It seems that United States government actions taken in the name of “security” become more oppressive each year. This trend can be seen in the activities of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that corrals people into checkpoints at airports for harassment, friskings, and warrantless searches of luggage — abuse that worsens over time. For example, last year, TSA friskings were made more invasive with the introduction of a new “universal pat-down” procedure. And, this week, we have the revelation of the TSA’s Quiet Skies that James Bovard, in a new editorial, sums up as a surveillance program “spurring federal air marshals to target dozens of Americans each day on the flimsiest of pretexts.”
Maybe there is some hope for a curtailment of TSA abuses. A Wednesday CNN article by Rene Marsh and Eli Watkins relates that the TSA “is considering eliminating passenger screening at more than 150 small and medium-sized airports across the US, according to senior agency officials and internal documents obtained by CNN.”
Marsh and Watkins write that the change at these airports would affect around 10,000 passengers or “about 0.5 percemt of the people who fly out of US airports on any given day,” though any of them who have a connecting flight at one of the airports retaining a TSA checkpoint would have to endure a “security screening” there. Still, the change would be a good start at improving respect for individual rights.
Read the CNN article here.
