Myths About Obama: Security Theater

Tuesday 2 November 2010 - Filed under Constitution + Dumbassery + Government + POTUS + War on Terror

Myth: Obama has genuine concern for our civil liberties and privacy and vows to protect our Constitutional rights against government intrusion in the name of National Security™.

A reminder:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlNXezxGZPo

Reality: Bullshit! This week sees the introduction of an entirely different level of assfuckery as the TSA, under authority of Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security (accountable only to Obama in his administration), begins some really fucked up security theater. The Atlantic explains:

Agents were funneling every passenger at this particular checkpoint through a newly installed back-scatter body imaging device, which allows the agency’s security officers to, in essence, see under your clothing. The machine captures an image of your naked self, including your genitals, and sends the image to an agent in a separate room.

[. . .]

In part because of the back-scatter imager’s invasiveness (a TSA employee in Miami was arrested recently after he physically assaulted a colleague who had mocked his modestly sized penis, which was fully apparent in a captured back-scatter image), the TSA is allowing passengers to opt-out of the back-scatter and choose instead a pat-down. I’ve complained about TSA pat-downs in the past, because they, too, were more security theater than anything else. They are, as I would learn, becoming more serious, as well.

At BWI, I told the officer who directed me to the back-scatter that I preferred a pat-down. I did this in order to see how effective the manual search would be. When I made this request, a number of TSA officers, to my surprise, began laughing. I asked why. One of them — the one who would eventually conduct my pat-down — said that the rules were changing shortly, and that I would soon understand why the back-scatter was preferable to the manual search. I asked him if the new guidelines included a cavity search. “No way. You think Congress would allow that?”

I answered, “If you’re a terrorist, you’re going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina.” He blushed when I said “vagina.”

“Yes, but starting tomorrow, we’re going to start searching your crotchal area” — this is the word he used, “crotchal” — and you’re not going to like it.”

“What am I not going to like?” I asked.

“We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance,” he explained.

“Resistance?” I asked.

“Your testicles,” he explained.

[. . .]

I pointed out to the security officer that 50 percent of the American population has no balls (90 percent in Washington, D.C., where I live), so what is going to happen when the pat-down officer meets no resistance in the crotchal area of women? “If there’s no resistance, then there’s nothing there.”

[. . .]

I asked him if he was looking forward to conducting the full-on pat-downs. “Nobody’s going to do it,” he said, “once they find out that we’re going to do.”

In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? “That’s what we’re hoping for. We’re trying to get everyone into the machine.” He called over a colleague. “Tell him what you call the back-scatter,” he said. “The Dick-Measuring Device,” I said. “That’s the truth,” the other officer responded.

The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, “Get new gloves, man, you’re going to need them where you’re going.”

I need to interject here for a minute.

Not only need I choose between a shit sandwich or a dirty pussy salad for the “convenience” of flying, but I’m also seen by TSA thugs as so undesirable and contaminated that one feels the need for “new gloves” (which isn’t even to mention that the search would be so invasive and intimate as to require new gloves)? I’m one of the unwashed; one of the other. I’m one of the little people.

[. . .]

I draw three lessons from this week’s experience: The pat-down, while more effective than previous pat-downs, will not stop dedicated and clever terrorists from smuggling on board small weapons or explosives [. . .]

The second lesson is that the effectiveness of pat-downs does not matter very much, because the obvious goal of the TSA is to make the pat-down embarrassing enough for the average passenger that the vast majority of people will choose high-tech humiliation over the low-tech ball check.

The government is intentionally making pat-down searches so undesirable and intrusive so that they can funnel us to the equally-as-intrusive back-scatter machines so some fucking jackbooted thug can ogle your fuckin’ goods. Awesome.

So I’ll come full-circle back to the post: anyone who thinks that Obama is better in civil liberties than your average statist authoritarian is a fucking idiot.

2010-11-02  »  madlibertarianguy