Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com

November 9, 2010

UPDATE: TSA: No Fondling, Groping Or Squeezing Is Taking Place At Airports

The TSA has reacted to the burgeoning backlash against airport oppression with a glib response that does nothing to address the multitude of complaints put forward by some of the most prominent travel and pilots associations in the world.

As the New York Times reports today, no less than four major travel organizations have strongly criticized the TSA in recent weeks over increasingly stifling airport security measures that do little to assure safety yet are causing many people to refuse to travel to the United States, costing the industry millions of dollars a year.

“In recent weeks, representatives from the International Air Transport Association, the U.S. Travel Association, the Allied Pilots Association and British Airways have criticized the T.S.A., saying it adds intrusive and time-consuming layers of scrutiny at airport checkpoints, without effectively addressing legitimate security concerns,” states the report.

The U.S. Travel Association is warning that onerous and “absurd” security procedures, which are only getting worse with the TSA’s recent move to institute outright groping of passengers that would be considered sexual assault in any other context, are discouraging people from air travel.

Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, said that the notion of passengers as guilty until proven innocent was also a complete misnomer.

“Discouraging travelers with queues into the parking lot is not a solution,” Mr. Bisignani said during a speech last week. “And it is not acceptable to treat passengers as terrorists until they prove themselves innocent.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

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As we reported yesterday, the largest independent union of airline pilots in the world is also urging its members to boycott body imaging machines currently being rolled out in airports all over the globe, citing dangers of excessive exposure to harmful levels of radiation during the screening process. The announcement by the Allied Pilots Association came after a ExpressJet Airlines, Inc pilot Michael Roberts was detained and suspended for refusing to be scanned.

Last month, British Airways Chairman Martin Broughton called for the UK to stop mimicking “completely redundant” security measures instituted by the TSA, calling for them to be immediately scrapped.

Longer waits in security queues are causing many to scale back air travel altogether. The Times cites the example of Cornell Professor Dieter Ast, who refuses to submit to naked body scanners.

“I’m not taking as many trips,” Professor Dieter said. “And my European friends are avoiding the U.S. because of the hassle.”

But it’s not just longer waiting times and enhanced groping measures that are causing the outrage, countless examples of abuse and degradation, particularly involving the elderly, the physically disabled, women and children, involving TSA thugs have prompted many potential tourists to refuse to travel to the United States.

As a result of a seemingly deliberate policy to humiliate and demean weaker members of society, US airport security, not just TSA agents but also Homeland Security goons, have attracted an odious reputation globally as something akin to the East German Stasi who controlled border security in pre-perestroika Berlin.

The TSA has responded to the controversy by offering nothing more than a terse email statement which glibly states, “T.S.A. is a counterterrorism agency whose mission is to ensure the safety of the traveling public. To that end, T.S.A. deploys the latest technologies and implements comprehensive procedures that protect passengers while facilitating travel.”

It looks like it’s going to take a raft of lawsuits and compensation claims to scale back TSA tyranny and that’s the course taken by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in its bid to prove that the naked body scanners are dangerous and completely illegal.

Until the TSA realizes that its job is to provide rational and sensible security screening to protect the American people and the vast majority of innocent travelers from the infinitesimal percentage of bad guys that try to board airplanes, and not to treat every single person as not just a terrorist, but in many cases lower than an animal in the levels of abuse metered out, the backlash against airport molestation will continue to build and it will end up costing the US government billions in lost tourism revenue as well as lawsuits against TSA thugs.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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