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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.
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