20 years later only half the population (according to TSA data, bet your life on that) have it
May 2025 is the final date, except for the 2 year extension for the confusion caused by those those that still don’t have RealID which will distract TSA employees from hassling and powering tripping…err…ensuring travel security
27 years and counting for this VITAL!!! security project
25 years later we have advanced to the point where we are flooding 9/11 perps with US tax dollars to create mayhem (kill people) in Middle East countries that never attacked US.
BOTTOM LINE: Ditch DOGE and make government bigger.
That’s because the TSA has a catchall offense that is comparable to “disorderly conduct.” It enables the TSA to levy a fine of up to $14,000 for anyone who “interferes” with inspectors. Like with “disorderly conduct,” it’s an entirely subjective offense, meaning that they can pretty much fine anyone who objects or protests with “interference.”
The biggest thing about the TSA experience, however, is not the abuse, harassment, intrusions, and fines. The biggest thing is that it reminds us of our lives as serfs. Federal officials are the masters, and we are their servants. We exist to serve them, not the other way around. When they issue orders to us, we are expect to immediately and quietly obey, just like people in the military.
By now, I’m sure that most Americans have their own personal stories about TSA abuse. The U.S. government’s takeover of airport security after the 9/11 attacks has made flying an unpleasant experience.
This past weekend, I was flying back to Virginia. A TSA agent took my carry-on suitcase aside and opened it up. She then pulled out a container of talcum powder. She spent around 5 minutes intensely examining it and then testing it. Up to that point, it was simply a matter relating to the talcum powder. No agent was hassling me ,and I was just waiting for the testing of the talcum powder to be completed.
I nonchalantly and innocently said to her, “So, I’m curious as to whether it’s bad to bring talcum powder with me.” Well, that was obviously a wrong thing to say. I think you’re expected to keep your mouth shut and not question anything they do.
In what appeared to me to be an effort to teach me a lesson, another TSA agent approached me and informed me that I was now going to be subjected to a complete pat-down search. Even worse, he advised me that it was going to be conducted by a trainee, who was about 70 years old. The trainee was obviously nervous, given that his boss was right there watching him. The trainee patted down almost every square inch of my body. For example, I was wearing a button-down dress shirt. He had me turn around and he curled my shirt collar backwards, presumably to see if I had a gun hidden there. (I didn’t.)
In the meantime, the talcum-powder lady decided that she needed to needed to go through my entire suitcase. She even removed my wallet and my cellphone and set them down on the counter in front of me. When I asked if I could retrieve them, a third agent declared, “Not yet! Leave them there!”
I got the distinct impression that they might be hoping that I would express some sort of objection or protest. I’m not stupid. I didn’t say anything else. That’s because the TSA has a catchall offense that is comparable to “disorderly conduct.” It enables the TSA to levy a fine of up to $14,000 for anyone who “interferes” with inspectors. Like with “disorderly conduct,” it’s an entirely subjective offense, meaning that they can pretty much fine anyone who objects or protests with “interference.”
So rather than debating whether we want a government more like East Germany than the one our Founders imagined, Section 702 was tossed into the military spending bill.
Considering that Speaker Johnson tossed into the “must-pass” bill yet another extension of Section702 of the FISA Act, it’s unsurprising that he wanted to rush the bill through without the possibility of amendment. Section 702 allows the government to intercept and retain without a warrant the communications of any American who is in contact with a non-US citizen.
Just before leaving town for Christmas break, the US House gave Americans a last-minute holiday gift: a nearly trillion dollar military spending bill filled with lots of goodies for the special interests and the military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, the rest of America got nothing but coal in its stockings.
With Constitutionalists like Rep. Thomas Massie on the House Rules Committee, Speaker Johnson made the unusual move of bringing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) under suspension of the rules, which bypasses the Rules Committee but requires two-thirds of the House to pass the bill.
Considering that Speaker Johnson tossed into the “must-pass” bill yet another extension of Section702 of the FISA Act, it’s unsurprising that he wanted to rush the bill through without the possibility of amendment. Section 702 allows the government to intercept and retain without a warrant the communications of any American who is in contact with a non-US citizen. It is clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment which is supposed to protect Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Section 702 was “legalized” under President George W. Bush during the “War on Terror” after it was revealed that Bush was using the National Security Agency to illegally spy on Americans. We were told at the time that government must be granted these authorities because we were under threat from terrorists. It would just be a temporary measure, we were promised, and then the authority would expire. That was fifteen years ago and here we are re-authorizing the government to continue to violate our liberties.
As with the rest of the violations of our civil liberties after 9/11, like the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, the federal government soon turned its terrorism-fighting tools inward, targeting Americans rather than foreigners who we were told wanted to harm Americans. That’s why the FBI’s so-called domestic terrorism watchlist continues to expand to include Christians and those skeptical of big government.
E Verify is designed to assist the DHS in tracking whether people are eligible to work? What could possibly cause someone to support this program? Or at least, what could possibly cause a conservative or libertarian minded person, someone on the right, to support this nonsense?
Is it really a stretch to think these E Verify IDs will not contain medical data? Let’s say, C19 bioweapon injection status?
Creating and enhancing the police state apparatus is not the way to stop illegal immigration. Securing the borders is.
The systemic attack and unrestricted warfare designed to abolish the United States and diminish the human population has many facets. Biological warfare, computer elections, supply chain attacks, dismantling energy supplies, food shortages, inflation, the surveillance police state, and a centralized digital bank currency, are just a few aspects of this all out assault. A virtual invasion via unfettered illegal immigration is also an important element to this campaign of asymmetrical warfare.
Let’s hone in on the illegal immigration issue. Of course, this issue can simply be addressed by protecting our borders. Red flags went off shortly after the 911 attacks because instead of policing the borders of the country, an effort was made to create a police state instead.
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This included creating the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), which is a perverted institution designed to instill fear and dehumanize the public. This also included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whose title came right out of the NAZI Germany playbook. The DHS is an enemy of the people and should be disbanded immediately. The DHS has collaborated with media and big tech companies to censor medical information about potential harms from C19 injections. These are violations of the Nuremberg Code and clear crimes against humanity. These actions by DHS also of course violate basic First Amendment rights and are a criminal enterprise.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.
E Verify is designed to assist the DHS in tracking whether people are eligible to work? What could possibly cause someone to support this program? Or at least, what could possibly cause a conservative or libertarian minded person, someone on the right, to support this nonsense?
The government should have nothing to do with your business operations. The conservative position (I am using the term conservative loosely to include libertarians and anybody on the ‘right’ too) is to limit government and protect freedom. The conservative view point should be to dismantle the police state, not enhance it.
It is painfully obvious that the problem of unfettered illegal immigration is deliberately created so as to herd unthinking conservatives into the knee jerk reaction of going along with E Verify. Creating and enhancing the police state apparatus is not the way to stop illegal immigration. Securing the borders is.
There are reports that the CIA and FBI “already want to leverage TSA checkpoints for law enforcement and intelligence purposes…pressure will build to expand it further and try to identify everyone from parole violators to deadbeat dads,” according to an ACLU White Paper.
The ACLU tested facial recognition systems in 2018 by running photos of members of Congress through a massive data of police mug shots, and 28 lawmakers “were incorrectly matched to people charged with a crime.” Actually, the number of congressmen who have committed criminal offenses is probably far higher but the matches to those specific mug shots were erroneous.
The Transportation Security Administration is running a pilot program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their face with a federal database of photos from passport applications, drivers’ licenses and other sources. TSA promises that its new airport regime, which could vastly expand next year, will respect Americans’ privacy.
What could possibly go wrong? Aside from everything? Will Americans tolerate an out-of-control agency intruding ever further into their lives? TheWashington Post warned in 2019 that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.” (Federal records of citizens’ photos were already filched in a 2019 “malicious cyberattack.”)
“Trust us” is the TSA mantra for its new Credential Authentication Technology program. TSA is one of the most secretive domestic agencies and is notoriously non-compliant with the Freedom of Information Act.
“TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” TheWashington Post recently noted. TSA will be relying on photo identification systems that have a misidentification error rate up to 100 times higher for Blacks and Hispanics. The ACLU tested facial recognition systems in 2018 by running photos of members of Congress through a massive data of police mug shots, and 28 lawmakers “were incorrectly matched to people charged with a crime.” Actually, the number of congressmen who have committed criminal offenses is probably far higher but the matches to those specific mug shots were erroneous.
TSA is already partnering with the Customs and Border Patrol agency to compel any American entering or leaving the nation to submit to being photographed for their database. That initiative was launched by the Trump administration and spurred plenty of Republican cheering on Capitol Hill. That program is named “Biometric Entry/Exit.” A better name would be: Nobody Leaves Without Uncle Sam’s Permission. But since the program will rely on computer databases instead of a Berlin Wall, nobody should worry. “Biometric Entry/Exit” sets a precedent for federal controls over Americans’ movement inside the U.S.
TSA will be capitalizing on vast federal poaching of state and local records, as well as online records. As Techdirt reported, “Federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.” The FBI is regularly tapping into databases with more than 600 million facial photos. As Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center noted, “A 2019 report revealed that the federal government has turned state drivers’ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup.”
“Mission creep” will likely follow the rollout of TSA’s facial round-up. The ACLU warns that “there will be enormous pressure to turn those [TSA facial] checkpoints into broader law enforcement checkpoints where people are subject to watchlist, criminal, and immigration checks.” There are reports that the CIA and FBI “already want to leverage TSA checkpoints for law enforcement and intelligence purposes…pressure will build to expand it further and try to identify everyone from parole violators to deadbeat dads,” according to an ACLU White Paper.
Never forget that TSA also promised to protect privacy a dozen years ago when it rolled out the Whole Body Scanners, often derided as “nudie scanners.”
But what harm could there be in permitting TSA to scrutinize people’s faces? TSA already spent a billion dollars on behavior detection officers who furtively circulated in airports to detect travelers who were sweating, hand-wringing, yawning, staring too intently, or avoiding eye contact. The inspector general said the program was a complete waste of money and never caught any terrorists.
Why would any law-abiding American balk at permitting the feds to vacuum up his biometric data at the airport? The Transportation Security Administration is running a pilot program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. TSA promises its new airport regime, which could vastly expand next year, will respect Americans’ privacy.
If you believe that, I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn really cheap.
TSA has long been one of the most intrusive and inept federal agencies. For 20 years, every TSA boondoggle has been shielded by a bodyguard of bureaucratic lies.
“Trust us” is the TSA mantra for the new program. “TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” the Washington Post notes. TSA will be relying on photo-identification systems that have a misidentification error rate up to 100 times higher for blacks and Hispanics.
Some view TSA as being the most intrusive federal agency as it has been in service for over 20 years.“TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” according to the Washington Post.
TSA has had plenty of profiling debacles, including targeting black males with backward baseball caps in Boston. At Newark Liberty Airport, TSA agents fabricated false charges against Hispanics to boost the program’s arrest numbers.
The TSA scanning system could be a big step toward a Chinese-style “social credit” system that could restrict travel by people the government doesn’t like. Actually, TSA has already been caught doing that. In 2018, the New York Times exposed a secret watchlist for anyone TSA labels “publicly notorious.” TSA critics to the end of the line — forever?
The real issue here is the existence of the TSA in the first place. The nation’s airports are either owned by local government entities or are privately owned. They are not owned by the federal government. Therefore, the federal government has no more authority to provide airport security than it has to provide security at hotels and convenience stores.
The TSA was established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (S.1447) that was passed by the 107th Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. No Republicans in the Senate voted against the bill, and only nine Republicans in the House (including the heroic Ron Paul) voted no. Originally part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), the TSA was moved to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when that department was created in 2003. The TSA is headquartered in Springfield, Virginia.
The official mission of the TSA is to “protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Although this mainly concerns security in airports, the TSA, with industry partners, also “safeguards all four general modes of land-based transportation: mass transit, freight rail, highway motor carrier and pipeline.” The TSA has about 65,000 employees, most of whom are transportation security officers, inspectors, specialists, administrators, or other security professionals. Its approximately $8 billion budget is partially funded by a $5.60 per-passenger fee for each one-way airplane flight originating in the United States. Although airports are allowed to opt-out of TSA screening and hire private companies, those companies must be approved by the TSA and follow TSA procedures.
For years, the TSA has been known for its ineptitude, baggage theft and other criminal activity, inefficiency, waste, sexual harassments and assaults, and abuses of airline passengers. At various times, the TSA has failed to detect explosives, knives, and guns, all the while treating Americans like—in the words of James Bovard—“cattle being chuted to a civil liberties slaughterhouse.”
The latest outrage perpetrated by the TSA is the spending of more than $18.6 million of taxpayer money “to update airport screening protocols and technology to be more inclusive of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming passengers.” The TSA “hopes the new technology will help reduce the pat-downs and other invasive screen procedures that are required when transgender individuals trigger body scanners ‘in a sensitive area.’”
The TSA issued a press release timed to coincide with the so-called Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31):
On this internationally recognized day for the transgender community, TSA is proud to announce significant initiatives as a direct result of close partnership with community stakeholders,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “Over the coming months, TSA will move swiftly to implement more secure and efficient screening processes that are gender neutral, as well as technological updates that will enhance security and make TSA PreCheck® enrollment more inclusive. These combined efforts will greatly enhance airport security and screening procedures for all.”
“To transgender Americans of all ages, I want you to know that you are so brave,” President Biden said. “You belong. I have your back.”
Republicans charged the president with politicizing the TSA to appease the Democratic Party’s base. This is “outrageous” and “wokeness over national security,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana).
Why is it that Republicans only seem to criticize the TSA when the agency or one of its security screeners does something outrageous?
Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize NPR, but only because it has a liberal bias. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), but only when it funds pornographic art. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize Medicare, but only for waste, fraud, and abuse. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize federal funding of Planned Parenthood, but only because the organization performs abortions. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize federal regulations for being excessive, burdensome, or costly, but not because they should not be issued in the first place. And probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but only when it awards grants for ridiculous things like the $33,037 grant to the University of South Florida “to study factors that can increase vaccination among gay men for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) to prevent them from developing anal cancer.”
The real issue here is the existence of the TSA in the first place. The nation’s airports are either owned by local government entities or are privately owned. They are not owned by the federal government. Therefore, the federal government has no more authority to provide airport security than it has to provide security at hotels and convenience stores. The only security business the federal government should be in is national security. There is no reason why airports and airlines cannot use private screening services, just like many other countries do.
As law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds has well said: “When, as was the case before 9/11, security screeners were contractors employed by airlines, they had every incentive to do a good job: Airlines don’t want their planes hijacked or blown up. And they also had every incentive to be speedy and pleasant: Airlines don’t want to irritate their customers, or to make flying an unpleasant experience in general.”
The TSA shouldn’t have more inclusive scanners; it shouldn’t have any scanners at all. The agency should not exist in the first place.
It looks as though President Biden’s immigration crisis isn’t just on the ground anymore. That’s because it was reported this week that the Biden administration is allowing illegal migrants to board commercial flights across the United States without ID – all in the name of not being “racist”.Rep. Lance Gooden from Texas, who has been in the midst of investigation the TSA, made the relevation. His investigation was prompted by “whistleblower documents alleging an operation to move migrants across the country without standard documentation.”
Gooden’s correspondence with the TSA was reported by PJ Media this week. Gooden wrote to TSA Administrator David Pekoske this week, stating: “We request clarification on the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) policies and procedures to protect the nation’s transportation systems and mitigate national security risks. I have serious concerns TSA is actively assisting illegal immigrants without proper identification travel throughout the country. Therefore, we are requesting TSA provide assistance in identifying and preventing the unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants into and throughout the United States and the role TSA has played in facilitating this influx of migrants.”He then asked the TSA: “What policies and procedures are in place to identify and screen Non-US/Canadian citizens who do not have documents issued by the U.S. government or passports?”Gooden’s office has only received an email response from the TSA so far, which reportedly states that “it accepts alternate forms of identification including a Notice to Appear (NTA) in court” as documentation. An NTA is reportedly only issued after agents have “processed a migrant’s biometrics, taken photos of them, and run their fingerprints through immigration and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) databases,” the PJ Media report says. But Gooden says agents inform him that an NTA isn’t adequate ID, writing: “When I asked a border patrol officer about TSA allowing migrants to fly with no identification, they told me a Notice to Appear is not sufficient identification and they often have to take migrants at their word that they are who they say they are. TSA and non-profit groups are putting millions of Americans travelling for Christmas at risk by allowing these unknown and unvetted migrants to board planes and fly across the country.”The TSA fired back, saying that: “in coordination with its DHS counterparts, TSA has also identified alternate forms of ID for use in special circumstances at the checkpoint, circumstances such as non-U.S. citizens or non-nationals who do not have an acceptable form of ID. For travelers in normal circumstances who lack acceptable or alternate forms of ID, TSA calls the National Transportation Vetting Center (NTVC), which attempts to verify a traveler’s identity by using the individual’s information along with information from various government and commercial databases.”
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.
The security walls around the U.S. Capitol may be removed, but the federal response to the January 6 protests has only just begun. The Democrats in Washington are determined to treat the incident as on par with the events of September 11, which may explain a troubling report about the potential use of the famed No Fly List.
Yesterday Nick Fuentes, a right-wing social media pundit who attended the January 6 protests in the capital, alleged that he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, preventing him from traveling to Florida for a political rally. While Mr. Fuentes shared on social media audio of an airline employee suggesting that his flying restriction did come from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), later that night Tucker Carlson informed his audience that his staff could neither confirm nor deny the report. While critics pointed to previous social media posts which documented his being removed from a plane for failing to comply with mask policies, Fuentes has noted that he had no problem flying to Washington in January.
It is unclear whether federal authorities will be in any rush to clarify the situation, but there is no reason not to assume that federal authorities would attempt to use this war on terror tool against political opponents. From its inception, what originally began as sixteen names federal authorities had connected to potential future terrorist attacks quickly grew to over 1 million. As is the case with other surveillance tools handed over to the deep state, there is very little oversight or due process involved in how federal authorities handle potential “terrorist threats.”
Since January there has been a concerted effort by Democrat leaders, former deep state officials, and America’s most despicable neoconservatives to push the Biden administration to utilize the power of the federal government against the supporters of Donald Trump. While the incidents at the Capitol on January 6 are used to justify these calls, the weaponization of federal power against political opponents goes back almost as long as the federal government itself. In more recent years, President Biden’s previous service in the White House saw a Democrat administration that used both the IRS and Department of Homeland Security to target conservatives.
Another reason to expect escalation from the Biden administration against vocal figures like Fuentes is the unique critique of the current regime from the right. The majority of Republican voters do not simply oppose President Biden due to politics, but flatly reject his democratic legitimacy.
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.
Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with its “legitimacy,” to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands….
The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’être.
This perspective explains the disproportionate treatment that mostly peaceful protesters at the Capitol in January have received in contrast to those arrested during riots in American cities throughout the past year. The state will always treat those who seriously threaten its perceived legitimacy with greater zeal than those guilty of simply destroying the livelihoods of its citizens.
For decades now, the same political party that often gives lip service to “federalism” has often been the party directly responsible for the growth of federal power. As noted earlier, it took exactly one administration before the Department of Homeland Security, created by the Bush administration, began to target the very voters who elected him to office. It was just two election cycles before the PATRIOT Act was used to target a Republican presidential campaign.
The biggest question that now lies in American politics is whether conservatives are capable of learning from these examples. If the American right is capable of fully absorbing the reality that the greatest threat to their lives, liberty, and prosperity lies domestically—and not abroad—perhaps there is potential for a political rollback of the American empire.
If not, American conservatives will come to understand how little constitutional rights truly mean in the face of a hostile state.
by Tyler Durden
MCViewPoint 