Megalextoria

As Americans celebrated their freedom this Fourth of July, headlines graphically proved how diminished that liberty is. Hannah Cohen, 18 years old and severely disabled from a brain tumor, sued the TSA and local cops for beating her bloody. Hannah’s “crime”? She had neither understood nor complied with their orders when trying to board a flight the year before.

In June 2015, Hannah and her mother, Shirley, were returning home from St Jude’s Medical Center. Hannah’s tumor and the radiation treating it have left her “partially deaf, blind in one eye, paralyzed, and easily confused….” Not surprisingly, such “substantial limitation[s are] obvious on sight.” No one could have mistaken Hannah for a healthy passenger as the Cohens approached the Transportation Security Administration’s checkpoint in Memphis, TN.

Hannah wore a shirt with sequins on it. Those metallic bits triggered the TSA’s scanner. “‘You could see on the screen what it was pointing out,’ Shirley said. …Agents told Hannah they needed to take her to a ‘sterile area’ where they could search her further. She was afraid, Shirley said, and offered to take off the sequined shirt as she was wearing another underneath, but a female agent laughed at her. … Shirley … [explained to] a supervisor standing nearby. ‘She is a St Jude’s patient, and she can get confused…’” In response, the TSA summoned “’armed guards.’”

Those “guards” grabbed Hannah’s arms, further scaring her. “’I tried to push away,’she said. ‘I tried to get away.’”

But “…in the next instant,” Shirley recalled, “one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere…” The heartrending picture Mrs. Cohen snapped of her daughter documents that ubiquitous blood as well as Hannah’s terror and anguish.

Not Isolated

Tragically, this incident was neither isolated nor a misunderstanding. Far too many sick, elderly, and otherwise vulnerable victims have endured similar horrors at American airports. Worse, not all of them have lived to tell about it.

In 2005,the TSA’s air marshals killed a 44-year-old Christian missionary suffering from manic depression. Rigoberto Alpizar, jittery and upset, had tried to disembark from a flight preparing to leave Miami, FL. Two marshals followed him off the plane and shot him in the jetway. They claimed he was shouting about a bomb. Other passengers denied that, insisting they heard the word “bomb” only from the police who later questioned them.

To be fair, most of the TSA’s prey doesn’t wind up bloodied or dead. They deal instead with crushing and very public humiliation. Just ask Thomas Sawyer. A bout with cancer of the bladder pushed him into the TSA’s hands—literally. “’Evidently the scanner picked up on my urostomy bag, because I was chosen for a pat-down procedure. … [E]very time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know … One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal … but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.’” No wonder Mr. Sawyer was so “absolutely humiliated” he “couldn’t even speak … They never apologized. They never offered to help …”

Comply Or Else

The TSA’s ferocity extends even to children, including sick or disabled ones. Four-year-old Ryan Thomas was “born 16 weeks prematurely. His ankles are malformed and his legs have low muscle tone.” He required braces to walk. When his parents tried to fly with him, the TSA insisted that they not only remove his braces after the metal detector beeped but that he walk through the machine without them. Nor did his father’s protests avail (“I told [the TSA’s supervisor], ‘This is overkill. He’s 4 years old. I don’t think he’s a terrorist'”).

Little girls fare no better. Lucy Forck’s parents hoped to introduce their 3-year-old daughter to Mickey Mouse. But Lucy’s spina bifida confines her to a wheelchair. That allowed the TSA to traumatize her until, “weeping uncontrollably,” she finally screamed, “I don’t want to go to Disney World!” Adding insult to injury, the TSA also “confiscated Lucy’s stuffed toy, ‘Lamby’ … ‘She was crying for her stuffed animal which they wouldn’t let her have for the longest time,’ [Lucy’s father] said. ‘It’s only about a half foot long … but she loves it.’”

What has happened to Americans that we tolerate such savagery against the weakest among us? Does terrorism so menace aviation that children in wheelchairs must forfeit Lamby while manic-depressive passengers are gunned down in jetways?

The officials responsible for the TSA continually assure us that it does; other sources dispute that. But even if the threat were as perilous as self-interested bureaucrats contend, does that excuse the TSA’s mortification of patients with urostomy bags and its brutalizing half-blind, half-deaf teens? Does fear of terrorism—or of anything else—justify gross inhumanity?

The Pat Down

The TSA’s cruelty towards sick, injured or elderly passengers is only one of its sins; its ordinary policies and practices are every bit as immoral. Consider the agency’s notorious “pat downs.”

As the TSA itself admits that it “has used pat downs since … 2002.” But it never concedes that they are indistinguishable from sexual assault, though neither the TSA’s employees nor passengers can tell the difference. Last year, when “two … screeners at Denver International Airport … were discovered manipulating passenger screening systems to allow a male TSA employee to fondle the genital areas of attractive male passengers,” the District Attorney couldn’t pursue charges because none of the eleven victims had complained.

Test after test demonstrates that the TSA can’t find the weapons and explosives on passengers that supposedly justify its existence. And independent experts in security condemn not only “pat downs” but the agency’s entire rigmarole as hopelessly ineffective: “Most of the layers of security are little more than illusions reinforced by a government agency that feeds off the paranoia and fear of the masses. Doing away with them would make America’s transportation systems no less safe.”

And far more humane. If we haven’t abolished the TSA for its incompetence, let’s do so for its immorality.

Source: The TSA Descends from Incompetence to Inhumanity | Foundation for Economic Education

Have you missed a flight recently due to a long security line? I have. So have tens of thousands of others. It used to be that you could get to the airport an hour before your flight. That might still work. Or maybe not. Maybe security itself will take an hour or two. You never know.

We stand in line and watch in shock and awe. There are six security stations. Only one is open. The lines snake around the airport and even into the street. No one in charge seems to care.

You ask why the long lines. It’s a holiday. The TSA apparently forgot to put it on their calendar. So there aren’t enough employees. And they apparently lack the ability to call in more when necessary.

Right now, warnings are pouring out to be careful this summer. The lines could be one or two hours in waiting. Or maybe not, and then you will have time to shop and drink, to hunt for an outlet for your cellphone, or sleep in an uncomfortable chair. But you dare not take the risk. You will miss your flight. No one will reimburse you. Your sick mother, your daughter’s wedding, a crucial business trip, they will all just have to wait.

The TSA runs the show, holding hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance. Do they care? Maybe the individual employees feel bad about it. But management is in charge. And even they don’t determine policies. It’s the Department of Homeland Security that does that, under the authority of the US Congress. If you don’t like it, start a lobbying organization.

The trouble is that the TSA is not the private owner of anything. It has no stake in the profitability of the airlines. It gets funding either way. As for your convenience, forget it. One agent might be nice and fast, another might be mean and slow. It’s entirely up to the individual in question. There is no institutional reason to boost one temperament over another.

What about the labor miscalculations? I’ve been at airports where dozens of agents stand around doing nothing. There is no line. Security takes minutes. In other airports, understaffing is obvious and egregious. There is nothing anyone can do. It’s an island of socialism in a sea of markets, and socialism doesn’t work.

Ask any restaurant owner about staffing issues. They know they need extra servers and cooks on Friday night. You don’t bring in that same load on Monday because it would be a waste of resources. It’s a major challenge to anticipate consumer demand before it happens, but that’s the life of private enterprise. Making money is hard.

The TSA faces a completely different incentive structure. It’s all about compliance and rules, even when the stupidity is obvious. TSA employees know that it is idiotic to confiscate hair gel, wooden toy guns, and water bottles. Why am I taking my laptop out of my bag and leaving my iPad in? They know it makes no sense. It’s embarrassing. But there is nothing they can do.

As for security, The New York Times notes in passing that an “audit found that agents had failed to spot weapons and explosives in 95 percent of the undercover tests.”

The response to the audit was to slow down the screening process, and add dogs too. Now you face what is a very scary and tremendously annoying process of having some huge dog sniff you up and down. What if the dog makes a mistake? You will be detained. You can’t sue, of course.

A few weeks ago, a machine found explosive residue on my hands. I had been to the rifle range the day before, so maybe that is why. Or maybe not. Someone on my Facebook page asked whether I had candles in my bag. I did. Those can trigger these useless machines. Regardless, I lost 30 minutes of my life as the TSA dug through all my stuff, looking for a bomb. Sheesh.

Let’s also talk about theft. Yes, thieves, employed by the NSA, with salaries paid for by the taxpayers. Your bags are no longer safe. Employees of the TSA routinely scavenge for good stuff, just like when you travel to far-flung places. In the last five years, more than 30K theft claims have been filed by passengers.

You know what bugs me most about this? Nothing about what is happening is surprising. You don’t have to be a prophet. You don’t have to read giant books. Just the slightest knowledge of reality will inform you that if you put a government bureaucracy is charge of something as important as airport security, that bureaucracy will screw it up.

This is not rocket science. Ask the average person: “should we put a government bureaucracy in charge of making and delivering chicken sandwiches? Software? Shoes?” Every person you ask will know the right answer.

And yet, following 9/11, George Bush went exactly in the wrong direction. He announced that airport security would now be controlled by the government. And you know how many people objected? I vaguely recall that Ron Paul said this wouldn’t work, but that was about it. Everyone else screamed: yes, that will teach the terrorists a thing or two! Next thing you know, travel was no longer fun.

Fifteen years later, we are all suffering. It’s not just the invasive screenings. If those are necessary for security, fine. What’s absolutely awful is the uncertainty about time. You could miss your flight or not. You never know. And they don’t care. That’s dehumanizing.

Should the TSA be privatized? Of course. Better yet, forget the process and just abolish it. Let the airports and airlines work it out.

What could be the objection? That airlines don’t care about security? That’s absurd. No institution has a stronger reason to strive for their customer’s safety than airlines. If any airline had a 95% failure rate in detecting guns and explosives, the public would be screaming. As it is, the TSA’s failures are known and expected, and there is very little outrage.

There we stand, in long lines. Being sniffed by dogs. Missing our flights. Demoralized.

Finally we get through the security lines and face an amazing world of airport shops, restaurants, and bars. There the employees are desperate to please us. If the fries are cold or the drinks made wrong, we complain and get our way.

What’s the difference? It’s government vs. the market. One cares nothing about us. The other exists to serve us. One is brutal, the other humane. Which should be in charge of security at airports?

Source: How the TSA Ruins Lives | Foundation for Economic Education

The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration was reassigned Monday after an internal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security found security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports. The breaches allowed undercover investigators to smuggle weapons, fake explosives and other contraband through numerous checkpoints.

Melvin Carraway, an 11-year veteran of the TSA who became acting administrator in January, was immediately reassigned to a DHS program coordinating with local law enforcement agencies, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday night. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Pete Neffenger’s nomination to be permanent administrator is awaiting Senate confirmation.

Upon learning the initial findings of the Office of Inspector General’s report, Johnson immediately directed TSA to implement a series of other actions, several of which are now in place, agency officials said.

In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent’s back. In all, so-called “Red Teams” of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials.

“The numbers in these reports never look good out of context, but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security,” Homeland Security officials said in a statement.

Source: TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests