a bad joke, at worst a deadly fraud perpetrated upon the citizenry.
BambiBq | Aug 24, 2010 | Reply
And is there any truth that Muslims are exempt from having to go through these x-ray scanners?
Kari J | Aug 25, 2010 | Reply