Civil Rights / Liberties

By Dave Lindorff

Let me see if I’ve got this right.

A TSA screener was shot and killed at Cleveland International Airport by her husband, who then turned the gun on himself.

Read the rest at TSA News.

One of the more interesting reactions to last week’s post arguing that the TSA as we know it is dead came from a publicist for one of the airline trade associations.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Yesterday we reported on the latest TSA theft. If it sounded familiar, in more ways than one, it isn’t just a case of déjà vu. The only thing more consistent than TSA thefts in recent years is the agency’s hollow statements about TSA worker integrity and agency standards.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Once again, a TSA screener has been caught stealing from passengers’ luggage.

As we’ve written now more times than I can count, this isn't the first time. And it won't be the last.

Read the rest at TSA News.

(Editor's Note: Sommer Gentry is a math professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.)

I was pleased recently to receive an email from Russell Wooten, the IT Strategy Branch Chief of the TSA. His email reached me through my membership in the Maryland chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). For the uninitiated, operations research is the discipline of applying advanced analytical techniques to help make better decisions. Mr. Wooten was soliciting input on these questions:

On December 29, 2012 Politico reported that Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas) was chosen to be the next chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, succeeding Peter King (R-N.Y.), who stepped down in November.

Read the rest at TSA News.

There are those who might believe that anyone opposed to the TSA has a problem with authority. And/or they hate all law enforcement. Well, sorry to tell you, but that is simply untrue. I am here today to laud the actions of one Deputy Sheriff Stan Lenic of Albany, New York. 

Read the rest at TSA News.

By Linn Washington Jr.

President Barack Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, has just nominated to the Federal bench a lower court magistrate in Philadelphia who appears to be a legal bully with a dim understanding of the First Amendment and the Code of Conduct required of federal judges.  

If you don’t believe the TSA is doomed after watching yesterday’s House Aviation Subcommittee hearing, then you’ll have to at least agree that the agency as we know can’t continue to exist as it does.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Once again, TSA administrator John Pistole is thumbing his nose at Congress and refusing to testify.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Attack of the killer mushrooms:

Read the rest at TSA News.

ACLU Challenges Warrantless Wiretapping

by Stephen Lendman

Throughout its history, America always governed extrajudicially. Post-9/11, it became more repressive than ever. Modern technology makes it easy.

Big Brother has lots of ways to spy. It can be done from space, eyes in the sky on drones, secret agents, neighborhood snoops, or electronic monitoring of phones, emails, and other personal communications.

Those of us who’ve been writing about the TSA for a few years are well familiar with security expert Bruce Schneier. He and others like him, people who actually study actual security, using data, risk assessment, statistical analysis, and empirical evidence, are a balm to our weary psyches, frayed and exhausted as they are from trying to correct the steady flow of misinformation, disinformation, and specious arguments put forth by the TSA and its apologists. 

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the mainstream media last week ignored a legitimate grassroots protest against the TSA’s allegedly invasive full-body scanners.

Read the rest at TSA News.

TSA Administrator John Pistole periodically conducts what are euphemistically called public relations campaigns. 

These PR onslaughts follow a predictable pattern: credulous reporters ask namby-pamby questions, take everything Pistole says at face value, don’t follow up, and gush their thanks when the interview is over.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Remember how we’ve been told for the past two years that the whole body imaging scanners are safe, effective, and can’t record and store graphic nude images? And remember how many of us never believed it?

A column by Charles Kenny has been reposted all over the web.

The TSA’s celebrated (cough, cough) “Blogger Bob” has responded to Amy Alkon's post about her most recent experience at JFK. Here’s the full text, with link below: 

Read the rest at TSA News.

Michael Scott Wilson, who worked for the TSA at Baltimore-Washington International Airport until he was arrested a year ago on child pornography charges, and about whom we wrote here, has just been sentenced. 

Read the rest at TSA News.

There are two petitions I’m asking you to sign. First off, I know petitions don’t, by themselves, effect change. I get it. But they still serve a useful purpose. They provide moral support to the person or organization sponsoring the petition. And they let other people know that they’re not alone. They are a way of communicating, a way of telling each other, “we’re all in this together.”

Read the rest at TSA News.

Via David Burkhead (who noted that about the steampunk art), the TSA has now taken to arresting people with artsy homemade watches and shoes. The nitwits at the Oakland airport said a man’s artistic watch could be used to make a timing device for a bomb. 

Read the rest at TSA News.

By John Grant

Using one of those overarching dramatic titles we have come to expect in mainstream media news coverage, John Stewart summed up the Petraeus story as “Band of Boners.” It's the sort of thing that may be inevitable when so much power is given so much free reign by so much secrecy.

By Michael Caddell

… [Dr. Ann Kristin] Neuhaus wishes that she'd skipped the hearing.
 

Exactly one year ago, on November 15, 2011, TSA News launched. The first post was by journalist and longtime consumer advocate Christopher Elliott. 

Since then, we’ve assembled a stable of writers from all over the country. We come from diverse personal, professional, and political backgrounds. We’re especially all over the place politically. But one thing we all share is respect for civil liberties. And we’re not about to sit around dumbly and watch as those civil liberties are ripped out from under us.

Land of the Free. 

Uh-huh.

In what should be a surprising result but, sadly, isn’t, one-third of your fellow Americans say a body cavity search to board an airplane would be fine and dandy.

. . . And my breasts. She’s a TSA “team leader” at the Delta TSA checkpoint at LAX. I had to ask her for her first name because her nametag only says “Applewhite” and “team leader.” 

Read the rest at TSA News.