Air travelers, mark your calendar. An activist opposed to the new invasive body scanners in use at airports around the country just designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 as a National Opt-Out Day. He’s encouraging airline passengers to decline the TSA’s technological strip searches en masse on that day as a protest against the scanners, as well as the new “enhanced pat-downs” inflicted on refuseniks…. “The goal of National Opt-Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change,” reads the call to action at OptOutDay.com, set up by Brian Sodegren. “No naked body scanners, no government-approved groping. We have a right to privacy, and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we’re guilty until proven innocent.”
Somewhere, Eugene Ionesco is spinning furiously in his grave….
Since 9.11, Americans who wished to be granted the privilege of being treated like cattle in order to travel by air have become sheep. We’ve mutely endured whatever indignity that has been forced upon us by the Transportation Security Administration. Whenever a new threat has been indentified and/or quashed, the TSA has reacted after the fact by a new, sillier, and more draconian procedure…as if the previous ones weren’t already invasive and demeaning enough. Someone put a bomb in their shoes…and so we must all take out shoes off at the security checkpoint. I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when some hapless terrorists discovers that you can hide a bomb in a suppository.
CAVITY SEARCHES PARA TODO EL MUNDO!!!
How silly has Security Theater become? Well, just ask any frazzled parent traveling with small children. A TSA goon once decided that he had the perfect right to rifle through my wallet in the Minneapolis airport. Anyone who’s traveled will have similar stories, and this would seem to raise a few important questions. Must we subject ourselves to all manner of invasions of our privacy in order to be allowed the privilege of boarding an airplane? When did we cede any and all right to be treated with dignity and respect in order to fly? What, exactly, does all this Security Theater buy us? Is the point to actually make us safer? Or is it really all just about making us FEEL safer?
Now we’re being subjected to machines that double as soft-corn porn generators…and FINALLY Americans are speaking up. It’s only taken a little over nine years for Sheeple to rebel over the reality that airport security has exited the realm of the sublime for that of the ridiculous.
The scanner booths, which bear a resemblance to that mythical “transporter” in the TV series, weren’t in use that day. But when I called Transportation Security Administration spokesperson Ann Davis on Friday, she informed me that the plan is for all passengers to be required to go through what amounts to a nude photo shoot before boarding an airplane.
That’s unless, of course, that passenger wants to have his or her genitals groped by an angry federal employee.
Davis didn’t say that. But a lot of the TSA’s critics are.
One such critic is John Whitehead. He’s a lawyer with the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties advocacy group in Virginia that is suing the feds to stop the scanning. The alternative to the scanning is a manual pat-down that many consider to be little more than molestation, he said.
“We’re getting flooded with e-mails, mainly from females who don’t like their breasts touched and their vaginas touched,” said Whitehead. “We got one e-mail from a mother whose 12-year-old daughter was put through the scanner and then groped.”
I’ve heard one report that brought up an issue that I’m not certain that anyone at TSA seems to have bothered considering. Apparently, some victims of sexual abuse have been finding that the new patdown procedure triggers memories of their abuse. So…let’s see if I have this straight; you can go through a scanner and provide a moment of titillation for a TSA screener…or you can be felt up by a TSA screener. I don’t about you, but when someone touches me like that, I’m usually naked and tied to a bed post.
Things have gotten so out of hand that a group of travelers have designated November 24th as National Opt-Out Day. As you might imagine, TSA is mighty upset that travelers sheeple think that they can do anything to question their supreme authority. Yes, when travelers begin to think and act for themselves, chaos is sure to ensue…but perhaps that’s exactly the point here. How much IS enough? When DO we have the right to speak up and demand that we be treated with dignity and respect? Why are our only options to go through a soft-core porn generator or be felt up molested patted down by a TSA screener? How long will it be before travelers are forced to go through security naked and submit to a cavity search?
We’ve stood idly by while Homeland Security and TSA used 9.11 as an excuse to subject us to all manner of disrespect and demeaning, intrusive searches. While I understand the importance of security screenings- one need look no further than 9.11 for that- Security Theater has become something only Ionesco could claim to be proud of. Until and unless Americans stand and demand change and the right to be treated with dignity and respect, the process will continue to become ever more degrading and invasive.
What’s it going to be, America??
