End ‘virtual strip searches’ by TSA

By WND Staff

CHICAGO - MARCH 15: Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers staff a checkpoint at O'Hare International Airport on March 15, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois. Today TSA personnel are scheduled to begin using the Backscatter Advanced Imaging Technology full-body scanners at the airport. Twenty airports nationwide are now using full-body scanners. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON – Do you want to put a stop to airport humiliation through invasive “pat-downs” and “virtual strip searches”?

Now you can generate individual letters of protest of these new “enhanced” security procedures by the Transportation Security Administration to every member of the House and Senate, as well as Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in one minute, announces Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, who spearheaded the historic “Send Congress a Pink Slip” campaign that buried Congress in 9 million letters of grievance and another campaign that helped free railroaded Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Campeon.

The innovative campaign called “STOP AIRPORT HUMILIATION NOW” permits anyone to deliver 537 letters, with delivery guaranteed by Fed Ex, to all those officials – putting them on notice that Americans are angry and will not tolerate these abuses of privacy.

Because of the volume of these messages, WND is able to send them less expensively than American citizens could send them individually. Through this program, you can send the 537 messages for only $29.95. To replicate that feat individually, postage alone would cost more than $236. But the impact of participating in the “STOP AIRPORT HUMILIATION CAMPAIGN” makes your protest much more impressive – being a part of a mass movement, rather than an individual grievance, explained Farah.

“You would think these people in Washington didn’t notice the election results this month,” said Farah. “Well, maybe they need a reminder that the people are not resting on their laurels and will not accept being treated like cattle before they get on an airplane.”
Americans have been expressing their outrage since the new “enhanced” security procedures by the TSA went into effect Nov. 1.

“Heads should roll over this kind of abuse – namely Janet ‘Big Sis’ Napolitano’s,” said Farah.

WND simultaneously established a free on-line petition to these same officials. Similar petitions launched by WND have attracted nearly 600,000 virtual signatures.

“If $29.95 is not in your budget right now, at least sign the free petition,” urges Farah. “I understand what politicians in Washington have done to our economy. But don’t let them cow you into silence as they march us like sheep down the road to tyranny and degrading subjugation.”

As the letter being sent to officials in Washington states, under the new screening protocols, passengers are subjected to a virtual “strip search” by being required to undergo a humiliating full-body scan, resulting in the display of a graphic image of their naked body to be scrutinized by a TSA agent.

If they choose to “opt out” of the full-body scan, they are forced instead to undergo the same kind of aggressive pat-down that criminals and drug-dealers get, including direct manual contact with their breasts and genitalia. Children are not exempt.

While such degrading and invasive searches certainly violate passengers’ Fourth Amendment guarantee to be “secure in their persons … against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the generation of naked images of minor passengers arguably amounts to the creation of illegal child pornography.

Moreover, backscatter X-ray technology is known to produce radiation that is potentially harmful to frequent fliers and airline crew members, which is why the American Pilots Association, representing about 12,000 pilots (including almost all of American Airlines’ pilots) has strongly warned its members to refuse the full-body scanning.

This humiliating and degrading new program is already massively unpopular, and obviously subject to horrific abuse. As such, it is certain to result in a significant decline in air travel by Americans at a time when neither the airline industry nor the country can afford another economic crisis.

“Don’t wait on taking action,” urges Farah. “I am participating in this bargain program – and I urge every single American to do the same. Let’s recreate the success of the ‘Pink Slip’ program and other similar efforts and return sanity and decency to our airports.”

Participate in the “STOP AIRPORT HUMILIATION” program now.