TSA 'Secured' Metrodome During Recent Football Game 364
McGruber writes "Travel writer Christopher Elliott touches down with the news that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration was spotted standing around outside a recent American football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers (picture). According to Mr. Elliott, the 'TSA goes to NFL games and political conventions and all kinds of places that have little or nothing to do with ... travel. It even has a special division called VIPR — an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team — that conducts these searches.' He continues, 'As far as I can tell, TSA is just asking questions at this point. "Data and results collected through the Highway BASE program will inform TSA's policy and program initiatives and allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to enhance the overall security posture within the surface transportation community," it says in the filing. But they wouldn't be wasting our money asking such questions unless they planned to aggressively expand VIPR at some point in the near future. And that means TSA agents at NFL games, in subways and at the port won't be the exception anymore — they will be the rule.'"
Nazi America (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not just get it over with and change your flag to the swastika, we all know that's where this is heading.
LOL! American Freedom! (Score:1, Insightful)
LOL! American Freedom!
TSA at Every Home (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't be long before there is a TSA agent posted at every home, to interview its occupants before they are allowed to leave.
Your papers, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not far off.
Re:Nazi America (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just get it over with and change your flag to the swastika, we all know that's where this is heading.
Well, I think the first step is to change their uniform shirts to a sort of a chocolate brown color, that has a "calming" effect...
Bureaucracy tending towards opression... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time for the US to get rid of the TSA, which has caught no terrorists, foiled no plots, cost millions, irradiated thousands with backscatter x-ray scanners, has stolen quite a few personal items and is actively trying to expand its sphere of influence.
Replace it with common sense and profile people. That's how airprort security works, not by wasting millions of dollars.
Hey TSA: Fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
You provide little actual security within your primary area of focus. Confinscating water bottles, nail clippers, groping little boys and girls, strip-searching people and putting unsolicited fingers on and in their privates, and using technology that your own people are now developing cancer from being near. You talk about terrorist threats, but how many terrorists have gotten away with irradiating our citizens? How many terrorists have stolen millions in camcorders, cell phones, and other electronics? How many terrorists have smuggled drugs onto commercial airlines? And the real kicker: Compared to those numbers, how many TSA agents have been caught doing the same?
You bring a level of institutional incompetence to the show that makes the current fiscal cliff negotiations look like someone forgetting to give the change back after buying a candy bar... you're overpriced, underwhelming, and frankly... the "cure" you provide is worse than the disease. And the only reason the TSA hasn't been drop-kicked out the door is because the media keeps people in perpetual ignorance of just how incompetent you guys truly are.
So when you come into my town and say "this will be the norm", I can't help but wonder how long until nobody flies, goes to public events, or even leaves their fucking house-- not because of terrorists, but because of the inconvenience of having to deal with your bullshit. Your organization is incompetent and useless. Go away.
Re:Bureaucracy tending towards opression... (Score:4, Insightful)
It was time to get rid of it when it was created. The first thing Obama should have done when sworn in was dismantle the Department of "Homeland Security" and fold everything back to how it was before the World Trade Center attacks. With the exceptions of Customs, let the airports handle their own security, and get rid of the "Constitution Free Zone."
Re:Bureaucracy tending towards opression... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck finding a politician willing to commit career suicide by dissolving the TSA.
Even in the extremely unlikely event that it's seen as a popular move with the electorate as a whole, do you really think all the campaign contributors with financial interests in the TSA supply chain would let them get re-elected?
Re:At least it will create jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're seeing an erosion of our freedom and privacy and your problem is that they just haven't caught a terrorist yet? Does that imply that there actions will be justified if they do? Would it therefore make more sense to give them even MORE power and take away even more personal liberty if that helps and leads to catching terrorists?
Re:Nazi America (Score:5, Insightful)
How was this marked troll? This is making it look like the US is gifting itself with a third, politically inspired police corps. Just like the SS.
Re:TSA at Every Home (Score:4, Insightful)
(I have actually been asked by a TSA agent how I was able to afford airline tickets.)
What was your answer? Did it include the words "none", "damn", "business", "yours"?
Re:Nazi America (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are mostly supportive of these security measures since they overwhelmingly voted for either Republican or Democrat
You're forgetting the part where most Americans are brainwashed into thinking that the only point that their vote is going to do any good (or bad for that matter) is if they vote Republican or Democrat. I keep meeting more and more people that hate both parties but vote for them, because "there's no other choice that's not throwing my vote away!" There's a pretty good chunk of people in the US right now that despise our government and are trying all kind of different means outside of starting a revolution to correct it. Unfortunately, that's MUCH easier said than done.
Re:At least it will create jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it would merely indicate that a non-lazy terrorist finally got his shit together and blew something up. Damn lazy terrorists. They are so soft and lazy they may as well not even exist. Oh wait...
If we had lots and lots of attacks on non-aviation or non-transportation targets or in the airport security lines themselves then you would have some evidence of a deterrence effect. So far you've got nothing more effective than a magic anti-tiger rock. Except that an anti-tiger rock won't cost you 7.85 billion USD per year. Of course if you wan't to pay that much I could sell you one. After all, you get what you pay for so my 8 billion dollar anti-tiger rock will be way more effective than one you found on the side of the road or whatever. Personally, I would feel just as safe if the US purchased an 8 billion dollar anti-terrorist rock and then dissolved the TSA. It would save taxpayers and travelers a whole lot of money in the long run as well since the rock is just a one time purchase.
Re:TSA at Every Home (Score:5, Insightful)
To which the TSA brute would reply, "Do you want to fly today?"
Re:Bureaucracy tending towards opression... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well they can't get rid of it now, can they? There would be a deluge of people who were undereducated, disgruntled and unemployed. Furthermore, these people are conditioned to see terrorism opportunities everywhere, they have insider knowledge of airport security, and they would have a motive to 'prove' that firing them had worsened security.
"Going TSA" will be the new "going postal".
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.
Re:Nazi America (Score:4, Insightful)
Read in PBS-Style voiceover: "This list brought to you by AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Twitter, and other message board posts like yours!"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nazi America (Score:4, Insightful)
100% that the next president ALSO won't disband it.
so, no need to blame this or that president. other than bush the bastard, who started it all going, that is.
it would take a powerful person (will-wise) to undo the security theatre we have. but we have not had a strong willed president since, well, kennedy? its been longer than I can remember, at any rate.
Re:At least it will create jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a large rock in my backyard. it keeps tigers away.
and its about as effective as the TSA is in their 'goals'. but my rock is a lot cheaper.
Re:Bureaucracy tending towards opression... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck finding a politician willing to commit career suicide by dissolving the TSA.
Would that be the same "career suicide" that Kennedy commited when he became a threat to those who control our nation's intelligence services? :)
Had we not flown... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boil the frog slowly is how the major parties operate; the major parties consist of politicians either too corrupt to stop or too inept to even realize what they are doing.
Re:domestic security? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I get that, and I also get that none of this is about security, but merely about control and power. What I don't get is why the security theater / homeland security smoke screen is so effective, but that's probably just me and owed to the fact that I've been taught history. History tells us where all of this will lead. As we now by now: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
As for why the "security theater / homeland security smoke screen is so effective"? Stop and think and honestly try and take stock of how many people you currently know personally who could be objectively called independent thinkers who are not afraid to live what they proclaim they believe. I am in my 40's and I can say this is not the America I grew up in. Very few people have the courage to live by the set of principles which made America a great Country to begin with.
Re:domestic security? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, like self-centered obsession with getting ahead personally regardless of the expense to others? Not that there haven't been some few stellar individuals that stood out, but the overall history of America is voracious greed thinly disguised as "individualism" or "manifest destiny". There are no longer free resources that are easily taken from the natives, or an endless supply of desperate newcomers to step on; we can't even overtly loot Central and South America now, thanks to global international relations. So now, we have turned inward and are eating ourselves. Very few stood on principle when it was every one else being digested, especially since the American middle class got the scraps. Don't pretend that now that it is the middle class that is the entree that somehow the principle of the matter has changed.
Re:Nazi America (Score:2, Insightful)
How do we change it?
Now you begin to understand why common citizens really do *need* AR-15 rifles.
Re:Nazi America (Score:4, Insightful)
Learn to love Alaska [romancingalaska.com]
But still encouraging others to go there?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)