How do we know that you aren't planning on carrying out some massive terrorist attack in the near future, and that you don't have a good supply of guns, ammunition, explosives, and other destructive materials with which to carry out this attack? Shouldn't we be sending police officers into your home on a regular basis, to thoroughly search it, in order to make sure you're not storing up such materials in preparation for such an attack?
This is such a wildly different situation that it's ludicrous.
Do you really think the only people that should go through any security to get on a plane are those that have been fingered by the FBI as a potential terrorist?
Shouldn't we have the police carrying out such searches of everyone's homes on a regular basis? How secure can you be if there's a possibility that your neighbor is about to carry out such an attack in which you might be killed or otherwise harmed?
Well, in this country, our Constitution was written with the understanding that being harmed by a violent criminal attack isn't the only way our safety and security can be violated. Having strangers rifling through your home and your belongings without your consent is also such a violation, as is having your intimate body parts viewed and/or fondled without your consent.
Except things are different when you are not in your home. Is a DUI checkpoint legal? I mean what's the difference between that and just pulling over everyone all the time and giving them sobriety tests?
I get that there are some people who are so desperate for any kind of sexual contact that they don't see how being sexually molested by a stranger is something that one ought to object to (you're not the first such person who's made himself know on the JREF forums), but most normal, emotionally healthy people, very much prefer to have more control than that over who has intimate access to them; and take it a a great offense when someone presumes to forcibly gain such access without permission.
Those phrases are not appropriate for what's going on unless you think your doctor is "sexually molesting" you to when you get checked for testicular cancer.
What, exactly, is the benefit? As far as costs, I expect the airlines are going to see quite a drop in business from people who don't like to be either photographed nude or groped by strangers.
Why did you use the phrase "grope?"
I'm beginning to see a pattern here to this irrational resistance.
Please learn the definition of "assault". One is not "emotionally disturbed" to feel that a word means exactly what it actually means. But, you know, nice moving goal posts anyway. You said these procedures aren't harmful. I provided an example where they ARE harmful, and now your response is "well, that person shouldn't be getting on an airplane anyway"? Pathetic. Really.
Well, they apparently shouldn't. The types of pat downs they give in airports now are identical to what I have go through every time I go to court.
And yes, describing this as assault is wrong. Unless you think I should accuse the cops that pat me down in court of "assault" too.
What do you mean, "how"? How is it NOT traumatic for a woman to have a complete stranger feel up her breasts against her will (and it IS against her will)? Not because she's done anything wrong, or broken any law, but because their equipment malfunctioned, and you had the "bad luck" to be wearing the same sort of clothing that every other woman wears? To be forced into it because if she doesn't "agree" she's stuck with a $10k fine, and stranded 3000 miles away from home with no way to get back? Thats coercion, and it's assault, plain and simple. Assault that you, Travis, are condoning. That a large number of the American people are condoning. All in the name of some nebulous and abstract "safety." Were this sort of thing to be done by any private person instead of the government, that person would wind up in jail.
You don't get it. It's not like the person doing it is enjoying it. They are professionals who do it as their job in the same way that a doctor checking your breasts for lumps is doing their job.
That's you. Other people do have a problem with it. A big problem with it. It's an invasion of privacy and one's physical person, without reasonable cause or any sort of "warrant". Something that our constitution is supposed to protect us from, but for some reason, isn't right now.
Because here the constitution doesn't apply. Don't try to fly and this "assault" doesn't happen....unless you get checked for breast cancer.
No. Apparently you've failed to read the situation this thread is about. And it is not "consent" when it's been coerced.
How is this coerced?
Really? Someone is an anarchist because they actually want the constitution followed? I'd think that's the complete opposite. But you know, go ahead and make fun. Your ignorance of the issues involved is showing.
Oh come on, I was having fun with your "juicing the piglet" thing.
What is the probability of this happening? Zero rational people on planet earth worry about death by speeding plane.
Well then why have any security at all? If there's no threat then what is the point?
Limiting the freedom of millions to prevent an event that has a truly negligible chance of happening is insane.
Nobodies freedom has been limited by this. If you choose to not fly because you are insane and think a perfectly legitimate pat down is a "grope" or a, lol, "sexual assault" then you are limiting your own freedom.
Also, by this logic its okay for the government to make any mandate that they want as long as its done with the excuse of saving the lives of potential victims. There is literally nothing that can't be done if we start basing policy off hypothetical deaths. Your imagination is the limit...
This is already done. That's why we have building codes for dams and skyscrapers. That's why we have an FDA and EPA.
Let's have random police checkpoints on all major roads and bodyscanners in all large population centers. We will prevent a few deaths that way.
Do you have several hundred people locked up in a pressurized can at 40,000 feet in any of those scenarios?
The difference is that the doctor isn't forcing you to do anything.
And you were not forced to go to an airport and try and fly on an airliner.
Causing inconvenience/invasion of privacy to be a condition of using the 21st century's cheapest, quickest method of travel is nothing less than limiting my ability to travel.
It's limiting your ease of travel but the government has no obligation to allow you on flying death machines.
You seem to be implying that if motor vehicles were outlawed then my freedom to travel isn't being restricted simply because I still have the option of walking. This is absurd, is it not?
Actually no. Your ability to travel via the convenience of a car was impinged but not your ability to "travel." That said outlawing cars is not going to happen. Cars, unlike airplanes, are not uniquely dangerous in a catastrophic way.
But not having driving training arguably poses a direct danger to others.
And blowing up a plane with plastic explosives strapped to your crotch does not?
Not having TSA mandated security screenings, on the other hand, poses almost no danger whatsoever (as security would be dealt with privately), and, critically, upholds individual freedom. (apparently, its more important for you to impose your subjective value of security upon others, rather than preserve universal, equal freedom)
You really think that the security the private airlines would provide would be better? Wow. That's wishful thinking.
Again, everybody has a different opinion of what the ideal balance between security and freedom is. Why not leave it up to the individual to execute that balance in his own life?
I'm all for that so long as it doesn't put anybody else's life in danger.
Personally, I don't believe the terrorist threat is that great and would much prefer a more convenient, less intrusive flying experience even if it means I have to give up a little of what you perceive as "security."
So when somebody does blow up a bunch of planes you won't make a fuss out of how there were no security precautions to prevent it?
You voluntarily buy a plane ticket.--planning to bring a bomb strapped to your crotch--
You voluntarily go to the airport--with a bomb strapped to your crotch--
You voluntarily stand in line--with a bomb strapped to your crotch hoping to not get the body scan--
you refuse the body scan--crap! I got picked for the scan--
You refuse the grope search--because that would find it--
You volunteer to leave--to come back sometime with the same bomb and hopefully not get the body scan--
you are fined $10,000.--to discourage people from making multiple visits to avoid the body scan--
This is not coercion?
Definite gap in the logic string, there...
Oh it's coercion. To not show up with bombs strapped to your body.
The part that I find most disgusting about all this TSA crap is the attitude of the TSA. I've heard audio of a TSA agent saying (paraphrase, don't remember the exact wording) 'you give up some of your rights when you purchase an airline ticket'.
That's technically true. You have given up some of your rights when you do that.
If you have to do a travel for your JOB, otherwise known as duty travel, you have the choice between : 1) lose your job (with all the conomic burden and uncertainty to not find another one) 2) travel. That certainly does not look to me like a choice. But hey, feel free to be on your high horse and pretend we always have a choice.
It is still a choice in the same way your company could have given you the choice to crawl through two miles of muck to get your job. You didn't have to do it but you did if you wanted your job.
If I wanted a plane ride with groping, I would buy a plane ticket with groping. I want a big discount on my ticket price if all I get is groping and no dinner.
Why are we continuing to read sex into this?
Replace the TSA drones with doctors and make it part of the health care bill. You're now cleared to board and up to date with your vaccines.
What is with the condescension?
I'm beginning to get the picture here that people just don't like the TSA and think their employees are a bunch of perverted lowlifes.
If all this is just because of your prejudices please just come out and say so.
