Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 22, 2010
John Pistole, the TSA boss, has implored activists to rethink their “opt-out” protest this week. Pistole warns that the national protest against naked body scanners and intrusive pat downs at airports would be a mistake and will only serve to “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones,” according to the Associated Press.
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| If John Pistole and the federal government have their way, we may have to opt-out of taking the subway or riding a train in the near future. | |
“I understand people’s frustrations,” said president Obama from Lisbon over the weekend. Obama said at present naked body scanners and pat down searches bordering on sexual molestation are the best way to prevent Muslims in caves from attacking the American people. Secretary of State Clinton told Meet the Press on Sunday that “everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public” and that “striking the right balance is what this is about.”
For now, that “balance” means a near minimum wage TSA worker will fondle your testicles and there is nothing you can do about it. Protesting will only slow down traffic and prevent people from visiting their family and friends.
Obama and Clinton expect you to bite the bullet and accept what amounts to sexual molestation in order to board a commercial airplane in the United States. Pistole said it really is not a big deal because “a very small percent” of people are subject to the process of submission and humiliation.
If past comments made by Mr. Pistole are any indicator, however, the government would like to see naked body scanners and intrusive pat downs expand from airports to train stations and subway platforms.
Soon after taking over the TSA earlier this year, the former FBI deputy director Pistole told USA Today that he will work to expand airport Gestapo zones. “Protecting riders on mass-transit systems from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority as ensuring safe air travel, the new head of the Transportation Security Administration promises,” the newspaper reported on July 17.
“Given the list of threats on subways and rails over the last six years going on seven years, we know that some terrorist groups see rail and subways as being more vulnerable because there’s not the type of screening that you find in aviation,” Pistole said. “From my perspective, that is an equally important threat area.”
In addition, Pistole said he would like to see TSA workers, including 47,000 screeners at 450 airports, to operate as a “national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts.” He wants to “take TSA to the next level.”
Earlier this month, the TSA implemented the “enhanced” security procedures that are now coming under fire and have resulted in countless people refusing to fly and the roll out of the national opt-out campaign that will commence on November 24 across the country.
If John Pistole and the federal government have their way, we may have to opt-out of taking the subway or riding a train in the near future.
It may not be long before you are forced through a naked body scanner or obliged to have your genitals groped in order to visit the local market to buy food and necessities. Considering the trajectory the TSA and the government are on, you may have to submit to a body cavity search at the local mall.
The Pentagon and local law enforcement are ahead of the curve. “As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. Streets,” Andy Greenberg wrote for Forbes in August. “While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s [roving x-ay] machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.”
There are few if any “vehicle-based bombs” on U.S. roads, not that this fact has prevented the government from claiming it is a threat. The DHS released a memo “stating that terrorists may try to kill innocent women, children and men in the United States by hiding IEDs in luggage left at airports,” Fox News reported not long after patsy and barbeque grill gas canister non-bomber Faisal Shahzad was arrested.
For anyone in denial, consider that the TSA has already beta tested searching Greyhound bus terminals in Florida. In 2005, the agency used the Madrid bombings as an excuse to train officers to use bomb sniffing dogs in mass transit stations. “The agency’s broader role overseeing all forms of public transportation and the increased terrorist threat to mass transit indicated by train bombings in Madrid and London have caused the canine program to expand significantly in recent years, the TSA’s Web site reports,” according to the U.S. Air Force.
As early as 2005, teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers swamped bus and train stations, ferries, and mass transit facilities across the country. The TSA dubbed the paramilitary effort “Viper,” short for “Visible Intermodal Protection and Response” teams. The TSA has been beta-testing a federal takeover of all transportation which constitutes a huge violation the ten amendment in spades.
Finally, the Department of Homeland Security has developed FAST, or Future Attribute Screening Technology, to detect “hostile thoughts” by screening people at airports and special events. See the video below. The technology is like something out of a Philip K. Dick short story.
Kurt Nimmo edits Infowars.com. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life In Neoconservative America.
