The Internet is awash with solutions to the problem created by President Obama's implementation of X-ray body scanners at airports that reveal nearly nude images of passengers on computer screens and sometimes the Web, or the alternative full-body hands-on pat-downs that include touching private parts.
"PROFILE."
"All we need to do is profile."
"Wanna fix it? Profile. Why? Because any cop will tell you, it works."
"Start profiling…"
Those ideas all come from just one forum page at YouTube, and whether that ends up being part of an ultimate solution or not remains to be seen, but now an internationally known law firm has announced plans to begin collecting first-person stories of the situations at airport security checkpoints that it believes violate the U.S. Constitution.
"We believe that the enhanced pat-downs are a violation of the 4th Amendment," said Richard Thompson, chief of the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan. "We understand that there is a need for security. It's important for the government to protect the people. However, these enhanced pat-downs in no way increase the security of the American public."
Tell your story of TSA terror by e-mailing the Thomas More Law Center.
The alarming news in contained in a report, titled "An evaluation of airport X-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics," in which University of California scientists Leon Kaufman and Joseph Carlson demonstrated that packages of explosives contoured to the body or worn along the sides likely would not be detected by TSA X-ray units built to "see" hard edges and anatomical features, and used primarily to image the front and back of the body.
Further, Thompson said, the working assumption is that the demand for enduring the body-scanning images or the physical pat-downs, both "intrusive," violates Americans' privacy rights embedded in the 4th Amendment.
Thompson confirmed to WND that his organization now is collecting stories of passengers' experiences with TSA requirements at an e-mail set up to let people report their grievances under a subject line "TSA complaint."
Join tens of thousands of Americans in a petition demanding action against the intrusive airport screening procedures implemented by Janet Napolitano and send a letter to Congress, President Obama and others telling them exactly what you think about the issue.
Under the existing procedures, which have been targeted by lawsuits, complaints, proposed state and federal legislation and online protests, everyone is considered a suspect, he noted.
"Every flier, every member of the public who uses airlines is considered a suspect," he said. "When you consider everyone is a suspect, they really aren't focusing on the people they should really be focusing on.
"Little kids. Grandmas. … Why are you wasting your time on them?" he wondered.
"They wanted to prevent another incident like the Christmas bomber. What they never would tell you is that [the invasive] procedures never would have stopped the Christmas bomber in the first place."
In one network interview, however, officials admitted exactly that:
John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, who sued the government over the issue, told WND the procedures were instituted through the work of President Obama.
"Legislation has been proposed to mandate full-body scanners and make them the primary screening method in all U.S. airports by 2013, but Congress has yet to act on it," Whitehead said in a commentary.
"So we can thank President Obama for this frontal assault on our Fourth Amendment rights. Mind you, this is the same man who insisted that 'we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans,'" Whitehead said.
There seems to be considerable doubt about the constitutionality of the searches, too. Even Mo McGowan, a former director of TSA security operations, was uncertain.
"We're not dictating these events that are occurring. Events are happening across the world … driving us as a society to have to go to these measures," he said.
"I mean, nobody likes having their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line," he said. "But the truth of the matter is we're going to have to do it."
Thompson noted while the value of the scanners is questionable, El Al Airlines in Israel has proven over and over that intense profiling of passengers is a strong deterrent.
"Profiling would have stopped the Christmas bomber," Thompson explained.
Instead, the U.S. program considers "every member of the public" as a suspect in terrorism.
The issue has erupted into headlines and protests during this month as the agency rolled out new requirements that demand passengers go through a scanning process through which essentially nude images are produced for TSA agents to screen, or submit to a hands-on full-body pat-down that includes agents touching private areas of the passengers' bodies.
Tell your story of TSA terror, by e-mailing to the Thomas More Law Center.
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the suspension of the enhanced security searches.