TSA got you down?

[parkerco]

I'm trying to figure out how this isn't ironic. From my point of view, going through TSA security and flying, whether for work or for pleasure, is throwing away one's 4th (and 5th, perhaps in some sense.. hey, I'm no lawyer) amendment rights.

It seems like a significant portion of the traveling American public has simply gone into BOHICA mode and is merely accepting what they perceive as either being out of control or even a necessary evil (or, stranger still in my eyes, a desirable situation). I chose to refuse to fly because I think it's one of the few things that I can do that has a chance of affecting change in how the TSA does its business.

Agreed on both -- however I don't see a real violation of 4th Amendment rights before the scanner/enhanced patdown thing in what the TSA was doing. Perhaps it was.

As for hitting them in the pocketbook I do agree -- you saw when this blew up with that Tyner guy's video last week how fast the airline execs were meeting with the Homeland Security & TSA head honchos. Sadly it's just inefficient to not be able to fly, so less efficient channels and putting your hopes in things like Ron Paul's TSA bill are about all we get -- which considering the people in charge don't actually go through the screening is probably a lost cause. Reasonably sure if the President had to stand there and watch Michelle and the kids get groped we wouldn't have this issue.

 

[terrylowe]

I'm trying to figure out how this isn't ironic. From my point of view, going through TSA security and flying, whether for work or for pleasure, is throwing away one's 4th (and 5th, perhaps in some sense.. hey, I'm no lawyer) amendment rights.

Well, I guess we are are entitled to our own points of view. I just don't see this as throwing away any rights. I don't know anyone who LIKES what the TSA is doing. I think that the media fury over this issue will get some things changed though. Also I am quite sure the ACLU will be getting involved with lawsuits, etc. I think most of us will continue to travel to work and to play regardless of how it works out.

National Opt-Out Day a Bust: Few Security Delays For Thanksgiving Travelers, Says TSA - ABC News

 

[Doc Harry]

Flying is not a guaranteed right in the U.S. constitution. Therefore, TSA is not "infringing" on anyone's "rights" with their detailed searches.

Terrorists have repeatedly tried, sometimes successfully, to destroy passenger airliners.

I am not interested in letting a terrorist bring an explosive on MY flight just because you're embarrased about the size of your pecker on an x-ray scanner.

It's really simple, people: If you don't want to be searched before you board a commercial airliner -- then take the bus, or a cruise ship, or charter your own private flight.

 

[iztok]

Flying is not a guaranteed right in the U.S. constitution.

But not being sexually assaulted without probable cause by a stranger in uniform is.

 

[iztok]

Flying is not a guaranteed right in the U.S. constitution. Therefore, TSA is not "infringing" on anyone's "rights" with their detailed searches.

Actually right to travel is protected by our constitution and upheld by courts. That includes commercial airliners.

Pistole Proven Wrong That Flying Is Not a Right LewRockwell.com Blog

November 23, 2010
Pistole Proven Wrong That Flying Is Not a Right
Posted by Michael S. Rozeff on November 23, 2010 12:54 PM

Pistole is totally wrong when he says that flying is a privilege, not a right. Flying is a means of travel, and everyone has a right to travel and to travel by a means of their choice. See my earlier blog. I add here the following quote from a Supreme Court case (U.S. v. Guest 383 U.S. 745 (1966)): “In any event, freedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution.”

Another US Supreme Court case, Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969) very strongly supports the right to travel.

“‘The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.’ United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757 . This constitutional right, which, of course, includes the right of ‘entering and abiding in any State in the Union,’ Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 39 , is not a mere conditional liberty subject to regulation and control under conventional [394 U.S. 618, 643] due process or equal protection standards. 1 ‘[T]he right to travel freely from State to State finds constitutional protection that is quite independent of the Fourteenth Amendment.’ United States v. Guest, supra, at 760, n. 17. 2 As we made clear in Guest, it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. 3 Like the right of association, NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 , it is a virtually unconditional personal right, 4 guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.”

Pistole is also wrong to say that “the government” has a role to play in public safety and specifically airline safety. The national government has no such constitutional safety role. The only time the term appears in the Constitution is where it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

The TSA is violating due process at every turn. They do not have warrants. They detain persons (keep them from proceeding) unless they bow to the TSA’s will and be x-rayed or molested. This detainment is assault in and of itself! (Thank you, Ralph Haulk for pointing this out.)

The Right To Travel Goes Way Back LewRockwell.com Blog

November 22, 2010
The Right To Travel Goes Way Back
Posted by Michael S. Rozeff on November 22, 2010 06:06 PM

According to a UCLA Law Review source dating from 1975 and written by Stewart Abercrombie Baker, Magna Carta (ch. 42, 1215) “guaranteed free passage into and out of the realm.” “Blackstone’s Commentaries proclaims a right to travel which includes ‘the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due process of law.’” (volume 1, *134). “The right to travel was declared ‘natural and inherent’ by the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776″ (ch. 1, para. XV (1776)). Article IV of the Articles of Confederation protected “free ingress and regress to and from any other State…” The Constitution dropped that language and instead incorporated the right to travel under the privileges and immunities clause of article IV, section 2. “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Baker writes: “The change was made not to disparage the right to travel, but because specific protection for the right would be redundant. Free travel was considered to be a necessary corollary to the ‘more perfect Union’ which the Constitution created.” The Supreme Court has recognized this right in numerous cases.

I do not claim that the right to travel as interpreted by a Supreme Court of 2010 would allow the traveler unimpeded travel or prevent placing such a burden on the traveler that it would effectively foreclose travel by air. The Court would probably back the TSA and provide some sort of balancing test. I assert that such a test would be unconstitutional and would destroy the right to travel. I assert that the TSA’s search procedures place a burden on the right to travel that destroys that right for millions of protesting Americans.

 

[vladimir]

A little perspective from Salon:

News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11 - Ask the Pilot - Salon.com

Here's a scenario:

Middle Eastern terrorists hijack a U.S. jetliner bound for Italy. A two-week drama ensues in which the plane's occupants are split into groups and held hostage in secret locations in Lebanon and Syria.

While this drama is unfolding, another group of terrorists detonates a bomb in the luggage hold of a 747 over the North Atlantic, killing more than 300 people.

Not long afterward, terrorists kill 19 people and wound more than a hundred others in coordinated attacks at European airport ticket counters.

A few months later, a U.S. airliner is bombed over Greece, killing four passengers.

Five months after that, another U.S. airliner is stormed by heavily armed terrorists at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, killing at least 20 people and wounding 150 more.

Things are quiet for a while, until two years later when a 747 bound for New York is blown up over Europe killing 270 passengers and crew.

Nine months from then, a French airliner en route to Paris is bombed over Africa, killing 170 people from 17 countries.

That's a pretty macabre fantasy, no? A worst-case war-game scenario for the CIA? A script for the End Times? Except, of course, that everything above actually happened, in a four-year span between 1985 and 1989. The culprits were the al-Qaidas of their time: groups like the Abu Nidal Organization and the Arab Revolutionary Cells, and even the government of Libya.

He goes on to say:

Look again at that list above. All of those tragedies, in a four-year span, with some of the attacks actually overlapping. Try to imagine a similar spell today. Could we handle even a fraction of such disaster?

In the 1980s we did not overreact. We did not stage ill-fated invasions of distant countries. People did not cease traveling and the airline industry did not fall into chaos. We were lazy in enacting better security, perhaps, but as a country our psychological reaction, much to our credit, was calm, measured and not yet self-defeating.

This time, thanks to the wholly unhealthy changes in our national and cultural mind-set, I fear it will be different.

I thought we prided ourselves on being "the home of the brave." What happened to that?

 

[naimis]

I am not interested in letting a terrorist bring an explosive on MY flight just because you're embarrased about the size of your pecker on an x-ray scanner.

If you really think that's what this is about, you haven't been paying any attention.

 

[cbm32]

You may have the right to fly, but you dont have the right to determine for yourself what hoops you have to jump through before you are allowed on the plane...just like you dont have the right to name your own price on flying (no matter what Priceline says LOL).

IF being patted down is sexual assault then every cop that pats someone down should arrest himself I suppose. And no, not everyone that gets patted down IS a criminal so that argument wont fly.

 

[Doc Harry]

But not being sexually assaulted without probable cause by a stranger in uniform is.

I wish over-reacting was illegal.

If you really think that's what this is about, you haven't been paying any attention.

Security is multi-layer process. Sure, there are many other ways to ensure flight safety. Searching passengers is but one of the layers, one of the necessary layers.

Don't like it, then don't fly. The solution is simple, folks!

 

[vladimir]

And no, not everyone that gets patted down IS a criminal so that argument wont fly.

In general, a law enforcement officer needs reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime before he performs a pat-down. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause. The Supreme Court case is Terry vs Ohio. There is a border search exception to certain Fourth Amendment protections, but there is still a reasonableness requirement, which, I believe, the debate over the legality of the TSA searches hinges on: what is reasonable?