Saturday, June 3, 2017

Slow Saturday Special: Trump's TSA

He slammed them for the 14-year-old boy being on a watch list, but....

"82-year-old woman held for 2 hours after airport scuffle" Associated Press  June 02, 2017

WICHITA — An 82-year-old Texas woman was arrested and jailed for about two hours after a Kansas airport security officer confiscated an oversized liquid from her carry-on bag, authorities said.

The woman and her husband were trying to board a plane at Eisenhower International Airport in Wichita early Wednesday when a Transportation Security Administration officer told her she couldn’t keep the bottle of ‘‘liquid hand product’’ because it was larger than the 3.4-ounce carry-on limit, according to law enforcement and TSA reports.

She was told the bottle would only be allowed in checked luggage.

The reports said the woman became angry, walked around an X-ray screening belt into the TSA work area, and hit the officer’s ‘‘right arm with a closed fist,’’ The Wichita Eagle reported. 

What is outrageous is the victimization of this woman over a crock of crap and false flag lies that were meant to advance the total surveillance state and control travel. Nothing good ever seems to happen when you give a group of people authority over another.

A TSA spokeswoman said the security officer found the bottle during a routine search.

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There are some things you just can't take on the plane, lady. Just be glad you weren't Muslim or you wouldn't have made it back in time for the anniversary.

Time for you to go through:

"TSA says passengers who opt out of other technology will face full pat-downs" by Ashley Halsey III Washington Post  March 07, 2017

WASHINGTON — Airport passengers who opt out of electronic screening will face a full pat-down by security officials as the Transportation Security Administration consolidates methods in use at its checkpoints.

The pat-down may include sensitive areas such as breasts, buttocks, and the groin area.

So your choice is to either go through the cancer-causing scanner that will take a nude photo of you or allows yourself to be molested by some pervert. (I suppose there is some sort of ironic justice there for the feminist women. Trump's TSA is a groper just like him).

I'll never fly again.

Until last week, TSA screeners could employ any of five pat-down procedures to check the few passengers who chose not to go through a millimeter wave imaging booth or walk-through metal detectors.

Now all passengers will receive the same pat down, the one previously known as the ‘‘full pat down.’’

The TSA, in a statement, said that a full pat-down ‘‘does not involve any different areas of the body than were screened in the previous standard pat-down procedure.’’

The new guidelines posted on the TSA website are much more explicit about what passengers should expect: ‘‘A pat-down may include inspection of the head, neck, arms, torso, legs, and feet. This includes head coverings and sensitive areas such as breasts, groin, and the buttocks. You may be required to adjust clothing during the pat-down. Pat-downs require sufficient pressure to ensure detection.’’

Since the terrorists are real, be they CIA foreigners being flown in or idiot FBI patsies, maybe these measures are appropriate. Problem is it supports the underlying and false narrative of Islamic terrorism when the 9/11 was an inside job regarding various factions within and without the U.S. government. 

The guidelines say that a pat-down will be conducted by someone of the same gender as the passenger and will be witnessed by a second TSA screener of the same gender.

Is that by birth or self-identification, and who decides?

The same pat-down will be employed with those who set off alarms in the millimeter machine or a metal detector, and those singled out by bomb-sniffing dogs.

‘‘Even passengers who normally receive expedited screening, such as TSA PreCheck passengers, may at times receive a pat-down,’’ the guidelines said.

There was some political pushback to reports of the change. Ron Paul, the Republican former congressman, tweeted: ‘‘TSA Launches ‘Invasive’ Pat-Downs With ‘More Intimate Contact Than Before.’ ‘‘ He republished an article on his website that referred to the new procedure as a ‘‘universal method which would involve heavier groping.’’

Who?

Airport security was tightened in 2015 after a damning inspector general’s report that said undercover operatives were able to slip through airport security with weapons and phony bombs more than 95 percent of the time. They were able to carry weapons or bomblike materials through airport security checkpoints in 67 of 70 attempts last year.

Well, when you know the "terrorist" attacks are generated from inside the very institution you work for, i.e. the U.S. government, and when you know you will be issued stand down orders if an event were to materialize.... why would you be worried?

If you want to take the report at face value, I suppose the incompetence is there to provide the cover need to increase "security," and CUI BONO?

TSA responded by putting the entire 60,000-member TSA workforce through retraining, opening a training academy in Georgia for recruits and bringing in several new top administrators. It also ended a practice in which random passengers were selected and allowed through special lines that were designed for travelers who had qualified by advance background checks for expedited screening.

The advance checks and expedited screening are for the elite, and they know there is no need to worry. They will get a heads-up not to fly like so many did the day before 9/11.

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Going to do more with less, eh? 

"Trump weighs cuts to Coast Guard, TSA, and FEMA to bolster border plan" by Nicholas Fandos New York Times  March 09, 2017

News of the proposal, which was first reported by Politico on Tuesday, has befuddled longtime veterans of the Department of Homeland Security. Lawmakers in both parties indicated they would scrutinize, and perhaps even oppose, a slew of potential cuts they argued would not only expose new weaknesses but also undermine Trump’s own strongly stated goals of curtailing terrorism, narcotics, and illegal immigration.

“It’s a little bit like putting an extra lock on the front door and none on the back door,” said Michael Chertoff, who led the Homeland Security Department for four years. “You are not really protecting the house.”

Why did the NYT not mention the Chertoff Group or his role in getting the body scanners into the airports?

Reports of the proposal were confirmed to The New York Times by an official who had seen the documents and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closely guarded budgeting process. Trump is expected to present the budget this month, although it already is viewed as a largely aspirational proposal created by the Office of Management and Budget of the White House and individual departments to set priorities for Congress.

Reports of the cuts prompted considerable pushback on Capitol Hill. Of chief concern were the potential cuts to the Coast Guard, the nation’s primary domestic maritime security force, which lawmakers and experts said had already been stretched thin by the wars on drugs, illegal immigration, and terrorism.

In addition to monitoring US waterways for foreign and domestic threats, the Coast Guard plays a significant role in combating problems Trump wants to address. In the 2016 fiscal year alone, it intercepted more than 6,000 undocumented immigrants, and 200 metric tons of cocaine and 52,000 pounds of marijuana worth almost $6 billion, according to its spokeswoman, Lieutenant Amy Midgett.

Should law enforcement officials clamp down on the land crossings into the United States, experts said, the maritime interdiction role would most likely only increase, putting additional pressure on the Coast Guard.

“Where do you think drug smugglers and illegal immigrants will go next if you make the land border more impervious?” said David Heyman, who was assistant Homeland Security secretary for policy from 2009-2014. “It’s obvious they would next try to sneak in by sea or by air, which is precisely what the administration is trying to cut.” 

Legalize the drugs, keep the drag on wages out.

The proposed cuts at the TSA, the agency tasked with protecting air travel in the United States, and FEMA, which is best known for providing disaster relief, are relatively smaller, but they have likewise raised concerns about opening up new vulnerabilities to the nation’s airports, transit hubs, and cities.

That's when the Globe let me pass through.

Within the TSA, the proposal calls for the elimination of a handful of programs that have played a critical role in airport security and counterterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They include a program that trains pilots to respond to an attempted armed takeover of the cockpit; a grant program that supports local law enforcement patrols at airports; and another, the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response program, that sends both undercover and highly visible officers to conduct security sweeps in high-risk airports and train stations.

At FEMA, potential cuts would target for reduction an array of grants to state and local governments that have helped fund the development of emergency preparedness and response plans for natural disasters and terrorism-related events.

The proposed savings would allow the Homeland Security Department to take significant steps toward addressing Trump’s priorities along the border between the United States and Mexico. The plan would free up funds to begin paying for the border wall, to construct detention facilities, and to hire an additional 500 Border Patrol agents and 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who will be responsible for border security and the deportation of immigrants already in the country illegally.

Chertoff said that considering the department’s overall imperatives, it made little sense to so strengthen one portion of the budget at the expense of another, critical area.

“If you are going to look at the mission of DHS, in which priority No. 1 is security, you have to take an approach to the budget that balances all the elements of security,” he said....

$elf-$erving $keletor.

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All told they are shifting about $5 billion, a drop in the bucket for what was my agenda-pushing(?) national lead.

Also seeTSA will heighten electronics screening at some US airports

Not internationally because that pissed off certain people. 

"Aly Raisman doesn’t care what you think about her muscles" by Mark Shanahan Globe Staff  May 25, 2017

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman fired off a series of angry tweets complaining about the behavior of a male TSA worker who, she says, body-shamed her as she passed through security.

Who did he think he was, Dani Mathers?

The Needham native doesn’t identify the airport, but said the worker was rude and insulting, and she didn’t appreciate it, tweeting:

“Lady at TSA: “Gymnast? I recognized u by ur biceps”

Man at TSA: “I don’t see any muscles” & continues 2 stare at me

How rude & uncomfortable”

The 22-year-old gymnast, whose muscles were sufficient to win a gold medal at the London and Rio Olympics, wasn’t done chastising the clod.

“I work very hard to be healthy & fit,” she tweeted. “The fact that a man thinks he judge my arms pisses me off I am so sick of this judgmental generation.”

Wait, there’s more:

“If u are a man who can’t compliment a girls, you are sexist,” she tweeted. “Get over yourself. Are u kidding me? It’s 2017. When will this change?”

And, finally, this:

“He was very rude,” she tweeted. “Staring at me shaking his head like it couldn’t be me because I didn’t look “strong enough” to him? Not cool.”

Raisman’s followers — she has over 933,000 of them on Twitter — were quick to back her, saying she doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone.

I wonder how many are fake or bought like the flash crowds?

Replied one of her fans: “Ask him where he keeps his Olympic Gold Medals.”

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Did you see her in the wet T-shirt?