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It’s going to be hard to get a handle on the impact of national “Opt-Out Day,” given the tens of millions of passengers and hundreds of airports involved. Most reports I’ve seen rate the impact as minor. Gallup was sure to roll out a poll showing that most people are OK with the new TSA procedures, because surely rights should be put up to a vote. The Nation, of all places, came out with a weird smear job on John Tyner of “Don’t touch my junk” fame. The short answer is that there’s a lot of pressure to show that the whole thing is a non-story, lest the herd be upset.
Nevertheless, the protests did get TSA’s attention. And I don’t think that will stop in the near term. I don’t agree with Matt Bai, predictably, that this shows some mass “distrust of government,” as that has sadly evaporated in the past few years. But I do think there’s an opportunity to present a full agenda that’s respectful of civil liberties and opposed to security theater, and now that agenda is on the radar screen.
I do think that if they try to take these scanners to trains and public transit, they’re going to face a bigger problem. The more than these draconian measures start hitting a larger segment of the public (not everyone flies), the more that they hit communities traditionally singled out and subject to profiling and abuse, the more stories of abuse will leak out. It’s just not compatible with an allegedly free society to have constant breakdowns in privacy protections. America is already pretty close to a surveillance state, and that has to stop.
Anyway, I’ll be road-testing these new security measures in just about an hour or so.
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Do you really think that people will care? I remember when companies started requiring drug tests in the 80′s and people were all up in arms becaus of the invasion of privacy. It wasn’t very long before the public just accepted it. They gave the same reasons back then, it was necessary because of work “safety”. There have been millions of people drug tested for jobs and it still happens. As long as the government doesn’t do everything in one giant step, the people will go along with it. i.e. Germany.
A mother forced to go through the TSA gauntlet because of her breast milk. There are no words.
After 9/11, when few were willing to complain, I pointed out to a TSA supervisor at the gate that the electronic boarding pass was easily forged, that people could walk through the metal detector with explosives, and that the secondary screening with a pat-down couldn’t detect things stuffed in your underwear. (I later proved this by undergoing a pat-down with a bag of weed in my pants.) In any case the other travelers were irate and told me to move abroad if I didn’t love America. Someone tried to hit me.
So while I agree with what Glenn Greenwald said, that Americans take umbrage at the implication that and theirs might be a terrorist, in general they are very willing to submit to the police state so long as it’s more of a hassle for people with foreign-sounding names than it is for them.
I should add that the whole hullabaloo started when TSA wouldn’t accept a photocopy of my electronic itinerary. I told them that the original was generated by me on my own computer, and there was nothing in the rules stating that it must be original. (This was in the days when itineraries were simply text emails.)
I never did get on the flight.
Flying used to be fun. It used to be an exciting mode of travel. Now it is just a hassle. The TSA has too much authority and has too big a budget now. I refuse to fly anymore because it is an invasion of my body and privacy. Not to mention it is way too costly to fly anymore. You are assumed to be a terrorist. This is America where people come and go as they wish. We don’t blow up airplanes nor do we wish to fly them into buildings. We simply want to be able to fly to our destinations without harrasment. I say if you fly, you get what you deserve. One more thing what about the age of the fleet? We are so worried about them getting blown up what if they start falling from sky due to mechanical problems?
Absolutely.
Ditto. I am not flying for any reason as long as scan-or-grope is the rule.
This is where I draw the line. Some people (such as minors, or, arguably, those whose economic livelihood is inextricably tied to flying) have no realistic choice. In a high-tech capitalist society, anything that is feasible can be made compulsory. I have nothing but sympathy for those who must fly, even though I personally will not.
Yet another good point. It also should serve to put the risks of terrorism in perspective. If you live any substantial distance away from the airport, you incur more risk by driving there than by taking your flight. And if that ever ceases to be the case, it will be due to fleet aging and poor maintenance, not terrorism. Mary Schiavo’s Flying Blind, Flying Safe (1998) put more fear of flying into me than 9/11 did. My understanding is that many of the problems exposed in her book have since been addressed effectively, but ongoing maintenance is vital.