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Posted on 12/26/2011 3:52:36 PM PST by upchuck
The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country...
The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.
According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking for an additional $24 million next year. That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security.
TSA officials say they have no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety. But they argue that the random nature of the searches and the presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent and bolster public confidence.
But critics say that without a clear threat, the TSA checkpoints are merely political theater. Privacy advocates worry that the agency is stretching legal limits on the government's right to search U.S. citizens without probable cause — and with no proof that the scattershot checkpoints help prevent attacks.
"It's a great way to make the public think you are doing something," said Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who writes on privacy and security. "It's a little like saying, 'If we start throwing things up in the air, will they hit terrorists?'"
Last month in Orlando, Fla., a team set up metal detectors at a Greyhound bus station and tested passengers' bags for explosive residue.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"But they argue that the random nature of the searches and the presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent and bolster scare the public. confidence."
Sorry, just had to fix that. This is so wrong.
They would start in the airports to get us accustomed and acquiescent to it, then they would expand it until there was a TSA goon on every corner asking to see your papers.
And all the street-corner TSA goons will be Eric Holder's people. Count on it.
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...Just be glad you’re still allowed to pass this on without censorship.
I’ll vote for whoever will fight this madness...
Flying is an ordeal at every level. The TSA is a part of it, and particularly annoying, but just about everything from the point of leaving my home to the point of actually walking through the door of my destination is a chore.
I just try to not travel very much. It works for me.
For now...
Not only expansion of the TSA, but hiring of thousands of IRS agents and DHS grants to local law enforcement agencies across the country to provide military grade weaponry, body armor, vehicles and surveillance such as unmanned aerial drones.
WTF is going on?
So after 11 years of this terrorist BS, we need a President or candidate that is actually going to change the direction of this Patriot Act, to one that represents the wishes of a free (not scared) people, and that which makes us the “Most free country in the world”? Otherwise freedom is just a USA marketing slogan.
Having SWAT (or whatever the latest LE buzzword is) teams with automatic weapons on every American corner, monitoring us, and at every train station scanning and asking for ID please is not my idea of freedom. Once this movement to steal our freedom starts, there is no end unless the guy on top says so.
We need to have an open and very public debate on why this movement to muzzle and handcuff all Americans as potential bad guys continues unabated.
...Yea, that part was a given. (-;)
Make that, "HELL NO!
...STERMABTEILUNG.
If the only people subjected to it are Muslims, I’m all for it.
It won’t be...it will be you and me. Not sure how I will handle it.
It won’t be...it will be you and me. Not sure how I will handle it.
Yeah, sure, like THAT is going to happen. It will likely be the opposite, and they will be exempt.
I wonder if being stopped on the highways or at train stations is going to wake some more people up? Sadly, I doubt it at this point.
Just dropped my son off at the airport and saw him go through the TSA gauntlet. I really don’t know why, because our family has gone through these for several years , but looking at the tubs of sh#t stuffed into their stupid uniforms and shiny little badges made me want to puke.
We are all sheep. My only consolation is that most of the airport flunkies will start getting their cancers in about 5-10 years, for women with predisposition for breast cancer. Men will pop up with the thyroid and then big cohort will get leukemias in 10-15 years. F’em all.
The only thing that would make me happier is if only the democrat owners of the corporations making money off of our loss of rights would go bankrupt to make it all good.
Maybe they could check folks on the way into and out from Mosques?
The real T Jefferson would have disagreed with you.
Among sheeple perhaps, but they do nothing except raise anxiety levels amongst the citizens.
TSA has no interest in them. They are after every day americans. It’s about controlling us.
I’m waiting for the weak minded “well you have no RIGHT to fly or you don’t have to fly” cowards to speak up about if we have a RIGHT TO:
Travel by train
Travel by bus
Enter a sports facility
Enter a Town, County, State building without our 4th Amendment rights being violated.
Just when will these cowards reach their breaking point and join the rest of us who detest the TSA and everything they represent? When can we return to profiling the scum of the earth who want to destroy us?. I am all for infringing on the “rights” of mudslime maggots who have openly called for our destruction before we infringe upon the rights of one more real AMERICAN grandmother or child in our PC insanity.
Does this mean that they are going after illegal aliens?
The last time I flew was in 1996 to my Dad’s funeral. I retired in 1999 so that made not flying much easier.
I enjoy driving around our beautiful country.
The Greyhound station in Orlando ought to have a detachment of special forces to keep the peace, never mind the TSA.
I wonder if discouraging travel isn’t part of the game. Reduce carbon footprint and make people easier to control.
This is why I do not do public transportation. One of them would end up touching my daughter and I’d end up ripping his arms off and feeding them to him. It wouldn’t end well for anyone involved. Touch my daughter and I will hurt you very, very badly.
I’ll stick to private modes of transportation. They cross into that area and we’ll have issues.
I haven’t flown since my first experience with TSA where I was poked and prodded by some nasty skinny hands that still gives me the creepy chills! My attitude is this: PHUC ‘EM ... I’ll stay home and not go to any place that has these thugs to harass good people! I will also be the first in line to vote ... in March and then in November.
This weekend I saw a film (true story), “Invincible,” about a young Polish Jew in 1932 that goes to Berlin to work. By 1933, he returns home to warn other Jews that bad things were going to happen. No one listened to him ... today, we seem to be repeating history. Very few really understand and know what is happening. It is sad for me to see families (including my own) that are barely able to remain civil at the dinner table on such matters.
I haven’t flown since my first experience with TSA where I was poked and prodded by some nasty skinny hands that still gives me the creepy chills! My attitude is this: PHUC ‘EM ... I’ll stay home and not go to any place that has these thugs to harass good people! I will also be the first in line to vote ... in March and then in November.
This weekend I saw a film (true story), “Invincible,” about a young Polish Jew in 1932 that goes to Berlin to work. By 1933, he returns home to warn other Jews that bad things were going to happen. No one listened to him ... today, we seem to be repeating history. Very few really understand and know what is happening. It is sad for me to see families (including my own) that are barely able to remain civil at the dinner table on such matters.
There have been VIPR teams searching people getting off trains and road check points. They’ve already started testing the “let’s search all modes of transport”.
We are mo onger free, we slave to pay taxes until August, they are now sepnding the remaining 4 months of our earnings.
“A people who will trade liberty for security deserves neither.”
Like these muslims:
You might want to reconsider. YOU may be next.
Like any other government agency, the TSA is scrambling for a” reason to be”. Let’s face it, the reason for the WoT is over, bin Laden is dead, the government is still incompetent and looking for another scapegoat.
TSA is nothing more than a Bush administration jobs program for the chronically unemployed, and now they are expanding.
That's because Jr Bush did it, and anything Jr did is not open to question, even though he is/was a liberal R.
Amen, brother.
All of the nuke’m all garbage spouted around here is knee jerk. I can appreciate the frustration, but we are giving up more and more liberties every day.
Thanks for pointing that out in a very understandable way.
I think too much of the nation is asleep. It doesn’t matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in office. They just don’t care.
Being stopped on public roadways for no reason is already a common occurrence. DWI checkpoints, ICE checkpoint on I-10 in Texas east of El Paso well within the territory of the U.S. and not at a border crossing. Now this crap.
By the way, anyone know what a NASCAR race has to do with transportation?
Read that, thanks. What a shame that can't be posted here. Really good article.
I hate to sound cynical of the situation, but I am. Just like the NYC stock trading interests, the government can create an event that can easily work to advance certain special interests and create profits.
If one wants to create a buying opportunity for insiders, one creates a negative financial event to encourage the outsider sheep to sell. If you want to create an event to scare the public into buying into TSA scanners, duct tape and supporting more govt control you hire an underwear bomber. When the message is easily manipulated and controlled, the determination of outcome is a piece of cake. We need to be more skeptical than naive.
Programed events always result in programmed outcomes.
You can debate all you want, while the tyrants and traitors laugh at you while putting the finishing touches on the police state that America has become. The time for talk is over. Death to tyrants and traitors.
VIPER=Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response
Beyond stupid.
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