TSA pat-downs

[AthenaC]

I agree the Gestapo agents on the front-lines were just doing their jobs. Most of them have been pleasant to talk to…just don’t say anything bad about the Fuhrer.

Same could be said for

The NKVD
The KGB
and The SS death camp guards.

Just nice folks doing their jobs, I bet they were the sweetest people you ever met.

Well I’m sorry you all feel that way, but until such time as the TSA starts committing genocide, and until such time as anyone has an actual suggestion for what I should do differently, I will continue to greet TSA with a big ol’

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Pleasant? Okay, to each his own I guess.
I fail to see any humor or frivolity in this abomnination that has inflicted on the American people.
I feel sorry for people who have to fly frequently because I would never allow myself to have my Constitutional rights violated in the name of “security”. I would never smile at them if I did. Any more than I would the Gestapo in WW2 Germany. And yes, I do believe there is a paralel between the two.
I would rather get a new job or travel by boat or train before I allowed that kind of violation. And it won’t be long before the TSA is there as well.
The fact that many Americans do not see this as a red light is frightening to me.
Freedom, in most cases, is never taken away rapidly, it’s GIVEN away slowly until the memory of that freedom is dim and lost.

I HATE to fly these days. HATE it with a purple passion. I try to drive if I have to go somewhere. Unfortunately there’s no way to do that to Europe.

But domestically, if I can possibly make it, I drive.

I used to be a “Well, if you don’t have anything to hide, what are you worried about?” type of person. But who is in charge of the authorities? Do you trust those people? No longer. No.

 

[GEddie]

Nobody much likes what this country has turned into since September 11.

However, as there is no visible means of getting it back, we should count it all toward our penance. And smiling, if you can, is a good way to do that.

I’m not much of a smiler myself.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Rejoice_Always]

Just giggle uncontrollably when they pat you down. They tend to keep it short when that happens.

 

[austenbosten]

Well I’m sorry you all feel that way, but until such time as the TSA starts committing genocide, and until such time as anyone has an actual suggestion for what I should do differently, I will continue to greet TSA with a big ol’

All I know is, I fear a goose-steppin, minimum-wage, blue-shirt violating my body more than some Ali-Baba Allah akbar terrorist.

Odds getting struck by lightning:

1 in 500,000

Odds dying in a terrorist attack on an airline.

1 in 25,000,000

So I have a better chance of being struck by lightning, but oh my…we have to have the blue-shirts sexually molest us, in order to protect us.

Maybe I wouldn’t have a problem, if I get to choose who feels me up, but of course with tyranny you don’t have a choice.

 

[JustaServant]

I HATE to fly these days. HATE it with a purple passion. I try to drive if I have to go somewhere. Unfortunately there’s no way to do that to Europe.

But domestically, if I can possibly make it, I drive.

I used to be a “Well, if you don’t have anything to hide, what are you worried about?” type of person. But who is in charge of the authorities? Do you trust those people? No longer. No.

I was the same way after 911. Many people were. Hindsight is always 20/20. If people can be convinced to have their rights violated “with a smile”, what’s the next step to “keep us safe”? How do a people end up the way the people of Germany did in the 30s? It wasn’t overnight. It was a long slow burn.

 

[austenbosten]

I was the same way after 911. Many people were. Hindsight is always 20/20. If people can be convinced to have their rights violated “with a smile”, what’s the next step to “keep us safe”? How do a people end up the way the people of Germany did in the 30s? It wasn’t overnight. It was a long slow burn.

And how long until the Christians are being aggressively persecuted? Cause a bunch of naive people thought “Oh well I was fine with giving up all of my rights, but I didn’t know that they would take away my right to worship.”

Statists don’t care about what rights you’re willing to forfeit and what rights you want to preserve, they want it all…if they can convince you it’s for your safety…all the better.

 

[epan]

First of all, I really hope this does not devolve into another “modesty wars” thread. We need another one of those like we need another hole in our respective heads.

Anyway, I am flying a lot for work right now, and I am reluctant to go through the body-scanners at security. I am concerned about the radiation. (*)

So I go through the pat-down. As some other posters can corroborate, I am not burdened with a sense of shame, so it does not bother me in the least to have another person that I don’t know feel me up in public. (Although as often as I fly right now, I am getting to know the TSA people. )

My question for you all is - what goes through your mind when you see someone like me get pat down? Do you think “Oh look! Free girl-on-girl porn!” or just a mental, normal-course-of-business mental shrug? I occasionally catch the eye of male passengers who seem to just give me a quick, sympathetic smile before going about their business.

I considered whether or not I should get the pat-down in a private room, but then I realized if I did that, there would be no witnesses should anything untoward happen.

Any other ethical issues I should be considering regarding being an airline passenger navigating TSA?

(*) I am fully aware that: 1) we get bombarded with radiation all day, every day whether we like it or not; and 2) the scanners could be perfectly safe in the long run for as many doses as you care to give yourself. In response to #1, it just seems common-sense to me to minimize whatever additional radiation we can control. In response to #2, I could be wrong about the body scanners being dangerous, but the cost to me of being wrong is that I take extra time at security. Seems a sensible trade-off. shrug

P.S. I have also been known to warn my seat-mates: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I need the other half of my seat belt.”

You understand, I hope, that a transcontinental flight exposes you to the equivalent of one chest X-ray. You get more radiation exposure flying than going through security. Still, it is a good idea to minimize your dose if you travel a lot.

 

[epan]

All I know is, I fear a goose-steppin, minimum-wage, blue-shirt violating my body more than some Ali-Baba Allah akbar terrorist.

Odds getting struck by lightning:

1 in 500,000

Odds dying in a terrorist attack on an airline.

1 in 25,000,000

So I have a better chance of being struck by lightning, but oh my…we have to have the blue-shirts sexually molest us, in order to protect us.

Maybe I wouldn’t have a problem, if I get to choose who feels me up, but of course with tyranny you don’t have a choice.

Professor Campos calls it, “the politics of cowardice”. Politicians using fear to make people think that they are doing something useful, rather than addressing substantive issues.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

I was the same way after 911. Many people were. Hindsight is always 20/20. If people can be convinced to have their rights violated “with a smile”, what’s the next step to “keep us safe”? How do a people end up the way the people of Germany did in the 30s? It wasn’t overnight. It was a long slow burn.

Well one comfort is that we still have our guns. In fact, we have a LOT more guns since 2008.



And more ammo too.

The Germans had no way to fight the Nazis. If they had had personal weapons, history would have been very different.

 

[GEddie]

Well one comfort is that we still have our guns. In fact, we have a LOT more guns since 2008.



And more ammo too.

The Germans had no way to fight the Nazis. If they had had personal weapons, history would have been very different.

They had guns in Hussein’s Iraq, too.

Guns are not a vaccine against tyranny. In fact, they can motivate a greater cruelty in administration.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Slinger]

I know this is spiraling downward from the original post but I have to ask when flying in an airplane and the security measures that accompany it become a violation of our rights? I didn’t realize that flying in an airplane was considered a “right”. Actually, I can say with certainty that it is not…we choose and pay for the option to fly (and get patted down if that occurs).

 

[austenbosten]

I know this is spiraling downward from the original post but I have to ask when flying in an airplane and the security measures that accompany it become a violation of our rights? I didn’t realize that flying in an airplane was considered a “right”. Actually, I can say with certainty that it is not…we choose and pay for the option to fly (and get patted down if that occurs).

You’re right, I guess we should demand people be stripped and cavity searched who use the street, since using the street or sidewalk is not a “right”…Hope you can find a way to survive in your home without using public roads.

BTW I’m loving how some people are perfectly fine with tyranny in this country. I guess they think because it’s America nothing bad can happen…I know many Germans who thought the same way.

 

[Slinger]

You’re right, I guess we should demand people be stripped and cavity searched who use the street, since using the street or sidewalk is not a “right”…Hope you can find a way to survive in your home without using public roads.

BTW I’m loving how some people are perfectly fine with tyranny in this country. I guess they think because it’s America nothing bad can happen…I know many Germans who thought the same way.

Comparing a pat-down in the airport before boarding a flight where a hundred or more people are confined in a space 30,000 feet in the air with no escape to being stripped and cavity searched in order to walk down the street…ummm, yeah. You need to consider that a certain amount of logic goes into these decisions.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

They had guns in Hussein’s Iraq, too.

Guns are not a vaccine against tyranny. In fact, they can motivate a greater cruelty in administration.

ICXC NIKA

Who is “they?”

We still have our Founding Constitution, the 2nd Amendment to that Constitution grants us the right to keep and bear arms, although that right has been constricted over our 200+ year history.

Trying to overcome citizens’ resistance to tyranny would mean an end to the Republic forever. The military would not cooperate with such a plan, to a large extent.

I am cautiously hopeful that we can still regain our footing, although the cliff is crumbling.

 

[austenbosten]

Comparing a pat-down in the airport before boarding a flight where a hundred or more people are confined in a space 30,000 feet in the air with no escape to being stripped and cavity searched in order to walk down the street…ummm, yeah. You need to consider that a certain amount of logic goes into these decisions.

How about you consider the logic that for some 80 years people could travel the air without being subject to an embarrassing and humiliating search. Even the terrorist hijackings in the 70s we didn’t budge our freedom. Yet one tragic event and we strip away every freedom and we allow the govt to wiretap our emails and phone calls, sexually molest us before we board, and now arrest us and hold us in detention indefinitely without due process…How about that logic.

If you enjoy living as a slave, be my guest…but I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. You think it’s going to stop with the airlines pal…look around the Church is the next target…I wonder how “okay” you will be with the “logic of government protection” when they start shutting down churches.

Me I’ll keep fighting the good and just fight. We have a Bible, a Constitution, and Founding Documents and I yield it for No Man.

[BIBLEDRB]Galatians 5:1[/BIBLEDRB]

[BIBLEDRB]Galatians 5:13-14[/BIBLEDRB]

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

• Benjamin Franklin

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

• Thomas Jefferson

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
-John Adams

“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

• Benjamin Franklin

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

• Samuel Adams

and one of my favorites.

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
-Patrick Henry

Huzzah!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

If we are willing to enslave ourselves to the government for the false illusion of security, then I pray that God make me a warrior for Freedom, for I’d rather be a slave to God, than a slave to Caesar.

 

[jimmy]

Professor Campos calls it, “the politics of cowardice”. Politicians using fear to make people think that they are doing something useful, rather than addressing substantive issues.

It goes both ways. Politicians may be using fear to make their policies seem valuable, but fear is being used in the reverse by their opponents. They are Nazis because they have mandated the use of body scanners? Are you serious? They are fear mongers? Its a body scan. If you don’t like it you don’t have to fly.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

*“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

• Benjamin Franklin

Yes, indeed, this is where we started falling apart.

 

[austenbosten]

It goes both ways. Politicians may be using fear to make their policies seem valuable, but fear is being used in the reverse by their opponents. They are Nazis because they have mandated the use of body scanners? Are you serious? They are fear mongers? Its a body scan. If you don’t like it you don’t have to fly.

Sure and if I don’t want be arrested, tortured and spend my life in prison without due process because of the NDAA…I should keep my mouth shut and not criticize the government.

I would not have a problem with it, if it was government airlines doing this, but it’s not. They are forcing private customers to go through government scanners to board private airlines…where’s the freedom?

BTW, since when did your desire for a false sense of security through erosion of our civil rights became more important than my desire to fly?

 

[GEddie]

I don’t mind body scanners and don’t get the problem. We all have a body, something we don’t often appreciate enough. If someone seeing just below the skin of mine somehow makes travelling safer, fine, provided it’s done in a fair manner among everybody.

If there is a choice, I’d rather their eyes on my image than hands on me.

But I still have to wonder. Ships are just as vulnerable as planes (it’s a floating metal box in the ocean with thousands of people in it, who may die if it goes down), yet Government has never seen fit to search those boarding them. What has really changed, except maybe now we are more afraid?

If the country of Israel can maintain a better level of security, without treating everybody like a criminal, why can’t we?

ICXC NIKA