TSA
Marti Oakley
I recently had to renew my car tags for 2013. Instead of new little stickers to be applied to my old plates, I got brand spankin’ new plates and new little stickers for2013. The plates themselves are different too. These are flat…no raised lettering or numbers and, come to find out, they contain a bar code which is also pinned to my new registration. From what I have been able to glean from various sources, there is no need what-so-ever for there to be any numbers or letters at all on the plate; the bar code is embedded and anyone at all with access to a plate reader can scan my plates, log my location, track me where I go and right back home again. All of this information can be kept for indefinite periods of time. And they don’t need any other reason for doing it other than …they can!
According to the the official State of Minnesota press release (Aug 28, 2008) states that the redesigned plates include black lettering which is suppose to be easier to read, and includes a bar-code that according to them “can be scanned for inventory control and record keeping”.
Q: What inventory is it that the State is referring to?
Q: What records are they keeping? And why?
TSA Wasn’t enough?
“With TSA now interferring with our legal right to travel freely, un-accosted by criminals, thugs, and other government employees, this per mile tax is the next step in the UN Agenda 21 Sequestered Populations plan. Many people will be forced into highly populated sequestered areas as a result of the additional costs and the refusal to comply with surveillance. What is at work here is the systematic creation of plans meant to make it so difficult, so invasive for you to travel…you won’t! You’ll stay right in your little center like you are supposed to.” Continue Reading
While trying to board a flight out of Buffalo, New York recently, a PhD student at Arizona State found out the hard way that being on a no-fly list isn’t the only way to attract the attention of the TSA — wearing a funny shirt will do the trick, too.
In a post published to his personal blog on Tuesday, a 31-year old doctoral candidate named Arijit recounts the horrors he experienced while attempting to fly from Buffalo-Niagara International Airport to Phoenix over the weekend after attending a funeral. In around 3,000 words he goes into great detail about being booted from a domestic flight, getting stuck renting a car and scrounging for overnight accommodations — something he argues most likely wouldn’t have happened if authorities didn’t make such a big fuss over his t-shirt.
The article of clothing that caused such a concern was a red t-shirt that featured a mock-up of the US Department of Homeland Security’s seal, surrounded with phrases such as “Bombs ZOMG,” “ZOMG Terrorists” and “Alert level bloodred — run, run take off your shoes.”
Image from arijitvsdelta.blogspot.co.uk
Arijit says he made it through the Transportation Security Administration’s standard screening routine without incident and that he was only questioned after arriving at his departure gate. There, he says, a supervisor from Delta Airlines started inquiring about the clothing, and soon after Arijit was quickly interrogated by others. He writes that he was then surrounded by agents with both the TSA and a crew from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the law enforcement agency that patrols Western New York’s mass transit system. Continue Reading
After 9/11, airport security quite rightly became an issue of paramount concern. Yet since its creation in 2001, the Transport Security Administration has repeatedly walked a fine line between vital vigilance and gratuitous intrusion. Security expert Bruce Schneier famously referred to the current system as bordering on “security theater,” in which the measures taken are more officious than efficient. This tendency toward such blunt theatrics has only been magnified by the “enhanced screening procedures” introduced in November 2010. Ron Paul, ever the champion of the individual, described the new system as “appalling” and “abusive.” There is no doubt that many of those who have fallen afoul of its excesses would agree.
1. Disabled four-year-old Ryan Thomas was on the way to Disney World when he was accosted by TSA agents at Philadelphia Airport and forced to walk through the scanner without his leg-braces. This wasn’t the easiest request to honor, as Ryan’s “ankles [were] malformed and his legs [had] little or no muscle tone.” His mother’s attempts to explain this to the screeners fell on deaf ears. The TSA eventually conceded that Ryan should have been privately checked, but only after the boy’s father got the Philadelphia Enquirer involved.
2. Elderly business traveler Penny Moroney described her TSA experience at St. Louis as “like being raped.” She had metal artificial knees and was thus eligible for a pat-down, during which the agent “touched her breasts . . . and patted her genitals.” The experience left her “shaking and crying.” Under any other circumstances, said Moroney, “it would be considered criminal sexual assault.”
3. Flying while pregnant can be uncomfortable enough, but for one diabetic traveler who did not want to be named for fear of “retaliation,” her day was about to get much worse. TSA agents at Denver International Airport considered the woman so much of a “risk for explosives” that they confiscated her insulin. When the woman asked for the names of the agents to make a complaint, they “scattered” and “left [her] crying at the TSA checkpoint.” Continue Reading
As Smedley Butler said: “It is always easy to convince half of the people to kill the other half.”
Say hello to the invasion of TSA agents inside the states, on our roads, unlawfully and illegally interfering with the right to travel freely….unacosted by government agents.
TSA says “If you see something , say something”. Ok! I will! I saw video of TSA agents unlawfully and unconstitutionally, randomly stopping busses and trucks in a video. They are looking for terrorists!!! And, if you are an American, minding your business, doing your job…. you might be one!
You are an American, aren’t you?
You are licensed and gainfully employed, aren’t you?
YOU! Are suspect! Continue Reading
(NaturalNews) October is Breast Cancer Awareness (BCA) month, which means millions of people and businesses worldwide are now donning pink clothing and those little pink ribbons in support of the massive campaign. But US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at John F. Kennedy airport in New York recently raised awareness in their own unique way by forcing a breast cancer survivor who had recently been through intense surgery to undergo an aggressive and humiliating pat down of her breasts.
TSA agents reportedly pulled aside Lori Dorn, who was on her way to San Francisco, Calif., after the image generated with a naked body scan revealed prostheses in her breasts. Dorn tried to explain to the agents that she had just undergone surgery for breast cancer, and that doctors had placed tissue expanders in her breasts for future reconstruction surgery, but they ignored her.
Not at all concerned with what Dorn had to say, TSA agents insisted that she undergo a breast pat down, or not fly. Dorn petitioned the agents to allow her to retrieve a medical card from her belongings that explained the reality of her bilateral mastectomy, and that contained serial numbers for the prostheses and information about the doctor that put them there, but the agents refused.
“I had no choice but to allow an agent to touch my breasts in front of other passengers,” wrote Dorn about the incident on her personal blog. “I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer. The way I was treated by these TSA agents added insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.” Continue Reading
By Jonathan Benson
(NaturalNews) The next time you are assaulted by TSA agents at the airport that try to force you through the naked body scanner or perform a full-body grope down on you, why not just grab them back?
This is exactly what 61-year-old Yukari Mihamae recently did at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PSHI) after TSA agents tried to subject her to the unlawful and unconstitutional “enhanced” security protocols — but when she decided to essentially perform the same procedures on a TSA agent, police arrested her on suspicion of sexual abuse.
A regular air traveler, Mihamae is quickly building a reputation for herself as a true American patriot, and one that refuses to allowthe TSAto violate her personal privacy no matter how often she travels. During her most recent attempted travels through PSHI, she decided to give theTSAa little dose of its own medicine, and she paid the price.
After getting into an argument withTSA agentsfollowing her refusal to go through thenaked body scanner, reports indicate that Mihamae grabbed a TSA agent’s breasts with both hands, and proceeded to squeeze and twist them. The incident ended up landing her in jail overnight, but she was released the next day with no charges were filed against her.
At the prompting of her lawyer, Mihamae has decided not to publicly explain why she grabbed the TSA agent’s breasts. But based on her history of fighting back against TSA tyranny, it seems clear that Mihamae is just a no-nonsense traveler who demonstrates a little extra “pizazz” every now and again — she apparently flies routinely and almost always ends up getting into an altercation with TSA agents for violating her rights.
Supporters of Mihamae have set up a Facebooksupportpage for her entitled “Acquit Yukari Mihamae” (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Acquit-Yukar…). As of this writing, the page had 1,834 supporters and counting.
Learn more:http://www.NaturalNews.com/033048_TSA_agents_sexual_assault.html#ixzz1SZWreIGv
Coming Soon to an Airport Near You
by Wendy McElroy, July 6, 2011
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1107c.asp
If you fly within the United States in the future, keep your expression neutral, do not blink too much or too little, and do not sweat. Carefully maintain a normal respiration and heart beat as you submit to demands from Homeland Security agents. If you question or resist their demands, you could be detained as a pre-crime suspect, fined up to $11,000 and added to a No Fly list. Continue Reading
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) In a new twist to the TSA saga to which we can only say, “We told ya so,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that reveal TSA employees are reporting “cancer clusters” among their own employees who work near radiation body scanners. At the same time,DHS refuses to issue dosimeters to TSA employeesbecause, obviously, those dosimeters would indicate alarming levels of radiation exposure. So it’s better to just keep everyone ignorant and keep irradiating all the TSAemployeesand hope nobody notices, apparently. Continue Reading
WASHINGTON (June 22, 2011) – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) unmasked the inane nature of the standards guiding TSA checkpoint procedures during a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting Wednesday. (FULL VIDEO BELOW)
“Currently the invasive pat-down searches are random and not based on risk assessment?” Paul asked John Pistole.
Speaking typical bureaucratic gobbledygook, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicated that they were, but they weren’t.
Or something. Continue Reading
by: Ethan A. Huff
(NaturalNews) Remember when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed back in 2010 that the US Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) naked body scanners had been proven safe by research conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (http://epic.org/privacy/backscatter…)? A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request recently brought to light internal emails that were sent by NIST to DHS that basically decry Napolitano’s false assertion that NIST had verified the safety of thenaked body scanners.
Amid the string of emails discussing the matter, an undisclosed sender explains that NIST was “a little concerned” over Napolitano’s public reassurances that TSA’s nakedbodyscanners are safe. After all, NIST does not test products, and it never tested the naked body scanners in the first place. Napolitano apparently took the individualmachinedose measurements that NIST had gathered and twisted them to say what she wanted them to say, which was that the machines aresafe.
You can view a partially-censored copy of thatemailexchange here:
http://epic.org/privacy/backscatter…
Worse, NIST had actually warned DHS andTSAthat the machines were not necessarily safe, and that airport screening agents should avoid standing next to them because of the harmfulradiationthey emit. It is unclear whether or not this warning was ever taken seriously by TSA officials.
Napolitano also falsely claimed thatresearchconducted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory confirms thesafetyof naked body scanners, even though the research actually suggests the opposite. Dr. Michael Love from the school publicly stated that the machines are going to give people skincancer, and the specific findings of the report indicate that “radiation zones” around the machines emit enough radiation to exceed the “General Public Dose Limit.” Continue Reading
Daily News
A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.
Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.
Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.
“The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner,” she said.
Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said.
Wheelchairs trigger certain protocols, including pat-downs and possible swabbing for explosives, Koshetz said.
“During any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm,” she said. Continue Reading
Friday, June 24, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) In a policy change announcement, the TSA now claims it will soon stop molesting little children by reaching into their pants and feeling their genitals. That we live in such a police state today where the opening line to a news story even mentions government agents molesting little children should be downright astonishing, but it’s the truth. Of course, the TSA never claimed it was “molesting” children, and it describes its policy change as a way to “screen children without using invasive measures.”
That kind of doublespeak deserves a place in theHall of Fame of Cowardly Language, alongside President Bush’s claims of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and President Obama’s description of war in Libya as “kinetic action.”
TheTSA, of course, has mastered the art of Orwellian doublespeak. This is the agency that insists it does not “confiscate” anything from airtravelers. Instead, those travelers all “willfully surrender” their pocket knives, decorative souvenir globes and other items thatthe TSAsteals from them and then sells for a profit (http://www.naturalnews.com/032757_T…). Continue Reading
Bridget Garrity recently saw a sign at Baltimore-Washington International Airport that made her turn off her cell phone a little faster.
“It said it’s against the law to take a photo or video of TSA doing their job,” she says.
Garrity wanted to take a snapshot of the sign and send it to me, but she was afraid she might be breaking the law by doing that, too. And she knows a thing or two about rules; she’s a lawyer.
TSA is pretty clear about what is — and isn’t — allowed at checkpoints. You can take pictures as long as it doesn’t interfere with the screening process.
So what about those warnings? I asked the agency, and was told the signs weren’t TSA’s. So I checked with the airport. Continue Reading
