MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘security theater’

‘Want a Job? Get a Shot!’ – Ron Paul’s 22 Mar. Column

Posted by M. C. on March 23, 2021

Mask mandates have as much to do with healthcare as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screenings have to do with stopping terrorism. Masks and TSA screenings are “security theater” done to reassure those frightened by government and media propaganda regarding coronavirus and terrorism that the government is protecting them.

Many employers will be reluctant to hire such an employee for fear their businesses will become the next targets of “cancel culture.” Those who doubt this should consider how many businesses have folded under pressure from the cultural Marxists and fired someone for expressing an “unapproved” thought.

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/vaccinepass-115318?e=4e0de347c8

Mar 22 – Mask tyranny reached a new low recently when a family was kicked off a Spirit Airlines flight because their four-year-old autistic son was not wearing a mask. The family was removed from the plane even though the boy’s doctor had decided the boy should be exempted from mask mandates because the boy panics and engages in behavior that could pose a danger to himself when wearing a mask.

Besides, four-year-olds do not present much risk of spreading or contracting coronavirus. Even if masks did prevent infections among adults, there would be no reason to force children to wear masks.

Mask mandates have as much to do with healthcare as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screenings have to do with stopping terrorism. Masks and TSA screenings are “security theater” done to reassure those frightened by government and media propaganda regarding coronavirus and terrorism that the government is protecting them.

Covid oppression will worsen if vaccine passports become more widely required. Vaccine passports are digital or physical proof a person has taken a coronavirus vaccine. New York is already requiring that individuals produce digital proof of taking a coronavirus vaccine before being admitted to sporting events.

Imagine if the zealous enforcers of mask mandates had the power to deny you access to public places because you have not “gotten your shot.” Even worse, what if a potential employer had to ensure you were “properly” vaccinated before hiring you? This could come to pass if proponents of mandatory E-Verify have their way.

E-Verify requires employers to submit personal identifying information — such as a social security numbers and biometric data — to a government database to ensure job applicants have federal permission to hold jobs.

Currently, E-Verify is only used to assure a job applicant is a citizen or legal resident. However, its use could be expanded to advancing other purposes, such as ensuring a potential new hire has taken all the recommended vaccines.

E-Verify could even be used to check if a job applicant has ever expressed, or associated with someone who has expressed, “hate speech,” “conspiracy theories,” or “Russian disinformation,” which is code for facts embarrassing to the political class.

Many employers will be reluctant to hire such an employee for fear their businesses will become the next targets of “cancel culture.” Those who doubt this should consider how many businesses have folded under pressure from the cultural Marxists and fired someone for expressing an “unapproved” thought.

Politicians and bureaucrats have used overblown fear of coronavirus to justify the largest infringement of individual liberty in modern times. Covid tyranny has been aided by many Americans who are not just willing to sacrifice their liberty for phony security, but who help government take away liberty from their fellow citizens.

The good news is that, as it becomes increasingly clear that there was no need to shut down the economy, throw millions out of work, subject children to the fraud of “virtual” learning, and force everyone to wear a mask, more people are turning against the politicians and “experts” behind the lockdowns and mandates. Hopefully, these Americans will realize that, in addition to coronavirus lockdowns and mandates, the entire welfare-warfare-fiat money system is built on a foundation of lies.

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The Fear Mask and the ‘I Surrender’ Pose – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 18, 2020

Psy ops (alternately PSYOPS, Psychological Operations, or Psychological warfare) is a behavior intended to psychologically weaken a target. The US government is renowned for this.

While I don’t know what is an intentional psy op in my life and what isn’t, I know fear is psychologically harmful to me and those around me. To live in a constant state of fear is hell. It shortens life and reduces the quality of the short life you have.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/allan-stevo/the-fear-mask-and-the-i-surrender-pose/

By

“For if you put me to death, you will not easily find another, who, to use a rather absurd figure, attaches himself to the city as a gadfly to a horse, which, though large and well bred, is sluggish on account of his size and needs to be aroused by stinging. I think the god fastened me upon the city in some such capacity, and I go about arousing…”

-Socrates, as reported by Plato in The Apology

A gadfly friend of mine has never done the pose of submission to the great state, the “I surrender” pose.

You know, the one where you stick your hands up in the air when someone points a gun at you, exposing your vulnerable torso and midsection.

You know, that “I surrender” pose – the pose that is drilled into you every time you pass through airport security. You must enter the naked body scanner and do the pose of submission. If you don’t you will be barked at, eye-rolled at, and huffed at until you do.

Notably, this “I surrender” pose is mere security theater. It looks like it works. It doesn’t actually work. That, alongside the dehumanizing: take off your shoes, get groped, and throw away whatever items you recently bought that happen to be more than 3.3 ounces.

3.4 ounces will take down a plane, we are assured. 3.3 ounces can’t.

Oh really?

Yes, that’s why it must be confiscated. Otherwise, we would never do such an awful thing like confiscate your private property. A half-full 3.4 ounce container can take down a plane too.

Oh really?

Yes, that’s why that too must be confiscated. It’s for your own safety.

Fascinating fiction, this US security theater that doesn’t actually work. But what it does work at is taking some of the most affluent members of society – air travelers – and bossing them around until they submit. The more affluent you are (to a degree) the more you travel by commercial air. The more you travel by commercial air, the more you get put through the compliance tester and obedience enforcer. This is a predictable way to make the most affluent in a society more compliant.

What a toxic thing for America.

You can almost imagine a table of Bush era stooges saying to themselves over beers “What’s the stupidest thing we can get people to do?”

“I know. Hold their hands up in the air for no reason like someone is pointing a gun at them.”

“Let a stranger go through their underwear.”

“No I’ve got one better: Let a stranger CONFISCATE their underwear.”

“This is way better: Let a stranger take photos of them naked.”

“No. Even better. Let a stranger touch them in between the legs.”

“No this is way worse. Get a rattled mother to voluntarily throw away pumped breast milk, because it’s a risk to national security, even if that means her baby goes hungry on a flight and screams for three hours.”

You now know the “I surrender” pose I mean, right? Read the rest of this entry »

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Uncle Sam’s Latest Plan to Spy on Air Travelers | The Nestmann Group

Posted by M. C. on May 29, 2019

These days, you can wind up on a watchlist for merely complaining to a TSA agent. Getting on a watchlist doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be able to board your flight, but it will result in delays at the airport.

https://www.nestmann.com/uncle-sams-latest-plan-to-spy-on-air-travelers

By Mark Nestmann

When you arrive at the airport to board a flight, do you have any legitimate “expectation of privacy?” Uncle Sam and the Orwellian Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) would like you to think you don’t.

I beg to differ.

It’s not enough to be poked, prodded, and groped by bored TSA agents as we pass through airport checkpoints. The agency is now telling us – falsely – that we need TSA-compliant identification documents to board our flights.

To make sure those documents properly identify us, the TSA is rolling out face recognition systems at major airports. The goal is to use biometric technology to identify 100% of passengers boarding international flights by 2021.

The airlines are only too happy to cooperate. Delta, JetBlue, British Airways, Lufthansa, and American Airlines are integrating face recognition into their check-in process. Naturally, it’s pitched as a matter of “security” along with “passenger convenience.” In some cases, you needn’t even show your passport or boarding pass to board your flight. You just stare into a camera.

This practice became much better known a couple months ago when a JetBlue passenger who went through this process tweeted: Did I consent to this?…

The inconvenience and privacy invasion we suffer when we fly might be more palatable if there were any evidence that it’s effective. But there isn’t any. In 2015, the TSA sent undercover agents to dozens of America’s largest airports to test security protocols. Shockingly, the agents were able to smuggle explosives or weapons through security checkpoints 95% of the time. The TSA failed in 67 out of 70 tests.

Two years later, screeners again failed to detect 95% of explosives and drugs in an undercover test at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Indeed, evidence suggests that the TSA has never intercepted anyone intending to hijack a plane at an airport checkpoint.

This is the system you finance with $7 billion of your tax dollars each year. It’s worse than you ever imagined. It is, in the words of security expert Bruce Schneier, “security theater” at its finest…

For domestic flights, no law or regulation prohibits you from traveling anonymously. When privacy activists filed a Freedom of Information request for the TSA’s records of travelers who show up at an airport checkpoint without ID, they learned that more than 98% of them were able to board their flights. That means the TSA is lying when it posts signs like this one warning passengers that if they want to board a flight after October 1, 2020, using a driver’s license as identification, it must be compliant with the Real ID Act…

You can get on a plane without ID only if you print your boarding pass at home and proceed directly to the gate without checked luggage. Once you’re at the gate on a domestic flight, you won’t need to show ID to board the plane – just your boarding pass. If you have checked luggage, though, it’s unlikely that a ticket agent will accept it without ID…

These days, you can wind up on a watchlist for merely complaining to a TSA agent. Getting on a watchlist doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be able to board your flight, but it will result in delays at the airport…

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Government Shutdown Is the Best-Ever Argument for Privatization | The Nestmann Group

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2019

So, if you enjoy being groped by TSA screeners, you’ll love dealing with the bureaucrats that will administer Medicare for all and free college. And you’ll enjoy paying their salaries with higher taxes even more. Have fun!

https://www.nestmann.com/government-shutdown-is-the-best-ever-argument-for-privatization

By Mark Nestmann

I was starting to feel sorry for the 800,000 federal employees who hadn’t received paychecks for more than a month. Then Donald Trump caved to the Democrats and ended the government shutdown last week.

There’s now a bipartisan effort in Congress to enact a law that would make government shutdowns less likely. But I have a much better and more permanent solution: privatize most of the functions that Uncle Sam’s intrepid bureaucrats perform.

Take the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), for instance. A big reason Trump ended the shutdown was that so many TSA employees had called in sick that flight delays were becoming intolerable. That wouldn’t have happened if the government hadn’t been in the airline security business.

Not that it’s doing an especially good job. In 2015, the TSA sent undercover agents to dozens of America’s largest airports to test security protocols. Shockingly, the agents were able to smuggle fake explosives or weapons through security checkpoints 95% of the time. The TSA failed in 67 out of 70 tests.

Two years later, the TSA tried again. The good news is that the failure rate fell from 95% to 70%. The bad news is … well, a 70% failure rate is nothing to celebrate.

One reason is the TSA performs so poorly is that the politicians in charge of our national security believe catering to lobbyists is more important than security.

Consider the saga of the Rapiscan scanner. Read the rest of this entry »

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