Tuesday, November 16, 2010

TSA Backlash Week: The Wall Street Journal Weighs In

It's probably worth noting at this point that TSA Backlash Week isn't a conservative or liberal phenomenon. It's got just about everybody angry, with nobody outside the TSA itself offering much in the way of a vigorous defense of body scanners and patdown. So it's interesting to note the Wall Street Journal is publishing a critique of the TSA, a piece from Wired's Noah Schachtman.

Money quote: "But the larger question is whether the TSA's tech-centric approach to security makes any sense at all. Even the most modest of us would probably agree to a brief flash of quasi-nudity if it would really ensure a safe flight. That's not the deal the TSA is offering. Instead, the agency is asking for Rolando Negrin-style revelations in exchange for incremental, uncertain security improvements against particular kinds of concealed weapons."

TSA Backlash Week: The Senate Hearing

"The Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security will hold a Transportation Security Administration Oversight Hearing tomorrow." Josh Rosenau has details.

TSA Backlash Week: Resources, And A Reminder From Penn Jillette

My friend Robb sends along links to a couple of websites helping build resistance to the TSA's intrusive security procedures:

FLY WITH DIGNITY: "Wre an organization seeking advocacy and recognition of the TSA’s and DHS’s actions against our privacy and right to refuse unwarranted search." Pictures seem a little overwrought, but I otherwise agree with them. Sign the petition!

NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY: "The goal of National Opt Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change. We have a right to privacy and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we're guilty until proven innocent. This day is needed because many people do not understand what they consent to when choosing to fly."

Robb also sends along this 2002 post from Penn Jillette, which reminds us we've been building to this point for a long time:

Last Thursday I was flying to LA on the Midnight flight. I went through security my usual sour stuff. I beeped, of course, and was shuttled to the "toss-em" line. A security guy came over. I assumed the position. I had a button up shirt on that was untucked. He reached around while he was behind me and grabbed around my front pocket. I guess he was going for my flashlight, but the area could have loosely been called "crotch." I said, "You have to ask me before you touch me or it's assault."

He said, "Once you cross that line, I can do whatever I want."

I said that wasn't true. I say that I have the option of saying no and not flying. He said, "Are you going to let me search you, or do I just throw you out?"

I said, "Finish up, and then call the police please."

When he was finished with my shoes, he said, "Okay, you can go."

I said, "I'd like to see your supervisor and I'd like LVPD to come here as well. I was assaulted by you."

He said, "You're free to go, there's no problem."

I said, "I have a problem, please send someone over."

It goes from there. Most of us haven't expressed Jillette's level of outrage about these procedures, which is why we've arrived at this point. It's TSA Backlash Week!

Ben and Joel Podcast: Dominic Tierney and 'How America Fights'

Joel is joined by Dominic Tierney. He is an assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College here in Pennsylvania, and is the author of three books: The newest is "How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires and the American Way of War." The book informed his recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, and it forms the foundation of his speech Friday at Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia -- check the FPRI website for details.

Topics discussed in this podcast:

• What are the "crusade" and "quagmire" traditions of American warfare?
• Isn't it pretty easy to get Americans to go to war? And isn't it easy to sour them on the experience of war?
• Is there a good reason for America to conduct "nation-building" missions in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq?
• What did the Founders see as the role of the American military?
• Would re-orienting the military to a nation-building role make us more vulnerable to peer competitors like Russia or China?
• Where will the U.S. be nation-building next?

Click here to listen.

TSA Backlash Week: One Hundred Naked Citizens

Gizmodo: "At the heart of the controversy over 'body scanners' is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images." Click the link to see the images.

For what it's worth, these images might actually tamp down public concern about the scanners: You can barely tell that people are depicted. But it would be a shame if the response was a collective shrug. For one thing, some scanners can show a person's body in rather greater detail. And in any case, TSA Backlash Week is long overdue. It's time we had a conversation about the government's ability to presume we are all criminals once we decide to fly on a plane.

TSA Backlash Week : Josh Rosenau

My friend Josh is angry: "I'm not a criminal. There's no probable cause to search me. I've flown at least a couple times a year pretty much every year since I was born, and much more than that now that I get to travel for work. If I were a threat to aviation, I think it would've become clear by now. Before 9/11, I carried two pocket knives on every flight. I took a railroad spike onto a plane one time, with airport security's knowledge and permission. I am not a threat to American aviation, and feeling me up or looking at me naked will not make anyone safer. And it certainly shouldn't make anyone feel safer to know that the government can feel them up or strip them naked just because they want to come home from a business trip (let alone that they can be fined $10,000 for rejecting either option)."

TSA Backlash Week: Brendan Skwire On The Case

Brendan doesn't just blog about his complaints. He takes them directly to his senator!

TSA Backlash Week: How Much Is Too Much?

Let us now quote Michael Aguilar, chief of the TSA in San Diego. He says:
"“Let me paraphrase our new administrator, John Pistole,” said Aguilar. “It really is irresponsible to encourage anyone to opt out of a technology that is there in place specifically to protect the public.”"

Nobody disputes the TSA is intending to "protect the public" by putting the body scans in place. But here's a question: What level of intrusiveness is too intrusive to justify security measures? That's a question that hasn't been answered, but it certainly appears to the public as though there is no bright line the government won't cross in the name of making our airplanes safe. It's looking at us naked and feeling us up. What's left?

Cold Medicine Backlash Week: Coming Soon

Seems to me if you're going to require people to get a prescription for cold medicine, you might as well ban cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine outright. How many people are going to go to a doctor -- and incur the cost and lost work time -- just to pick up a package of Sudafed? If you're going to raise the bar that high, might as well raise it all the way.

The Party of Fiscal Conservatism

A chart at James Fallows' blog:


Now: Maybe the current crop of Republicans will end up walking the walk they've only ever talked. History doesn't bode well.

Sitting Bull: Original Tea Partier

Fox News is raising some hackles with its "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General" headline, but that's what Fox does. It seems to me, though, that Sitting Bull would actually be a Tea Party hero. This is a movement, after all, that not-infrequently raises the specter of "Second Amendment remedies" to government overreach and trots out the now-tired "tree of liberty must be refreshed by the blood of tyrants" quote (I'm paraphrasing) at every opportunity.

Well, Sitting Bull was somebody who actually walked the walk. He took arms against a literally encroaching federal government that, by any rational standard, was robbing his people of their property rights. From an ideological standpoint, this guy should be a Fox News hero! What makes him different, I wonder...

The Beatles Are Already On My iPod

Apparently Apple's big announcement today is that they'll finally be selling Beatles' songs through iTunes. Hard for me to get excited about. I've had the Beatles on my iPod ever since I've had an iPod. Legally, of course: the digital files back up physical CDs that are in my storage closet somewhere. It's nice that the music is now available for legal download, but given the nature of 21st century music consumption, I doubt many people who wanted to listen to the Beatles on an mp3 player have been unable to do so.

TSA Backlash Week: New Jersey!

Inky:
"TRENTON - The use of full-body scanners at airports should be reconsidered because the machines are ineffective, are overly intrusive, and open the door to further invasions of privacy depending on how the images are retained, New Jersey lawmakers said Monday as they announced a resolution urging Congress to review the program.

The effort brought together members of both political parties and both houses of the state Legislature as well as the American Civil Liberties Union. The resolution calls the scans a 'gross violation' of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure and says the machines' effectiveness has not been sufficiently proven."

Monday, November 15, 2010

TSA Backlash Week: Twitter Edition

#TSASlogans is trending on Twitter right now. A couple of favorites:





TSA Backlash Week: Fox News Strikes Back!

From my friend Ben, fresh video from Fox News:



The security folks seem unwilling to backdown. That's why TSA Backlash Week must continue.

Are Mennonites Becoming Too Influential?

At The American Spectator, Mark Tooley writes an article mocking Mennonites for their victimhood and for the perniciously liberal influence they're having in evangelical circles. He writes:
"All these neo-Anabaptists denounce traditional American Christianity for its supposed seduction by American civil religion and ostensible support for the 'empire.' They reject and identify America with the reputed fatal accommodation between Christianity and the Roman Emperor Constantine capturing the Church as a supposed instrument of state power. Conservative Christians are neo-Anabaptists' favorite targets for their alleged usurpation by Republican Party politics. But the neo-Anabaptists increasingly offer their own fairly aggressive politics aligned with the Democratic Party, in a way that should trouble traditional Mennonites. Although the neo-Anabaptists sort of subscribe to a tradition that rejects or, at most, passively abides state power, they now demand a greatly expanded and more coercive state commandeering health care, regulating the environment, and punishing wicked industries."

First: Tooley never really grapples with whether Mennonite pacifism is theologically correct. I think that's telling. Who wants to argue that Jesus wants us to drop fragmentation bombs on foreign countries?

Second: Tooley's right that martyrdom -- literal and metaphorical -- is at the foundation of the Mennonite story. He neglects that that's true of pretty much the entirety of Christianity. The founder died on a cross so that his followers could live! It's silly to act like Mennonites are particularly vulnerable to the self-pity that accompanies the theology.

Third: as has been much-noted, I'm no longer in the church. If I were to return to Christianity, though, I'd probably return to the Mennonites. And though it's not really my place to make this observation, Tooley might have a point that many active peace-and-justice Mennonites have put too much faith in politics, and in the Democratic Party in particular, to bring about a just world they believe Jesus points to. (It's not a uniform leaning, though. I grew up partially in the Mennonite Brethren church, where most of the people who surrounded me were far more interested in supporting the GOP's pro-life policies than the Dems' anti-war positions. I don't see Tooley complaining about that. )

I don't think that means Mennonites should absent themselves from politics. I think it's good to have a segment of society that offers principled resistance to American hawkishness. But Mennonites shouldn't expect to find salvation in politics. None of us should.

UPDATE: A friend suggests should make the point I made on my Facebook account, in response to the Spectator's "Mennonite Takeover?" headline: "Today, rural Kansas! Tomorrow: slightly more expansive areas of rural Kansas!" Demographically, Mennonites aren't and never will be all that strong a force. But I don't want to discount that Mennonite ideas can seep into the broader discourse without being joined to Mennonite identity, which still tends to have a very strong ethnic component. (Apologies to all my Desi Mennonite friends.)

TSA Backlash Week: Invading Your Privacy Is Good Business

Washington Examiner:
"If you've seen one of these scanners at an airport, there's a good chance it was made by L-3 Communications, a major contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company's behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D'Amato to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park's L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse.

The scanner contract, issued four days after the Christmas Day bomb attempt last year, is worth $165 million to L-3.

Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan's lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price's appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted 'Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.'"

Wait for it...
Deploying these naked scanners was a reaction to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas 2009, but the Government Accountability Office found, "it remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon Mr. Abdulmutallab used."

Your government in action.

TSA Backlash Week: Napolitano's Take

Janet Napolitano tries to get ahead of TSA Backlash Week. It might be more convincing if she didn't conclude with a blitz of bureaucratic-speak: "We face a determined enemy. Our security depends on us being more determined and more creative to adapt to evolving threats. It relies upon a multi-layered approach that leverages the strengths of our international partners, the latest intelligence, and the patience and vigilance of the American traveling public." And that's the most engaging part!

Hey, I get it: If a plane goes down, Napolitano loses her job and probably retires to the ranks of HeckuvaJobBrowniedom. It might not be entirely fair: As I've said, it's possible to do everything right and the terrorists still score a point. But read her whole piece and there's a sense that Napolitano -- who should have a bit of a political ear; she was a governor, after all -- isn't really engaging the real concerns of real people who actually have to hurdle TSA's procedures to go on business trips or visit family or do whatever else they have to do. Napolitano's message: It's not that bad. But the people who are coming forward with stories of being felt up or losing their tickets because they refuse invasive screening are adding up, and they have a message, too: It's bad enough. Stop it.

We're approaching a point where TSA is going to have to be responsive to the concerns of fliers -- the people it's trying to keep secure, after all -- or the agency will strangle the airline industry. The worst thing that can happen is that people accept these measures as "the new normal."

Afghanistan Quagmire Watch

Gen. Petraeus' feelings are apparently quite hurt over Hamid Karzai's publicly stated wish to reduce the number of American troops and scale back their activities in Afghanistan. The Washington Post quotes a NATO official: "'It's pretty clear that you no longer have a reliable partner in Kabul,' the official added. 'I think we tried to paper it over with [Karzai's] Washington visit' in May. 'But the wheels have becoming looser and looser . . . since that.'"

But Karzai hasn't been a reliable partner for a very, very long time. If you go back and look at Gen. Stanley McChrystal's memo that preceded the current surge of troops, it's clear that corruption in Karzai's government was a major factor in the recent successes of the Taliban. It's why I didn't support the surge, because there was no pathway to making Karzai an honest and good leader of his people. There still isn't. Why NATO officials would act surprised by that is perplexing.

The Perpetual E-Reader Revolution

New York Times: "This could be the holiday season that American shoppers and e-readers are properly introduced." Wait. Wasn't everybody writing that last Christmas? (Yes.) How many Christmases in a row are we going to hear that e-readers are really arriving in the American marketplace this year? Haven't they gotten their foothold by now? I think so. Maybe it's time for a new narrative.*

*Incidentally, really enjoying my iPad as an e-reader. I can do Kindle and Nook and Stanza and iBooks on it. Don't know why anybody would bother with a single-bookstore machine like Kindle at this point.