May it happens because of that?
Even-the-uk-balks-at-us-air-security-measures
Written by Kelly Holt
Thursday, 28 October 2010 17:53
As U.S. airport security measures tighten, squeezing every last ounce of dignity out of law-abiding travelers, even European officials have had enough. Oklahoma’s NewsOn6.com carried Thursday’s AP report that British Airways Chairman Martin Broughton “accused the U.S. of demanding completely redundant security checks at airports, such as removing shoes and separate examinations of laptop computers.”
“Europe should not have to kowtow to the Americans every time they want something done to beef up security on U.S.-bound flights.”
I recently received an email from a friend who asked me to share the information publicly:
The owner of Heathrow agreed with Broughton, as did the British pilots’ union and several European airlines.
That says a lot coming from a continent with the ubiquitous security camera, but, hey, it seems even Brits have a limit. AP continued with Europeans’ complaints that the U.S. imposed unnecessary and overly intrusive air travel security measures, calling on the Obama administration Wednesday to re-examine policies ranging from X-raying shoes to online security checks for Europeans.
The European Union challenged the U.S. requirement for European travelers to have online checks before boarding U.S.-bound flights, claiming the system is burdensome and it’s uncertain how long personal data is stored and used. Europeans aren’t currently required to have visas to enter the U.S.
The TSA responded with this statement: “The U.S. works closely with our international partners to ensure the best possible security. We constantly review and evolve our security measures based on the latest intelligence."
But some European airlines, including the popular Virgin Atlantic, agreed that airport security is too time-consuming and they want it reevaluated. Complaints are that security measures are redundant.
AP’s article notes, “Britain's Aviation Minister Theresa Villiers said the government planned to give airport managers more freedom in determining how to meet security goals.”
The controversy, however, goes beyond the inordinate amount of time required to clear security, or redundancy in measures.
The issue has reached the point known in the stock market as resistance, or, when a stock has reached a price at which the market resists any increase. People are resisting increased levels of outrageous security intrusions, at least as far as how much is enough and how much delay can be tolerated.
One argument frustrated travelers posed is that if technology is so advanced, and it could detect anything potentially dangerous, why are they required to remove clothes just for some TSA employee to make sure?
So said Donald Smith, 48, of Providence, Rhode Island. "I actually just flew in last night. I think the whole process has gotten slightly out of hand. I appreciate the concern, but for things like taking off shoes — shouldn't the machines be able to detect anything that could be potentially dangerous?"
It is hoped by some that airline companies will intervene in order to protect their customer base. Heck, even the pilots are fed up.
On this side of the pond, an American sparked debate last week in Memphis. ExpressJet Airlines pilot Michael Roberts refused to submit to the body scanner, then the requisite pat-down, sparking attaboys from all over the country for his resolve.
The action may have jeopardized his job, but it reflects the attitude that some Americans, as well as Europeans, have indeed had it.
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I received a message from another friend who asked me to forward it:
=== It's sick - plain and simple ===
There's been little discussion about the euphemstically-named full-body "pat downs" taking place in US airports as they effect CHILDREN.
We've put up numerous videos now of very young children being stripped searched in public, touched against their will, and, in any other place and under any other circumstances, molested by TSA screeners.
Parents are counseled to tell their children that these "screenings" are a game.
The US news media's comment on this?
Deafening silence.
Instead they ask us if we aren't being "too sensitive" and tell us there needs to be a "balance between security and privacy."
Children are being taught that anyone in uniform has free access to their bodies...that they can't say "no"...and that their parents are unable to protect them.
In turn, parents are being taught that they cannot protect their children.
The only word that comes to my mind to describe this enterprise is "criminal."
Did not the TSA, Homeland Security, and the White House (and the jackals in Congress that fund this insanity) anticipate this as an outcome?
There are two possibilities here: either this is official idiocy and arrogance of the highest order or this outcome was anticipated and deemed acceptable.
I don't know the answer...but I do know that as a government agency that works closely with the CIA and FBI, Homeland Security and the TSA have access to hundreds of psychologists and psychiatrists, in their employ, under contract, and available at the drop of a dime.
I am not an expert in child abuse so I asked my friend and colleague Kenneth Wooden for his comment.
Wooden is a former journalist and author of the chilling and important book "The Children of Jonestown."
His experience covering the Jonestown story and seeing the hundreds of children's coffins that came back from Guyana motivated him to create a training company that teaches children how to identify and protect themselves from predators.
I asked him what he thinks of the TSA's policy of commanding its employees to strip search and conduct full body "pat downs" of small children.
I specifically asked him his opinion of the TSA advising that young children be told that these officially sanctioned intrusions of their bodies are a game.
Wooden's answer follows...
=== The TSA has crossed the line ===
As a national child personal safety expert, I submit the TSA crosses the line when it allows the patting down of children for security reasons, cloaked as a game.
The most recent Gallup Poll on childhood abuse revealed that in just one year, more than a million children were sexually and physically abused. Along the same lines, the American Medical Association has referred to the rape and sexual exploitation of women and children as a "violent and silent epidemic." Men increasingly reveal how they were sexually assaulted in their youth, by a rainbow of sexual predators, usually someone they knew.
Given that background - and the number of survivors that have been sexually abused and exploited - it is beyond comprehension how the Homeland Security Agency's TSA can conceive of such insensitive and invasive security checks on our children and youth. Even worse, they want to depict pat downs of children as a game! As an investigative researcher/reporter who has interviewed well over a thousand sexual offenders, I can document that one of the favorite ploys to lure children and youth into sexual abuse is to disguise it as a "game."
How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game?! To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years. Such policy could essentially desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children. This policy is also incredibly insensitive to the countless victims who have already been traumatized by unwanted touching in their lives and could be re-traumatized by such pat-downs.
In my judgment as a lifelong journalist and child advocate, such unapprised actions by the TSA borders on criminal negligence and, legally speaking, "deliberate indifference to the future emotional well being of millions of victims and the potential for far too many more young victims."
Ken Wooden
Child Lures Prevention
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=== What you can do ===
Please - if you think this information is important - share this e-mail far and wide.
As far as I know, this issue is not being discussed anywhere else in a public forum in America...not in Congress, not in the news media, not in the White House, and not in the self-justifying press conferences of the TSA.
The TSA, and the entire US government White House and Congress, has crossed the line here.
Think long and hard before you agree to allowing the small children in your care to be subjected to these searches.
Let the so-called public servants who conceived of and imposed this system - and now unashamedly defend it - know what you think.
Share this e-mail.
Thanks.
One of our videos on this subject:
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TSA REMEDY- Ron Paul Introduces HR 6416: The American Traveler Dignity Act
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WATCH VIDEO:
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1. LOCK THE DOOR TO THE COCKPIT
2. ARM THE CREW
WHY NOT JUST MAKE THE COCKPIT A SELF-SUFFICIENT MODULE WITHOUT ANY DOOR TO THE PASSENGER BAY?
Congressman Paul interviewed by Neil Cavuto-11/18/2010
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Mr. Speaker, today I introduce legislation to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports. We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled. We do not know the potentially harmful effects of the radiation emitted by the new millimeter wave machines.
In one recent well-publicized case, a TSA official is recorded during an attempted body search saying, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” I strongly disagree and am sure I am not alone in believing that we Americans should never give up our rights in order to travel. As our Declaration of Independence states, our rights are inalienable. This TSA version of our rights looks more like the “rights” granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens — right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.
The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.
My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.
Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.
I warned at the time of the creation of the TSA that an unaccountable government entity in control of airport security would provide neither security nor defend our basic freedom to travel. Yet the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats then in Congress willingly voted to create another unaccountable, bullying agency– in a simple-minded and unprincipled attempt to appease public passion in the wake of 9-11. Sadly, as we see with the steady TSA encroachment on our freedom and dignity, my fears in 2001 were justified.
The solution to the need for security at US airports is not a government bureaucracy. The solution is to allow the private sector, preferably the airlines themselves, to provide for the security of their property. As a recent article in Forbes magazine eloquently stated, “The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.” In the meantime, I hope we can pass this legislation and protect Americans from harm and humiliation when they choose to travel.
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Season's Gropings from the TSA
Roxi Copland- I'll be groped for Christmas (TSA Edition)
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IT IS TIME TO START A NEW AIRLINE COMPANY:
NO GROPE OPT OUT
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Guess who stands to profit by all this "security."
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Check Federal Criminal Code Title 18
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ALL OVER AMERICA INNOCENT AMERICANS ARE FALSELY ACCUSED OF MOLESTATION. THOSE WHO DO IT FOR A LIVING ARE NOT PROSECUTED.
Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused (Paperback) by Dean Tong
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TSA security: 'It's our business to touch yours'
Includes a hilarious video
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READ THE ACTUAL TSA Administrative Directive: Opt-Outters To Be Considered “Domestic Extremists”
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Ron Paul Crotch Groped by TSA, Calls for Boycott of Airlines
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The TSA is out of control
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TSA Searches: Are Trains and Subways Next?
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Glenn Beck and Andrew Napalitano on TSA
Administration Is Setting Us Up For An "Event"
So Obama Can Say "I Was Trying To Protect You"
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Patriot Act Presentation
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Login Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, speaks on the Opportunities of Crisis
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Login The sequence of steps that have been taken, in this country, is the most common pathway to dictatorship.
THE SHEEPLE ASK:
"You would rather we let or guard down and suffer terrorist attacks on our own soil?"
"Can't the government cut a few corners to help with natural calamities?"
Government officials making searches without warrants, demanding identification without probable cause, to believe that a crime has been committed IS a terrorist attack on our own soil.
For Hitler, the national emergency was the burning of the Reichstag Building. Then he set up the Gestapo.
We have 9-11 and "HomeLand Security". It even sounds like "Fatherland"
Totalitarians gain power through techniques that have been developed over the entire history of mankind. Most of these techniques have been written down in "training manuals" for would be dictators.
Examples are:
"And Not a Shot is Fired" by Jan Kozak, This is the manual for taking power through crisis.
(It is ALSO the manual for STOPPING the taking of power through crisis… if patriots read it too)
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TSA Agents Took My Son
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Obama Tells Americans: Get in Line and Get Your TSA Gropings
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STRIP SEARCHING LITTLE BOY
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TSA Pat Down Search - It's a Crime!
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TSA pulls pants off 71 y/o man with knee implant
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WHAT TSA REALLY STANDS FOR
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BOOKS BY RON PAUL
The Revolution: A Manifesto (Paperback) by Ron Paul
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End the Fed (Hardcover) by Ron Paul
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