The TSA has an Honor Guard...

Jaybird180 said:
I think the security procedures are inconvenient and and sometimes stupid. I have in the past felt my blood pressure rise at the thought of commercial travel security procedures, but I've accepted the reality of NOW.

I also do not trust the guy in the row behind me to do the right thing if a bad-guy were sitting next to him which is one reason I will opt to sit near the Emergency Egress and PAY ATTENTION during the briefing.

Quit sitting down and posting on the internet about the issue. Go out, DO SOMETHING...Hell, "Go Egypt".
Click to expand...

I have not flown on an airline since the new security measures. If its too far (expensive) for my little airplane I just don't go. Period. Then again I have these luxuries. I will never fly the airlines or even apply for an airline job while things stand the way they are. I'd rather take a fing cruise ship for a week or save up a few thousand for AVgas than blow up on one of these scum bags that work for the TSA and end up in jail.
 
p1l0t said:
I have not flown on an airline since the new security measures. If its too far (expensive) for my little airplane I just don't go. Period. Then again I have these luxuries. I will never fly the airlines or even apply for an airline job while things stand the way they are. I'd rather take a fing cruise ship for a week or save up a few thousand for AVgas than blow up on one of these scum bags that work for the TSA and end up in jail.
Click to expand...

Some of us don't have that luxury (typed as I sit at the desk in my hotel room in Seoul, South Korea).
 
Ghery said:
Some of us don't have that luxury (typed as I sit at the desk in my hotel room in Seoul, South Korea).
Click to expand...

Yes, which I why I don't think it is a good argument to say that people really have a choice in the matter (I do but I probably represent the missing 30% of the load factor not the majority). If your livelihood depends on it or if you have family in distant places than you forced to choose between food/job/family and being violated or radiated. People are out protesting on wall street about money when they should be at the airport protesting about their civil rights. :mad2:
 
dmccormack said:
Anthony - you're 100% correct. This issue (TSA screening prior to boarding commercial flights) has been challenged and the courts have failed to overturn the federal government's approach..
Click to expand...

The challenges to airline screening predated 911, intrusive pat downs, and millimeter wave scanners. They also predated TSA doing searches at train and bus depots.

Here's the key, in my opinion. The Supreme Court ruled that in 'special cases' like airline screening, the intrusion based on two key points:
1: The magenetometers that were the source of the challenge were minimally intrusive,
2: They were effective.

The portion on 'voluntariness' is irrelevant. The Court has ruled that citizens have an inherent right to travel by the means they choose. Prior cases on airline screening did not hinge on voluntary compliance.

The relatively recent expansions of TSA searches fail, in my opinion, on both points of prior caselaw. Millimeter wave or backscatter scanners are not minimally intrusive, nor are physical pat-downs.
Secondly, and most crucially, repeated evidence has shown that backscatter/millimeter wave imagers are easily defeated.

The core of the balancing test is that the intrusion must further a compelling state interest. The key to a compelling interest is that the the proposed action will accomplish that interest. In other words it must be effective.
If it is not effective, then it cannot be a justified infringement.

The Court has not taken a case yet, there is no current caselaw on the current TSA operating paradigm. But at some point, these issues will be litigated.
 
sba55 said:
Want to be depressed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8ahsgZYtE&feature=player_embedded

This county's going down the tubes faster than I could ever have imagined :(
Click to expand...

Well THAT is one really effective program. I mean we've NEVER had a terrorist incident on an Interstate highway*, right? Look at how well it worked!

(* Wasn't Tim McViegh arrested on an interstate?)

--------------

There's still "walking around" security hole, so they'll need checkpoints on city street corners but then the terrists coudl be at suburban shopping mals, so there, too!

"Ver are yer papers?"
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
If you don't want to be searched, just don't fly, or use highways, or buses, or trains, or cruise ships, or...

Travel is a privilege, not a right.
Click to expand...


Initially, that was my take regarding the actual Constitutionality of these security measures, but the more I research, the more this is, or will bleed into ALL modes of transport, limiting our travel choices. In addition, it is often not practical to use those other modes of transportation to accomplish your task, which is often business. So could this be seen as a "restraint of trade" issue also?

I am beginning to think so.
 
Anthony said:
While I absolutely despise the TSA, and just about anything they represent, flying on an airline is VOLUNTARY. It is not illegal search, and seizure. If you don't want to go through the security measures, don't fly the airlines. Walk, drive, take the train, fly GA, ride a bike, etc.
Click to expand...

Well, they've already made their presence known at train stations. Checking people as they disembarked (which makes absolutely no sense). The Tennessee news article puts them on the highways. They've been at GA airports searching private airplanes and checking everyone coming and going including pilots and passengers. That leaves...

...walking & riding a bike.

And, I'm confident that they'll start screening those activities shortly.

EDIT: I didn't see your post immediately above this one before composing mine...
 
Yeah Tim. I didn't know about the X-Ray vans, and the train station shenanigans. I sometimes travel by train also, and just never noticed it. I certainly wasn't searched, but I am sure that is the direction they want. When most or maybe all of your travel choices require a search, that is unacceptable.

Even with this one mode of transport, airline travel, I think due to the impracticality of travelling any other way is limiting. I can't walk or drive to Europe or Asia for my work, nor is sea travel pratical. I'd be fired long before the ship ever got to my destination.
 
timwinters said:
Well, they've already made their presence known at train stations. Checking people as they disembarked (which makes absolutely no sense). The Tennessee news article puts them on the highways. They've been at GA airports searching private airplanes and checking everyone coming and going including pilots and passengers. That leaves...

...walking & riding a bike.

And, I'm confident that they'll start screening those activities shortly.

EDIT: I didn't see your post immediately above this one before composing mine...
Click to expand...

I would not let them search my plane without a warrant. Period.

<---<^>--->
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Travel is a privilege, not a right.
Click to expand...

What is the alternative to travel? Is staying at home a right of a privilege or suspicious activity? Imagine what you could pour down the drain...They need a checkpoint at the bathroom door.

Well THAT is one really effective program. I mean we've NEVER had a terrorist incident on an Interstate highway*, right? Look at how well it worked!
Click to expand...

We haven't had a catastrophic planetwide meteor impact event since the invention of toilet paper either.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
If you don't want to be searched, just don't fly, or use highways, or buses, or trains, or cruise ships, or...

Travel is a privilege, not a right.
Click to expand...

Wow. Does anyone still think TSA searches are "voluntary"?

The people in charge at TSA need to read this portion of Shapiro v. Thompson:

This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.
Click to expand...

My new motto:

"Governing is a privilege, not a right."
 
WTF!!!!

PORTLAND, Tenn. – You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.
Click to expand...

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/1...-becomes-first-state-to-deploy-vipr-statewide

I would refuse the search unless they had a warrant, and therefore I'd probably end up in hand cuffs. THIS IS NOT AMERICA. Our fathers, grand fathers and many of us fought, shed blood, and died to ensure this crap never happens.
 
Last edited:
p1l0t said:
I would not let them search my plane without a warrant. Period.

<---<^>--->
Click to expand...

I haven't watched the video. But as many discussions on this and other forums have flogged to death, such an attitude could get you in trouble without a fuller understanding of the law. There are many instances where agents do not need a warrant for a perfectly legal search, if conducted appropriately.

So if you don't want to consent to a voluntary search, that it certainly your right. But there are scenarios where a government agent would search your airplane/truck/car/boat/RV/trailer/motorcylce without a warrant anyhow. Or not.
 
Follow the money.

Make up threats.

Buy overpriced gear for States to counteract those false threats.

Buy a job.

Buy a vote.

That's all any of this is. Constitution and/or Rights be damned.
 
numberofar.png


Mission creep has no bounds.
 
(a) Sovereignty and Public Right of Transit. - (1) The United
States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the
United States.
(2) A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit
through the navigable airspace. To further that right, the
Secretary of Transportation shall consult with the Architectural
and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board established under
section 502 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. 792)
before prescribing a regulation or issuing an order or procedure
that will have a significant impact on the accessibility of
commercial airports or commercial air transportation for
handicapped individuals.
(b) Use of Airspace. - (1) The Administrator of the Federal
Aviation Administration shall develop plans and policy for the use
of the navigable airspace and assign by regulation or order the use
of the airspace necessary to ensure the safety of aircraft and the
efficient use of airspace.
...
3) To establish security provisions that will encourage and
allow maximum use of the navigable airspace by civil aircraft
consistent with national security, the Administrator, in
consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall -
(A) establish areas in the airspace the Administrator decides
are necessary in the interest of national defense; and
(B) by regulation or order, restrict or prohibit flight of
civil aircraft that the Administrator cannot identify, locate,
and control with available facilities in those areas.
(4) Notwithstanding the military exception in section 553(a)(1)
of title 5, subchapter II of chapter 5 of title 5 applies to a
regulation prescribed under this subsection.
...
(e) No Exclusive Rights at Certain Facilities. - A person does
not have an exclusive right to use an air navigation facility on
which Government money has been expended. However, providing
services at an airport by only one fixed-based operator is not an
exclusive right if -
(1) it is unreasonably costly, burdensome, or impractical for
more than one fixed-based operator to provide the services; and
(2) allowing more than one fixed-based operator to provide the
services requires a reduction in space leased under an agreement
existing on September 3, 1982, between the operator and the
airport.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/49/VII/A/I/401/40103
Click to expand...

Cute idea. That was.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
How many (if any) of the 15 were really (possible) terrorists and how many were stupid kids that phoned in a fake bomb threat to school to get a day off?
Click to expand...

Well....top o' my head.... 6 of the 15 were the Lackawana 6, who were innocent.

So that leaves 9.

Then was the guy who had a watch wrapped around a bottle of Pepto Bismul.

Now we're down to 8...

Shoe Bomber. The passengers caught him after he failed to explode.
Leaving 7...

Undie Bomber. The passengers caught him after he failed to explode. Leaving 6...

Just like with J. Edgar Hoover all of those, including McVeigh are great gets by the TSA.

Oh, but that's not all with the PATRIOT Act. That's the TSA.

With the PATRIOT act we should see how many warrants were issued for terrorism busts. The numbers prolly got he other way - 25,000 warrants for terror, 15 busts for terror 1600 for drugs.
 
Last edited:
We'll know for sure we're in trouble when the TSA "honor" guard starts goose-stepping when on parade.
 
alaskaflyer said:
I haven't watched the video. But as many discussions on this and other forums have flogged to death, such an attitude could get you in trouble without a fuller understanding of the law. There are many instances where agents do not need a warrant for a perfectly legal search, if conducted appropriately.

So if you don't want to consent to a voluntary search, that it certainly your right. But there are scenarios where a government agent would search your airplane/truck/car/boat/RV/trailer/motorcylce without a warrant anyhow. Or not.
Click to expand...

Yeah with either a warrant, or probable cause. Now its pretty easy for a cop to just lie and say they smell marijuana and call it probable cause.. but still search me for the sake of it because you don't have to play by the constitution that this country was supposed to uphold. BS

<---<^>--->
 
It just keeps getting better,

Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.
Click to expand...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...an-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/
 
De-fund and allll of this goes away. No better place for an "unfunded mandate" to be utilized, ever.
 
alaskaflyer said:
I haven't watched the video. But as many discussions on this and other forums have flogged to death, such an attitude could get you in trouble without a fuller understanding of the law. There are many instances where agents do not need a warrant for a perfectly legal search, if conducted appropriately.

So if you don't want to consent to a voluntary search, that it certainly your right. But there are scenarios where a government agent would search your airplane/truck/car/boat/RV/trailer/motorcylce without a warrant anyhow. Or not.
Click to expand...

The sad thing is if someone in authority decides to search you property, there is very little you can legally do about it. You can challenge any evidence they might find in court, and you may or may not win. In the mean time they are free to do as much damage to your property as they deem appropriate, and I am not aware of any means of recompense. Most of your freedom in these matters was destroyed in and by the War on Drugs. If you want to see a victim of the War on Drugs, just look in the mirror.
 
While Congress had to also approve this, I blame Bush for allowing this to happen.

Surprised? I do not think this is an R vs D debate, it is a government getting to powerful debate.
 
With luck the SCOTUS can provide some redress for the more odious aspects of the TSA-sponsored security theatre.
 
mikea said:
Not this SCOTUS.
Click to expand...

Not so certain. The searches have grown both intrusive and onerous, clearly contravened by the Constitution. Moreover, given several year's records, I think you'd have a hard time arguing either need or efficacy.
 
steingar said:
Not so certain. The searches have grown both intrusive and onerous, clearly contravened by the Constitution. Moreover, given several year's records, I think you'd have a hard time arguing either need or efficacy.
Click to expand...

This is the court that upheld property confiscation by law enforcement without even an arrest, right?

Corporations have a free speech right?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top