Just When You Thought it was Safe to Fly Again.

An engineer shows how easy it is to defeat the new whole body scanners.

$1B of TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless By Blog — How Anyone Can Get Anything Past The Scanners

H/T to Wendy McElroy

Rand Paul Detained by TSA

I'm not sure yet exactly why this happened and it might be interesting to see how Blogger Bob and the TSA spin it. Frankly, I suspect it will just be another entry in the Big Book of Stupid Things the TSA got Away With.

Rand Paul Has Been Detained By The TSA At Nashville Airport

H/T to Claire Wolfe

Cupcakes are a Security Risk!

MSNBC reports

Frightening frosting? TSA confiscates cupcake

PEABODY, Mass. -- An airport security officer confiscated a frosted cupcake amid fears its icing could be a security risk, according to reports.

Rebecca Hains said the Transportation Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas took her cupcake Wednesday. According to Hains, he told her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives.

"I just thought this was terrible logic," Hains said Friday.

Hains said the agent didn't seem concerned that the red velvet cupcake, which was packaged in an 8-ounce mason jar, could actually be explosive, just that it fit some bureaucratic definition about what was prohibited.

Read the rest here

I admit that I wonder what Blogger Bob or one of his accomplices will have to say about it but for entertainment purposes only. And from a distance. In a regime of security theater managed by delusional fools, the TSA may be piss in the wind but it is toxic piss.

TSA Bumper Stickers

Found these over at The Unwanted Blog

Testicle Squeezers at San Diego International

The blog <Insert title here> has a first person account of an encounter with the Testicle Squeezing Authority at San Diego International Airport.

TSA encounter at SAN
More about my TSA encounter at SAN

Just another incident in that long train of abuses hurtling head long to a place intelligent people don't want to go. I sometimes wonder if the govgoons described in the above postings really are as stupid as they appear. It makes no sense that they would provoke citizens the way they do unless the are just too stupid to see where it is leading

Or, maybe, they want to go there.

TSA

Testicle Squeezing Authority

Spread the meme

Other commentary here.

Blogger Bob from the TSA

Blogger Bob who seems to troll blogs looking for anything remotely critical of the TSA poked his head out of his hole to respond to a question about the treatment of passengers who don't care to be scanned by one of the Government's newest invasive toys, the Whole Body Imaging Scanner:

Anon, I'm posting about this because it is relevant. One of the top questions on this blog is about AIT safety.

Also, there is no fondling, squeezing, groping, or any sort of sexual assault taking place at airports. You have a professional workforce carrying out procedures they were trained to perform to keep aviation security safe.

Please keep pat-down discussions in the Enhanced Pat-down post and let's keep on topic with AIT safety here.

Thanks,

Blogger Bob
TSA Blog Team

While thinking about a proper response to the above tripe I found a gem by Billy Beck:

Dear Bob

You are an unconscionable idiot. You don't have a clue in the world what's going on out there. I would not hire you or your perverted goons to take out my trash, and I would rather take my chances with the terrorists. Those bastards don't look me in the face and lie to me like you do.

I can't wait until you're out on a winter-blown sidewalk, starving and trying to sell pencils for a living. I'll spit right in your face as I walk by. I promise.

Some might think that sounds harsh. After all, he is just following orders; just trying to feed himself and maybe a family. I'll bet he is kind to small animals and children, too.

So what? People like Blogger Bob and his team represent a modern example of how evil becomes banal. They actively defend actions that decent people recognize as wrong. They work to normalize ugly and degrading acts and make them routine. They endeavor to get you to accept being treated like a domestic animal as being "just the way things are".

And they do it with a smug sense of moral superiority.

Billy is right. Blogger Bob and his accomplices deserve no consideration or pity. What they are doing is not a tragic mistake they might be forgiven for. They are institutionalizing the degradation of the citizen and defending it with high sounding rhetoric and scientific charlatanism.

If he were freezing to death, I wouldn't piss on him lest it warm him up a little.

The Deathplace of Liberty

From NBC Philadelphia comes the following report on the antics of the Philadelphia TSA.

I am sure the security uber alles untermenschen will claim this is a reasonable restriction and that you don't have a right travel on the subway. Which only proves two wrongs do not make a right but they can sure be used to destroy one.

Random Pat-Downs Turn PATCO Into Police State

Commuters who ride PATCO trains between southern New Jersey and Philadelphia should expect random searches of their clothing, pockets, bags and vehicles on their morning trip to work.

Twelve Transportation Security Administration screeners, armed with an explosive-sniffing K-9, checked 663 commuter bags randomly selected from the morning rush at the Lindenwold station Tuesday.

"It was chaotic," Kevin Greczyn, an accountant from Magnolia who commutes to Philadelphia daily, told the Courier Post. "Nobody was sure what was happening, whether it was safe to get on the train, or whether we were carrying something we shouldn't be.”

Delaware River Port Authority Police Chief David McClintock told The Courier Post of Cherry Hill screeners were looking for improvised explosive devices and weapons.

The chief says that out of the 6663 bags searched between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., a crack pipe was the only item confiscated.

“We can conduct any kind of search we want," said McClintock. "We could ask TSA to bring wands or X-ray machines like they have in airports, though we don't think that's appropriate for PATCO riders at this time."

There are about 5,000 commuters passing through the Lindenwold daily, according to the Courier Post. The searches will be conducted by a freshly hired DRPA police several times a month, --without advance warning -- at various PATCO stations.

A special Delaware River Port Authority police unit plans to conduct surprise searches at various PATCO stations.

Fly the Thieving Skies?

Mike Vanderboegh commenting on this article:

A taxpayer funded criminal enterprise. The deal goes like this, or so I'm told by folks who have seen it in action:

TSA employees scanning bags turn up something they want to steal. In this case, Israeli pistols. They tag the bag with some mark that their confederate in the baggage process can easily identify out-of-sight of the cameras and public. After the items are removed from the bag, all routing marks are effaced from the bag and it is re-routed, in this case sent to LA -- a popular destination for NY TSA thievs' handiwork simply because it takes so long to get there. The thieves are never too greedy. Note that in this case the two "lost" bags both have weapons, but only one bag is pilfered -- the one with the most pistols, naturally. The merchandise is often handed off to a third-party at the airport, who sneaks it out in a personal bag. By the time the baggage arrives at the wrongly-forwarded airport, returned and the theft discovered, the merchandise is long gone from the airport. Who participates in scanning the bags originally? And who knows where all the security cameras, obvious and unobtrusive are?

You guessed it, the "transportation security" folks.

I don't know that Mr. Vanderboegh's scenario above is true but I do think it is plausible.

I've flown exactly once in the last ten years and, while not a particularly pleasant experience, it was not as bad as I was prepared for. All of the TSA agents I had to deal with were minimally polite and the folks in Tennessee, as expected, were noticeably better than the ones in California. There was a subtle attitude on both ends that we, the passengers, were cattle and they, the TSA were herders. I certainly didn't like it but I learned years ago to play the step'n'fetchit game when dealing with the government.

People I know who do fly regularly tell me horror stories and I read about them on the web regularly. Even allowing for some exaggeration, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence the TSA is not the friendly skies they pretend to be. One lawyer told me her law firm no longer allows company laptops to be taken on passenger flights because of damage suffered at the hand of the TSA. They instead ship them by private courier at considerable extra expense.

By the way, the flight attendants I dealt with were unfailingly polite and did it without being obsequious.

Eight-Year-Old on Watch List.

According to the TSA here (Retrieved Jan, 15, 2001 at 08:52 PST)

No 8-year-old is on a TSA watch list. Airlines can and should automatically de-select any 8-year-olds out there that appear to be on a watch list. Whether you're eight or 80, the most common occurrence is name confusion and individuals are told they are on the no fly list when in fact, they are not. If you get a boarding pass, you’re not on the no fly list.

Note how the TSA switches from "a TSA watch list" to the "no-fly list," implying that the watch list and the no-fly list are equivalent. This is a common rhetorical trick in Internet "debates". It serves to mislead the reader and is generally considered sleazy by honest and intelligent readers. OTOH, the above quote is from a government web site so who know what wrote it. Maybe one of the Infinite Monkeys.

Giving lie to the TSA claim, a NYT article dated January 13, 2010: Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List reads in part:

"Meet Mikey Hicks," said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. "It’s not a myth."

As for "automatically de-select[ing] any 8-year-old" on the watch list:

A third grader at a parochial school in Clifton, N.J., Mikey recites the drill like the world-weary traveler he is. Leave early for the airport, always with his passport. Try to get a boarding pass at the counter. This will send up a flag. The ticket agent, peering down at tiny bespectacled Mikey, will apologize or roll her eyes, and call for a supervisor. The supervisor, after a phone call — or, more likely, a series of phone calls — will ultimately finagle him onto the plane. But the Hickses are typically the last to select seats and the last to board, which means they sometimes can’t sit together.

Ok. It looks like the government is lying to us about this. Gomer Pyle used to put it this way, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

Maybe that's who is writing the TSA mythbuster site.

H/T to David Codrea

Fred on Airport Security

On February 17, at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, a young Nigerian terrorist named Farouk Abdul al Faisal attempted to board United Airlines flight 1497 to Stuttgart, Germany. He had eluded detechtion [sic] by the FBI, and was not on the Terrorist Watch List. He seemed to have succeeded in his aims.

Al Faisal had not counted on an alert TSA employee, as none had been encountered before. TSA agent Michael Trabinney noticed that Faruouk’s cheeks were puffed out strangely. He pulled the young African aside for further screening and discovered in his mouth a condom filled with black powder and a detonator. Trabinney sounded the alarm and Farouk was arrested. The Department of Homeland Security immediately closed the airport for three days, saying that, since the terrorist was in custody and posed no further threat, extreme measures were necessary. Travel snarled around the world as flights were diverted or canceled.

Read the rest

High praise for the ever vigilant employees of the TSA who are working constantly to protect us from the Islamists who hate freedom so much they are ready to die to destroy it.

My Daughter, the Terror Suspect

Original here

Mr Brown recently discovered his four-year-old daughter is on the terrorist watch list. He also discovered that the TSA unloads the cost of their false positives onto the victim. What is really instructive, however, are some of the comments from the wearers of kneepads. One commenter with the initials "CM" writes in part:

Speaking as someone who was flagged for several months and travels regularly, you are overreacting. The inconvenience of checking-in in person is relatively minor. Being flagged does not subject you to additional searches, simply the requirement that the airline confirm your date of birth.

Ever notice when someone is defending the indefensible they use weasel words? When compared to a heart attack or an attack of the gout, checking-in in person may be "relatively minor". However, the sane and intelligent member of the human species will compare it to the alternative of checking-in online. Being sane, intelligent and having done both I can testify that, by that much more reasonable standard, it is not relatively minor. In fact it is an inconvenience. At times a major inconvenience.

Hat tip to The Advice Goddess