Just a quick note that electricity in lower Manhattan or not, the first draft of my new petition documents is completed. I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks adding sources and discussing with useful and interested parties, with a filing date of November 16th, 2012, which happens to be the 2-year anniversary of my first complaint and the very beginning of this blog!
Hard to believe it’s been 2 years!
Professional Troublemaker ® 
“The lights go out and I can’t be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh, I beg I beg and plead
“Come out of things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head
And a trouble that can’t be named
A tiger’s waiting to be tamed singing
“‘You are, You are'”
– Coldplay
Couldn’t help it. Clocks’ lyrics do seem to fit your situation extremely well. I see ten points of intersection; if you don’t get it, I can explain.
Jon I have backed you 100% right from the start and will continue to do so. I applaud your efforts and hard work but are “We”, “You” any of else making one scintilla of progress against the TSA? The groping, irradiation and plain abuse of travelers continues and at time appears to have gotten worse. I am not giving up just looking for a small bit of light. My continued support via words and funds. Thanks and good luck.
Reggie,
Absolutely. The situation still sucks, but imagine where we’d be if no one protested what’s been going on since 2010. Who knows how many new invasive and abusive ideas the TSA has come up with that have been canned for fear of further negative PR, court, or Congressional action?
As far as what we’ve accomplished: a lot. There’s now a law that forces the TSA to transition from scanners where the images are viewed to scanners with automated threat recognition. The TSA has been ordered to conduct notice and comment rulemaking. The TSA has been beaten in court many times, including rulings preventing them from forcing travelers to show ID, supressing evidence obtained by TSA screeners fishing for drugs, and vindicating some (but not all) arrested on trumped up charges. But most importantly, we’ve thoroughly exposed the TSA for what it is, when otherwise they would have continued unimpeded. The video I produced in March, by my estimation, was viewed or read about by at least 50 million people all over the world, not to mention many of our Congressmen.
Reggie, it’s a fight that’s worth fighting no matter if it’s a losing battle. I know people who think this country is going down the drain and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I personally don’t believe that’s true.
–Jon
Thanks Jon I was feeling a bit defeated after Andrea Abbott was found guilty for trying to protect her daughter. Keep up the good work:)
I know, me too! It would have been nice for that jury to give the TSA a proper smack-down.
But, like most things in life, we must endure many failures before success. Luckily, it only takes one big success to shut this whole thing down.
I’m with you 🙂
There is a natiional opt-out week coming up. We need to protest en-masse. Last time we just did a day, and they merely stopped using hte machines. If they stop using them for week, then it will prove both the machines & the TSA are worthless.
How To Fix the TSA:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/how-to-fix-the-tsa-14553186?click=pp
United Flight 662 From Denver To Dulles Airport Emergency Declared after passenger prays in aisle:
http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/228752/158/Emergency-Declared-After-Passenger-Prays-In-Aisle-
TSA uniform perks more expensive than Marine Corps.
Under their new collective bargaining agreement, Transportation Security Administration officers get to spend more taxpayer money on their uniforms every year than a United States Marine Corps lieutenant can spend in a lifetime.
“TSA employees will see their uniform allowances nearly double to $446 per year,” the House Transportation Committee noted in a press release on the TSA’s new collective bargaining agreement. “By comparison, a combat Marine Lieutenant receives a one-time uniform allowance of $400. The cost of the increase in TSA uniform allowance is an estimated $9.63 million annually.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/tsa-uniform-perks-more-expensive-than-marine-corps/article/2513111
Woman Describes Shocking Sexual Abuse At Hands of TSA. (video)
Another day, another shocking TSA abuse story, this time directed against a woman who TSA agents insinuated had a penis as she was subjected to numerous invasive grope downs which included screeners touching her genitals.
58-year-old Maggie Buckenmayer was going through a TSA checkpoint in Birmingham, Alabama when her harrowing encounter began.
As expected given that she has implants in her knees, Buckenmayer set off the metal detector and was then subjected to an “extremely invasive” pat down which included a woman TSA screener groping Buckenmayer’s “female body parts”.
Buckenmayer was subsequently told that the first agent found “a protrusion, an abnormality” between her legs on the left side.
“I’m shocked, I’m humiliated, so I don’t know what to say, I blurt out ‘I don’t have a penis’ and she looks at me and says ‘well I’m going to have to perform a second pat down on you’.”
An even more invasive pat down was then performed on Buckenmayer which she described as “painful” and “akin to sexual assault”. The TSA screener said there was still an abnormality between Buckenmayer’s legs.
“I’m a normal female, a 58-year-old female, my husband, my OBGYN, my doctors have never ever told me that I was anything but normal, so I’m in total disbelief I think that this is a joke,” said Buckenmayer.
After a whole group of TSA agents gathered round to discuss Buckenmayer’s private parts, they took her to a private screening room.
Buckenmayer then angrily removed her pants, spread her legs, pointed at her crotch and said, “Do you see anything abnormal here, do you see a protrusion?”
After being told to put her pants back on, another TSA agent performed yet another pat down on Buckenmayer and found nothing abnormal. A wanding of her private parts was also negative.
Buckenmayer was finally released after an apology and handed a TSA evaluation form.
“I can’t believe you’ve just subjected me to this sexual assault, this emotional assault, there are bad guys out there….why are you picking on me?” Buckenmayer told TSA managers, calling on them to fire the two TSA screeners who performed the initial pat downs on her.
Buckenmayer pleaded with viewers in her video for people to acknowledge the “egregious abuse of power” the TSA is engaged in on a daily basis.
“Our country is a country of great civil liberties….why the TSA is allowed to emotionally and sexually abuse passengers – I don’t get it – if some stranger did this to me, what one of these TSA agents did, that stranger would be convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison – please please get my story out,” concluded Buckenmayer.
http://www.infowars.com/woman-describes-shocking-sexual-abuse-at-hands-of-tsa/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkM6n5qbMa4&feature=player_embedded
Hi;
In order to contest the TSA on 4th Amendment grounds, we have to argue that air-travel is not a luxury, but a NECESSITY in today’s world, and that any infringement violates the 5th Amendment Due Process rights against deprivations of life, liberty and property.
Currently, passengers are being denied their 4th Amendment rights, on the basis that the court claims that they voluntarily “waive” this protection when they choose to board airplanes– which the government claims is not a right, since the planes are privately owned. This was decided in US v Davis (482 F2d 910), where the court ruled as follows:
“A person has the choice, as a matter of constitutional law, to submit to a search of her person and carry-on baggage, as a condition to boarding an airplane, or to leave. The passenger’s choice can be seen as either a decision to give up the right to leave or a decision to submit to the search. Either way, the choice is seen as a “consent,” granting the government a license to do what it would otherwise be barred from doing by the Fourth Amendment. This consent must be voluntary.”
However this “consent” cannot be voluntary for airline-passengers, since it is COERCED by the simple fact that other-transportation is much slower than air-travel, even where alternatives exist; and so this amounts to a constructive violation of the 5th Amendment via interfering with the person’s freedom of movement. As such, air-travel is not a “choice,” so much as a necessity in modern life when traveling any considerable distance.
Likewise, consent cannot be alleged to be “voluntary” on the grounds that it is made via private contract with the airline; for ALL commercial airlines and airports impose these conditions on passengers, under TSA regulations. And therefore the contractual requirement that the passenger consent to a search as an a priori condition of boarding the airline’s plane, creates a “contract of adhesion“ (i.e. one in which the party had no opportunity to negotiate the terms of the contract). For indeed this search-requirement is a) non-negotiated, as well as b) unconscionable in terms of superior bargaining-power of the airline, while air-travel is also c) a relative necessity in modern life and business, while finally d) the consumer has no alternative via other airlines, if all airlines impose this rule. Rather, such terms are defined as “boilerplate language,” and cannot be enforced against a consumer. Rather, such “contracts of adhesion” are considered unenforceable under modern contract-law. Therefore, airlines and the federal government cannot circumvent 4th Amendment protections on this basis.
Since people are thus being illegally coerced into such “consent” through a) infringement of 5th Amendment right to liberty and b) contracts of adhesion by the airlines, then the court must therefore extend full 4th Amendment protection to commercial airline-passengers, and thus treat airports like any other public place in respecting a citizen’s reasonable expectations of privacy.
By raising these arguments in a federal suit, we will thereby end the streak of airline-passengers being treated as second-class citizens on the grounds of “implied consent” various searches.
This is a valid argument, since it firmly addresses both the 4th and 5th Amendment rights, against unreasonable searches and the right to travel without restrictions. Currently, the federal government is forcing people to choose between these rights, by giving up one or the other– which is a constructive breach of the Constitution; and therefore we have valid grounds for a federal suit against it.
The federal legislature clearly is out of control on this issue; and therefore an appeal to the federal court, is the logical recourse toward abolishing these atrocities of a federal legislature run amuck.
American Airlines Employee Was Put On No Fly List
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/American-Airlines-Employee-Was-Put-On-No-Fly-List.html?dr
given this, it sounds like the government’s argument that a passengers do not have 4th Amendment rights on privately owned planes is moot. The airlines clearly dont have control over their “privately owned” property if the government can force them to abide by the fed security rules, even to the point of being forced to fire employees because of them.
Airlines have clearly stated that they have no control over the TSA- they cannot choose to not abide by their silly “security” theater. Neither the airlines nor the passenger is willingly “waiving” anything – they are being forced.
Airport searches implicate the fourth amendment — that’s been long-settled.
TSA Vendor Denies Faking Test of Body-Imaging Software.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/tsa-vendor-denies-faking-test-of-body-imaging-software.html