Airport Security: protecting the state's right to abuse you

According to news reports from ABC news' Austin, TX affiliate, a middle aged woman was assaulted by TSA employees, dragged out of Austin airport, and arrested by local police for refusing to allow the state to physically examine her breasts.  Unless I'm your physician or a law enforcement official who has probable cause to believe that you are engaged in a criminal act, groping a woman's breasts in public is considered sexual assault.  Under America's authoritarian regime, the state in the name of national security has the right to sexual assault any woman: your wife, mother, sister, or daughter, in the name of protecting the nation from overheated and dangerous tities.

Claire Hirschkind, fourth amendment rights proponent and the perpetrator of this heinous act of civil disobedience, stated to the press that the basis of her actions was that "she [was] a rape victim [sic] who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest." The news report outlines the events:

Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.

"I can't go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me," she said.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

I have been criticising the absolute uselessness of this entire "fear-mongering" and civil liberties denying exercise for sometime. In an earlier blog ("Will this scanner make my penis look bigger?"), I discussed the limited value to subjecting persons to invasive an qualitatively ineffective screening practices. Civil libertarians and consumer advocates have entered lawsuits and issued numerous complaints about the virtual strip-searching of innocent civilians (examples here, here, and here).  The ACLU has also been warning people, for much of the past year, as to the authoritarian over-reach of airport screening procedures:

what was formerly voluntary is now mandatory... this is the classic way that invasive technologies reach us: the authorities make them as palatable as possible to get the public to swallow them (they’ll say it’s "voluntary," or "applied only in certain cases," and tell you it’s chock-full of privacy protections). Then once they’re accepted, they become more and more intrusive in all the ways the ACLU always warns against.

Ralph Nader wrote to President Obama earlier in 2010, to ask him to consider the potential public health risks entailing the exposure of millions of citizens to ionizing radiation through the employment of not fully tested technology at the nation's airports.  He further elaborates on previous mistakes made by the government in pushing unsound technology:

It was wasteful enough for the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to install the “puffer” security devices at U.S. airports and then withdraw them because they were found to be “unreliable” at a cost of $30 million to taxpayers. Now, a far larger amount of taxpayer money is being spent on these scanning devices by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which claims it is not obligated to observe the Administrative Procedures Act.

Prior to the American Thanksgiving holiday season, a national debate proceeded on the absurdity of the entire "junk-touching" process.  Even this limited outcropping of sensibility has been revealed to be little more than political posturing and an attempt by right-wing media to publicly embarrass the Obama administration.  Glenn Greenwald explains:

I have no doubt -- none -- that if there were a Republican President in office now, these very same people would not only be defending the TSA in the name of Staying Safe, but maligning critics as Privacy Fetishists, Civil Liberties Extremists, and Friends of The Terrorists... In the other corner, we have the Democrats, who -- in perfect unison -- would be screaming bloody murder about these methods and waving the Flag of Civil Liberties if George W. Bush were still President, as they would smell partisan advantage from doing so. But since it's Barack Obama who is President, they are -- with a few exceptions -- meekly raising concerns, though more often acquiescent to the TSA when they aren't outright supportive.

Of course, all this is to protect you the feeble minded and easily scared public.  In the original ABC article discussing Ms. Hirschkind, fellow passenger Emily Protine says it all, "It's unfortunate that that happened and she didn't get to fly home, but it makes me feel a little safer."  Safer from what?  Another ABC News story discusses the case of Houston businessman Farid Seif who accidentally brought a loaded gun in his carry on luggage and evaded detection.  Despite assurances that airport safety is better than ever, field research tells a completely different story.

Experts say every year since the September 11 attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert tests of airport security. A person briefed on the latest tests tells ABC News the failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports. Two weeks ago, TSA's new director said every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports.

How is that nearly ten years after Sept-11, people with firearms are walking aboard airplanes in their hand luggage?  Yet we are told that by radiating large segments of innocent people with ionizing radiation and subjecting people to invasive search practices will make us all safer.