And everyone expected that unreasonable searches of individuals would come from the Conservatives.
Everyone is familiar with the old movie cliche'. The sadistic Nazi officer stops some poor helpless person on the street and demands their papers. When the papers aren't in order the otherwise innocent guy gets hauled off to prison. Of course, this same thing also happened under other authoritarian systems. The difference is that they generally weren't made into movie icons.
With the introduction of the new body scanners that show what is essentially a nude image of the person being scanned, the American public is getting a taste of what it is like to live in a police state. The "enhanced" pat down that is being used on people who "opt out" of the scanner, whether for personal or medical reasons has been effectively described as a sexual assault. There have also been at least two cases reported of what amounts to child molestation performed by TSA officers who should know better. San Francisco and San Jose have reportedly announced that they will prosecute airport screeners who go to far. Meanwhile, what's next? Stopping people on the street at random just so that they can be screened for some random offense?
Back in the 1980's, while working in San Francisco I was subjected to frequent statements that Ronald Reagan was about to turn the nation into an Orwellian police state. Of course, just in time for the year to coincide with Orwell's book title 1984. Nothing of the sort happened. It is happening now, under color of national security. As the homeland security bureaucrats tell us, we have to undergo this kind of indignity to protect ourselves; and so it progresses to protecting society by eliminating privacy altogether. Not from the conservatives, but from the liberals. The right to privacy has now shown itself to be an utter sham; it applies in only two venues; the bedroom and the abortionist's operating room. And the government flacks don't care. After all, it helps to increase the power they can assert over others who aren't fortunate enough to work for Big Brother.
The entire process as presently implemented is a clear violation of the rights of the individual under the Fourth Amendment which requires that people be secure in their persons and property from unreasonable searches and seizures. It also effectively violates the presumption of innocence, which does not appear explicitly in the U.S. Constitution, but is held to follow from the effects of the fifth, sixth and fourteenth amendments, and recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Coffin v. United States 156 U.S. 432 (1895).
Yet, the attitude of the Transportation Safety Authority is that anyone who enters an airport with the intent to travel is a criminal suspect, and needs to prove their innocence before they may board a plane. There is no presumption of innocence and no requirement of probable cause to perform a search as would be required in normal law enforcement situations. And the implied consent that is argued by pro-TSA lawyers doesn't hold water. States require implied consent to alcohol and drug testing as a condition of driving, but an officer has to observe erratic behavior or some other evidence to provide probable cause before you can be stopped and tested. That for of standard is reasonable. But the mere fact that someone wants to take a commercial airline flight does not provide probable cause for an abusive search. Not only does it go well beyond the pale of reasonable security precautions, it sets the stage for turning the American public into sheep who will suffer any indignity to get where they need to go.
Meanwhile, on has to wonder how Israel has avoided acts of air travel terrorism for the last 30 years. Israel is, of course, an even bigger target than the United States. The answer comes in two parts. The first is profiling. They look for people who might be terrorists and subject them to increased scrutiny if their behavior implies something out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, security also has people entering the airport to test the security. They may be carrying fake bombs or have an artificial terrorist profile created for the purpose. If anyone fails to catch these fake terrorists they are fired. No second chances, no retraining. Generally speaking it takes a passenger one half hour from the front door to the airline gate. There is no reason why we can't do the same thing here; no reason except that it reduces the level of bureaucracy and the amount of public show that makes it look as if the government is doing something.
Another approach worthy of consideration is that the ticket is a contract between the passenger and the airline; therefore the airline should be responsible for providing security. If an airline has a bad security record, or abuses the passengers they will soon go somewhere else. Management knows this, and will work to provide the highest level of dignified and respectful security. Instead of letting the market take care of the problem, government has stepped in and decided what to do in its usual "one size fits all" approach; an approach that allows no one any respect or dignity.
The fact that it is under a liberal administration that this is happening should come as no surprise. Conservatism has always been oriented on the dignity of the individual and his or her ability to control their own lives. It does not believe in government intrusion into the lives of private citizens for security or other reasons. That is the reason for the Fourth Amendment. The modern Left, which has no respect for the Constitution or for the rights of the citizen, is the source of these new, assaultive behaviors by government. It is from the same source as "health care" death panels, forced disclosure of health records, and non-prosecution of illegal activities because the perpetrators support those in power.
Citizen activism to remove these abusive procedures must now be a priority. It may be a good idea for the incoming congress to defund homeland security until the scanners are removed and reasonable procedures are returned to the nation's airports. And perhaps while we are at it, we can add the title of "voyeur" to the dubious credentials of Obama and Napolitano.
I wonder if an interrogator at GTMO would be court-martialed for doing to terrorists what TSA is doing to the traveling public.
That wouldn’t be an objective truth now, would it?
All this contradicts adagio4639’s assertion that truth is value. So which is it? Yes or no? [I realize, of course, that I’m asking for an objective truth.]
This is interesting. Liberals claim there is no objective truth, yet demand that something be rationally proven to be an objective truth!!! Not to mention that the burden of proof is on the innovator of social change, not the defender of the status quo.
Isn’t this derived from Nietzsche? The individual human will being the highest and best value, and asserting that the individual will is the arbiter of all value? Within society, all individual human wills are considered of equal value, validity, and worth, and there is no principle [e.g., God] by which to discern among them. Society is then a contest of a will to power, of asserting one’s preferences over those of others. It’s not difficult to see that this arrangement becomes one of dog-eat-dog.
Obama and Napolitano are acting from higher motives, neither wants little girls or boys molested during a pat down search by TSA security guards. So, blunting the emotional hook of “questionable motives”, the problem actually breaks down into 2 conflicting issues: Necessity and culture.
Necessity says we have to fly, John Madden may eschew air travel, but the trains don’t run on time between San Francisco and Honolulu – in fact, the trains don’t run at all between these two destinations. So we fly to get where we want to go, it’s fast, readily available in all metro areas and reasonably priced. In my business, men and women have to travel to make the business work and keep the sales orders rolling in; they do so by plane, due both to time considerations and personal preference.
Self preservation is part and parcel of “necessity” – we’re confined in a metal tube, cruising between 30 and 36,000 feet, blasting along at 500+ miles per hour. We’re unarmed, there is nowhere to take cover if trouble occurs and even a slight mechanical malfunction can have disastrous consequences for passengers and crew. Personal dignity takes a lower priority than personal safety – and it’s always about safety, all the time. We also know airplanes make great targets, something we prefer not to think about when our backside is comfortably resting in seat 13C. We’re collectively helpless, vulnerable, but still determined to get where we want to go, praying this flight isn’t the “bad one”.
But in an overcrowded country on an overcrowded planet, we’re also perpetual victims of our dysfunctional culture, a culture which can easily and willingly kill us, not out of malice but out of a mindless indifference. We should be profiling passengers like the Israelis but we’re not. And it isn’t about the Constitution in any sense of that concept. It’s about maintaining the tension between “normal” life and a state of war – and war is a lot of things, but it will never be described as normal.
In normal life, we stand in line; at Starbucks, at the airport or when buying tickets for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. And obeying the “rules of the line” is comfortingly normal for us. Cheerfully doing what we’re told to do by our designated officials is also normal, as long as the rules are impersonally administered and fairly applied. Were there no terrorists in existence, we still wouldn’t rush onto the Jetway, pushing and shoving to grab a choice seat on the plane – outside of New York City that is. Such behavior wouldn’t be normal, it’s considered rude to shove, rude to jump the line and unfair to allow the strong to elbow aside the weak. We prefer the “normal” even when, due to our size or musculature, pushing and shoving would work to our personal advantage.
We also like “fair” – following impartial rules which apply equally to all – and, in our culture’s special case, without regard to race, creed or ethnicity. Fair is “normal”, unfair is outside normal and emotionally disturbing to everyone concerned. But we’re presently in a “state of war” with political leaders who can’t respond to danger without sacrificing normalcy. So, we pretend our airport security measures are normal and simply prudent precautions which can be administered under the standard “rules of the line” and with fairness for all.
Only the few living among us today understand that the first thing war does is destroy “normal”. Nothing about war is either “normal” or “fair”. And nothing about war is predictable and that which can easily lead to a slightly altered form of “normal”. Those armchair Special Forces operatives among us believe we should immediately take “this” or “that” action to control the situation – but such confidently suggested tactics are futile attempts to restore a measure of control – and control is simply another of the many faces of “normal”. Control based on accurate predictions of probable enemy actions and actual warfare will remain incompatible realities. And, during armed conflict, the ability to maintain such control is an illusion widely shared by those who have never witnessed the true face of war.
Regardless of whether we’re examining the First or Second world wars, the ability of any nation’s politicians to shield civilians from the violence of war is another widely held delusion. Whenever a war starts, confidence is always high that some form of normalcy is possible, soldiers fight wars, civilians are exempt from violence, rules exist and work in actual practice, fairness can be preserved. But, as the war progresses, real life quickly intrudes on those cherished illusions. Passengers on the Lusitania find themselves targets, even when the politicians assure them ocean liners are “safe”. Passages to England are naively booked, even when the German embassy takes out ads in the New York Times warning that ships will be torpedoed and not always intentionally by their submarines – the transition from the mindset of normalcy to war takes time and requires sudden, violent death to lubricate its transition.
It would be very easy to describe another 50 examples of civilians as victims of war and despite their leaders’ assumptions the situations should never have endangered “innocent civilians”. And also easy to describe the steady progression from those initial “minor and regrettable” incidents to the final “wholesale and insane” slaughter of the innocent. At one time, all political leaders of every nation declared bombing innocent civilians was completely contrary to the rules of civilization, barbaric and an act for which governments and leaders would be held accountable. And American and British leaders were foremost among those who made such emphatic declarations. How then to explain the firebombing of Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden and countless other enemy cities? And we have to ask ourselves how could politicians who were considered honorable and sincere make such strong statements regarding civilized behavior and then within a few short years completely repudiate their own words? War has a habit of doing that however and politicians find themselves ordering measures in war time which they wouldn’t have dreamed of in “normal” times.
Politicians never envision such a progression from the normal to the “unthinkable”; the mistakes of WWI were repeated all over again in WWII in regard to shielding innocent civilians from the horrors of war, almost as if WWI had never occurred. Nor are the politicians callously indifferent to the dangers facing their citizens, they simply have no way to predict what course the war will follow. Their non-combatant citizens believe their leaders can chart a safe course for them but such expectations during any war are childish and absurd.
It’s not fatalistic to expect Bush, Obama and their successors to go through progressions similar to politicians of earlier wars and earlier eras. Unlike the Israelis, Americans still believe ”normal” can be restored with only a few minor inconveniences, that we’re not all potential combatants. But despite such naïve beliefs, we are at war with terrorists, there is no longer any “normal” for us – and neither we nor our leaders want to accept that. History tells us quite emphatically that, as the war continues, security measures will become ever harsher, ever more restrictive, ever more of a knee jerk reaction to the latest enemy actions, less of a reasoned response to “ acceptable risk” – and civilian lives will continue to be lost in the process. And despite the Constitution, we had better quickly become used to the “abnormal”.
The fact that it is under a liberal administration that this is happening should come as no surprise. Conservatism has always been oriented on the dignity of the individual and his or her ability to control their own lives.
While this may be true in a more general sense, these intrusive security measures and the consolidation of federal “security” departments actually began under the Bush administration and was supported to a large extent by many who would profess themselves to be “conservatives”. Liberals had conniption fits at the time because they didn’t trust the conservatives in government to wield that much power. Now that liberals are in charge conservatives are having conniption fits because they don’t trust the liberals in government with that much power. The real solution is not to give anybody that kind of power so that neither camp has to worry about what the other will do if it inherits or creates such power. Unfortunately, that is virtually an impossibility, because at the first sign of emergency, the first thing a majority of Americans cry for is the government to “fix it” and “make sure it never happens again”, relinquishing whatever power demanded by the government in exchange for such assurances.
The TSA approach to security won’t be effective if some potential suspects (e.g., veiled Muslim women) are exempted from the process. But it is possible to maintain airport security and not do things in the ham-handed way our government approaches the job.
Back in 2002, just a few months after 9/11, my family and I vacationed in Europe, and went through several of the busiest airports in the world. My two children are adopted and do not look like me or my wife. Moreover, one of them requires a full leg-brace to walk and a wheel chair for long distances. I had expected lengthy delays at security check points while trying to convince security people that my daughter’s leg-brace or wheel chair did not conceal any explosives. At best, I had assumed that the process would be long, frustrating, and possibly embarrassing to my child.
Imagine my surprise when I realized that in the UK, France, and Italy, security people could ask me intelligent questions about my daughter’s equipment, examine it closely, and never even come close to seeming menacing or meddlesome. In short, to a man and woman, they were thoroughly professional. They didn’t have to disassemble the wheelchair to make sure it was harmless, and all my daughter had to do was to roll up her pant-leg to expose part of the brace. A wand and a pass through a conventional scanning portal were sufficient. The key to making this experience both brief and untraumatic, however was the skill the security people showed in asking me, my wife, and our children questions that had clearly been formulated to extract relevant information. It seemed likely that we didn’t fit the profiles they were employing to look for terrorists.
In the US we entrust airport security to people who are poorly trained, prone to throw their weight around, and who confuse generating annoyance with doing their jobs.
As I understand it one can choose between a scan and a grope. I also understand that a person of the same sex is the groper. What if two gay guys were traveling together and the one being groped didn’t want to make his partner jealous, could he ask for a female to grope him since that would neither anger his partner nor arouse him. That brings up this potential situation, once this is found out, I can see straight guys declaring that they are gay in order to be groped by a female. Would this be fair to the female TSA agent? I of course know that this could never happen since our government has thought out this process and all of its ramifications for not only our safety, but for our feelings. I just love Big Sis and her solutions.
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