Last June, the House of Representatives, in dramatic fashion voted down using whole-body scanners as primary screening devices at airports. The voice vote was inconclusive and an actual vote count was ordered. The final tally was 310 for the amendment and 118 against. Now, TSA is merrily on its way to defying the will of the House.
This 310 to 118 June 4th vote was taken on the amendment offered by Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., to the TSA authorization bill. Evidently, TSA can’t count. Or, they just don’t give a darn about what our representatives think.
TSA feels that the choice of being strip-searched or groped is as American as apple pie. I’m sorry, but I was joking back in the early 2000s when I said that soon we we will be walking onto our planes naked. The last time I checked, there was a law about “reasonable suspicion” before subjecting someone to a strip search. Is simply the act of getting on a plane now considered “reasonable suspicion”?
Unfortunately, even these $100,000 strip-search machines won’t stop a dedicated terrorist who might find ways to hide explosives inside his body, like this jihadist who hid explosives in his anus. I’m afraid to imagine the operation of TSA’s next “in-body scanner” that is surely being designed as I protest the less-irritating current iteration of search.
Fellow blogger, Jason Barger noted:
So, the naked truth for air travel in the future just may come down to this choice for each passenger – pass through the peep hole or let the wandering hands get frisky? Either way, air travel may just become X-Rated.
I better get a tan.
TSA is using undirected stimulus money to buy these x-rated, x-ray machines, ironically bypassing the House of Representatives, the very place where such funding is normally initiated. In fact, the House has clearly directed that they don’t want money spent on these contraptions as primary scanning gizmos.
Hopefully, Sen. Lieberman, who controls the Senate side of Homeland Security and TSA, will see his way to allowing the Senate to vote on a version of the TSA Authorization Act that has already been debated and passed by the House of Representatives.
If there was ever an agency that needed control, it is TSA. This behemoth has been virtually strip-searching us, collecting travel data, making us walk in socks, confiscating toothpaste and shampoo, rummaging through our luggage and more without any Congressional oversight since its inception.
Someone needs to wallop TSA and Homeland Security with a dose of common sense and a bit of respect for our elected representatives, and remind them who is paying their salaries.
(Photo: Quasimondo/Flickr Creative Commons)
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
