Police State USA Travelers are now being subjected to even more invasive screening procedures by the infamous Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Before “allowing” people to travel, the TSA is performing unwarranted checks of a wide variety of personal documents, going further than ever before into the lives of innocent passengers. As expected, Americans will roll over for the new intrusions and accept that they are necessary to protect the Homeland.
The new pre-screening procedure is more exhaustive than a federal background check. The TSA will now be dramatically expanding their reach into the lives of every passenger, and scouring all of the following documents, according to the New York Times:
- private employment information
- vehicle registrations
- travel history
- property ownership records
- physical characteristics
- tax identification numbers
- past travel itineraries
- law enforcement information
- “intelligence” information
- passport numbers
- frequent flier information
- other “identifiers” linked to DHS databases
“I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” said Edward Hasbrouck to the New York Times. Hasbrouck is a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreening initiatives. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.”
What gives the TSA this authority? The constitution does not even provide for the TSA’s existence. In fact, the constitution ensures that the federal government will not perform these kinds of searches without probable cause or a warrant. Yet all day, every day, the agency devotes itself to performing warrantless searches of travelers. Its existence is a travesty, and its mission-creep is alarming (and predictable).
And what will the TSA do with this information? Nobody is explaining what criteria the agency will be looking for to indicate whether a passenger will be denied the right to travel. How can job history and vehicle registration possibly be relevant to flight safety? What happens if you have criminal convictions on your record? More groping?
Is owing taxes going to prevent people from flying? Actually, the NYT reports that the TSA will be reporting their findings to “a debt collection agency for the purpose of debt collection.”
For fun, compare the government’s disparate efforts in invading travelers’ privacy versus ensuring fair and proper voter registration.
The process is meant to be onerous. The only alternative that travelers are left with is to join the TSA’s “PreCheck” program and become a “trusted traveler.” This program allows passengers to willingly submit their biometric fingerprint scans into a FBI database, submit to a criminal background check, and pay the TSA a fee of $85.00 for a five-year PreCheck membership. RT reports that the TSA may net $255 Million hustling travelers in 2013. This option is still highly invasive, and actually enriches the very entity that is violating our liberties, so it hardly seems like a viable alternative.
Ask yourself: Is this how free people travel? Every trip is now turned into a personal investigation by the federal government. This might be reasonable research to do on inmates transferring between maximum security prisons, but not for people trying to travel between American cities.
In my mind I can hear the march of goose-stepping jackboots. Not long now…
AS despicable as ERIC HOLDER is he had one thing right AMERICANS are cowards; because if we just allow ourselves to be stripped of our rights and the future of our children than we are worst than cowards!
I have something they can pre screen. Just another knock off of the brown shirts. they deserve no mercy and no quarter. I cannot believe that americans stand by and take this crap. Please people have you not embarrassed the country enough?
The time for open resistance is upon us ………
“other “identifiers” linked to DHS databases”
Don’t you just love the miscellaneous “other” line at the end of the list. It could mean anything and gives them the authority to look at anything that the DHS has and since the DHS doesn’t report to anyone and can basically get any information about you without their authorization like the NSA, then therefore TSA is not only a group of pedophiles with toy badges, zero police training and want their own guns like babies, but they are also allowed to view all of your personal information that even local police most likely doesn’t have access to.
So why do we allow them to get away with this shit? Seriously, arrest the bastards for treason and impersonating a government agent because that’s all they are doing!