on, well, you know...

[acroyear]

pandagon.net - it's the eye of the panda, it's the thrill of the bite:

You know you’ve fucked with privileged people when USA Today suddenly starts engaging in the investigative journalism of government corruption that you usually only find in places like The Nation. [preceded by an excerpt on the blatant relationship between the increase in lobbying dollars from the 2 top backscatter companies and the increase in their purchases by TSA affiliates, along with the fact that their management boards include former DHS members]

Point is, there’s a lot of money to be made by selling scanners to airports. And there’s a revolving door between people who work in high levels of government and those profiting off selling these devices. It’s in the financial interest of these corporations that are lobbying the hell out of this to have you told that you use their products or you have your junk touched.

Yep, we seem to have reached that stage of capitalism where sexual abuse is being used as a threat to get people (taxpayers in this case) to spend money to pad corporate profits.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

i never said congress wasn't paying attention (though they are turning as blind an eye to the blatant 4th and 5th amendment violations as the average person seems to as well).

and my point is they are hardly staying "ahead" of the terrorists - they are being reactionary to every recent (failed) plot. we didn't remove our shoes 'til someone tried to set theirs off. we didn't have to constrain our liquids 'til someone set theirs off (in Russia). we didn't have to appear nude 'til someone had a bomb in their underwear. at no point have i actually seen TSA acting *proactively* and staying ahead of anything.

yes, to think we are safe by keeping the status quo is ludicrous.

so is thinking we are one damn bit safer today by telling the bill of rights it can go fuck itself.

given that, what's the damn point? as everybody has said, by the time a REAL threat gets to the airport (nevermind past it), it is really already too late. if nothing else, if they get detected, they'll just "detonate" there and then and still cause one hell of a commotion. really, it would worse, 'cause closing a major hub airport like ATL or IAD for days is more devastating to air traffic than any single plane might ever have been - the airline in question would probably go bankrupt without government intervention ("bailouts") which right now are politically unfeasible.

and if people actually knew that "increased screening" actually meant "appearing nude before total strangers", they probably might have been more specific.