Old News – Same TSA Tactics

Dees Illustration

Lynn Swearingen
The PPJ Gazette

As Mommy and Daddy put little Timmy on the bus to school for his first day of Pre-Kindergarden, they were very confused. Why were those strangers running their hands down Timmy’s little backside? Why did they choose to fondle his “special places”? Oh well, they shrugged as they turned to go home and prepare for work, Timmy was in “Good Hands” even if it wasn’t a famous insurance company.

A TSA representative presented an overview of the administration’s Intermodal Security and Transportation Exercise Program (I-STEP) as a vital resource to help school districts and private bus companies develop table-top training to prevent criminal and terrorist attacks on and using school buses.

If the above seems unbelievable, consider the fact that 10 years ago the American Public would never have considered Transportation Safety to include “Inter-Underpant Screening (IUS)” (TM). Even the thought of some blue gloved stranger sliding their approved finger under the wire of feminine support devices seemed ridiculous. Now this is a “standard operating procedure”. Everyone knows we must be safe in our “intermodal transportation process”:

Where are these programs targeted at this point? No one knows. According to DHS:

We are also making considerable progress engaging the public in transportation security. DHS launched the “If You See Something, Say Something™” campaign last summer to raise public awareness of indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats, and emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities. This campaign is being expanded to places where the NSI is being implemented, to ensure that calls to authorities will be handled appropriately, in an environment where privacy and civil liberties protections are in place. The NSI is currently active in 15 states (California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin) and 15 major cities (Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, District of Columbia, Houston, Kansas City, MO, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle).

Reported earlier this month was the egregious actions that “secret TSA orders” were acceptable  by the Federal Courts:

Interesting news.

The Rutherford Institute site explains exactly why the American People cannot question these searches:

A federal court has dismissed a Fourth Amendment lawsuit filed by The Rutherford Institute challenging the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) airport security screening policy of requiring air passengers to either submit to virtual strip searches involving advanced imaging technology (AIT), which exposes intimate details of a person’s body to government agents, or submit to highly invasive pat down searches during which TSA agents may go so far as to reach inside a traveler’s pants. U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., justified his dismissal by declaring that the court has no jurisdiction over the case, citing a secret order issued by the TSA which requires that the D.C. Court of Appeals hear any reviews of TSA orders. Insisting that it contains “sensitive security information,” the government has yet to make public the order embodying the TSA enhanced screening procedures.

Secret orders? In The United States of America?

These orders are not even “secret” anymore. Every time a passenger chooses to fly from location to location, you should fly in full knowledge that there are no “civil liberties”. They have been surrendered to the TSA with a few whimpers here and there, but now fully implemented in our social consciousness is the fact that fear rules our daily lives.

Even more disturbing are the breaches of these “safety procedures” – almost always in favor of those who control the data. Take for example Mr. Gass of Massachusetts. Receiving a letter explaining that his Official Papers were now suspended, it required 10 days of effort to prove that because his “facial mapping” was similar to another individuals, he could no longer travel via his private vehicle.

Caught in a dragnet

It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake identity. His driving privileges were returned but, he alleges in a lawsuit, only after 10 days of bureaucratic wrangling to prove he is who he says he is.

And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity.

Authorization papers please.

Little Timmy’s parents place him on the yellow school bus. Perhaps in later years when Timmy tells of the fear and horror of the daily attack on his body to travel to Government Mandated Indoctrination, they will wonder perhaps if they did the wrong thing. But at that point for Timmy it will be too late. He will have become accustomed to the daily fear that we all face in the perpetual darkness of “Secret Orders”.