The TSA and Big Brother
It ain't just airline passengers anymore;
Big Brother wants to screen EVERYONE!
“...no one may enter a train, stadium, school, shopping mall or bank in the United States without undergoing a thorough background check, a metal-detector scan and possibly a body search.”
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I recently embarked on an Internet safari in search of more information about "#TSA bots." You know, those little snoop snippits that can help you (or the other guy) ferret out and transport information across cyber-space. Well, as luck would have it, the search engine also found some stories about another familiar TSA... the (Transportation Security Administration). The news item that really caught my attention was the following information posted @:
http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/001497.html
As with many news items of late, the text is getting way too close to that of a George Orwell novel. I'll just let the scrappleface.com story speak for itself:
{TSA Screening Isn't Just for Airlines Anymore...
(2004-01-12) -- The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new enhanced program to screen all airline passengers will expand later this year so that no one may enter a train, stadium, school, shopping mall or bank in the United States without undergoing a thorough background check, a metal-detector scan and possibly a body search.
Starting next month, the TSA's Computer Assisted Passenger PreScreening Program (CAPPS 2) will compare airline passenger lists with computer databases, then classify each passenger with a color code (red, yellow, green) representing the individual's potential threat to the flight.
"This is a great advance in American liberty," said an unnamed spokesman for the TSA. "Thanks to this technology, you'll soon feel safe wherever you are because you'll know that everyone around you has been thoroughly vetted by our federal government."
Eventually, the system will interact with the computer chips in personal vehicles, screening each driver and passenger before allowing access to cars, trucks and Segway Human Transporters.
"When we get all the circuits humming," the official added, "each person will wear a color-coded threat-level badge everytime he or she leaves home. Through GPS technology, the badge will be updated in real time. It's the government's job to protect each citizen from all threats. And the biggest threat to people is other people. When you know which people are ThreatCon Yellow or Red, you can make wiser choices."}
{"This is a great advance in American liberty," said an unnamed spokesman...}
I guess that when you tell such outrageous lies, you would want to go "unnamed." It has been more than two hundred years since Ben Franklin spoke these words of wisdom ....
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
... but how timely and apparently immortal they have become!
Please note that the time-frame for all this to take place is “later this year.” Not four or five years down the road, but “later this year!” When bureaucracy swings into action, it don’t take long to destroy our liberty.
You would think that our elected leaders in Washington would have figured out by now that further restrictions upon the liberty of our law-abiding citizens will not get the job done in fighting a religious war against an enemy of fanatics. Rather than make an honest attempt to secure our borders and curtail the overwhelming army of immigrants flooding into this country, our government chooses instead to abridge our privacy through electronic tracking devices. School children in many communities now are having to submit a thumb-print before being served their lunch or allowed to board a bus.
Our government has been slowly programming its citizens, young and old, to the point where they not only [accept] these intrusions into their privacy, but they have come to [EXPECT] them!
The obstructions to, and removal of our freedoms over the past two decades has crossed both party lines. Some methods taken by those in power may appear more radical than others, but the worst infringements of our liberty and privacy slipped right by us because we were convinced there was a problem that only more government control could fix. So now we have allowed ourselves to be governed by bureaucracy. When the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), TSA, or the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) makes a ruling, there is no representative for the common man to appeal to. Presidential “Executive Orders” are rarely reversed, even by a sitting President of the opposing party to the one who wrote a previous order.
But many U.S. citizens, fortunately, have now come to the conclusion that much of what has been implemented in the name of “Homeland Security” has more to do with increased CONTROL over the people and more POWER rendered to the government than it has to do with keeping our homeland secure from our actual enemies. Too many of us, however, have been persuaded to base our opinions on fear, rather than fact. What we really need to do right now is become more vigilant to our surroundings. We need to read the news more carefully, and learn to search out which news agencies are projecting the facts, and which ones are merely promoting someone's agenda.
It's not that easy to find the honest truth every time we look at the news, but if we are to remain free, we must educate ourselves to the extent where we are aware of, and imune to, mass media spin. Times may have changed, but we must weigh our present-day decisions against the age old wisdom of our forefathers. We cannot allow the sacred precepts written into our Constitution, which safeguard our freedoms, to be tread upon or overturned because we failed to call upon our faith and courage in our time of trouble.
May God help us (U.S.)!
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Gary Miller
gmiller@tpromo.com
March 15, 2004