It's coming up to the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and the TSA hasn't actually caught any terrorists yet. And yet their policies just get more invasive.
What exactly would the TSA have to do to get people to be outraged enough to not just go along? To actively resist at the airport? To say 'no, this is not okay'. I honestly don't know.
Currently they're groping six year olds. Apparently that's not enough.
Suppose the following policies were implemented:
-Prohibit checked luggage
-Shave people's heads to make sure nothing is smuggled in their hair
-Have TSA agent perform full cavity search in front of everyone, with men performing all searches (to maximise offense to both men and women)
-Store video of the above on publicly searchable web site
I promise you the following. There would be a reasonable group of people that would point out how they don't like it either, but remember, someone could have a dirty nuke smuggled inside their anus, or an AK-47 inside their pigtails. Isn't it worth sacrificing to stop this?
There'd be significantly larger group that would grumble about it, but just end up going along. After all, what are you going to do? Get arrested?
I would wager that between them, those groups would be large enough that the policy would not be reversed.
(Via Popehat)
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
ReplyDelete--- James Madison
The terrorists have won; they have our government violating our Constitution in the name of "protecting" us.
John, I think that part of the difficulty is that a lot of people look at each additional burden and just go along. In other words, they'll compare the genital grope to the genital screener and say that it's not that bad, we put up with the last one so why is this one tyranny? But the policies will keep getting worse until people acknowledge that there's a real tradeoff to be made somewhere - namely, are you willing to let some government stooge touch your junk in order to reduce the probability of a terrorist attack by 0.0000001%? To which the answer should be, 'hell no'.
ReplyDeleteLynn, the real question is why citizens must be forced to choose between not flying and signing up to government-mandated fondling of your kids. There's a lot of people who don't have much of a choice and just have to lump it - it's hard to visit your parents in China by yacht or zeppelin, for instance. My worry is that I've seen little evidence that the TSA would care one way or another whether the airline industry collapsed - after all, their jobs are secure.