No airport director wants to be the one that DOESN’T choose the government-funded TSA and is then implicated in a terrorist attack, though. So all airports choose the TSA, and no other security company gets a look-in. Like the old IBM ad-line.

Plus, of course, the government-funded and equipped TSA is miles cheaper than the other companies because they are massively subsidised.

If there was a huge commercial reason for airports to pick a different (more expensive, less-well-equipped) security provider, then they would, of course.

But that’s not gonna happen until something happens that strips the TSA of its government subsidies, and privatises it.

Where are you ‘it’s my body’ women now? Stand up for yourselves for crying out loud!

Security in your person doesn’t mean anything anymore apparently.

Why should the force upon what you could legal shoot and kill them for elsewhere?

What do you mean? The TSA said the gropings aren’t punishment, so how would they possibly be fucking themselves over? Remember, the TSA is “only” doing this to make you (appear) safer, not to screw with people that don’t want to be scanned.

>backups in the security area make as good a target, if not better, as an airplane. By creating blockages, you are making it that much better for a potential attack

Who cares? There are about a thousand unsecured soft targets that are way better than trying to blow up a plane. We are really safe from the previous war/attack though. Maybe france should build another maginot line too?

I’m going to be calling every airline and telling them, while not a frenquent flier, I’m about to become a never-with-them-flier.

It is no different than a single woman so afraid to lose her job to support her kids so some scumbag of a boss let’s her know ‘how’ to keep her job – wink, wink.

Now the ‘boss’ is the government! Scum. Sumbit to my sexual proposals and you can keep your way of life…

Mkultra, then you deserve to be microwaved and fondled.

Do they have T-shits in kids sizes as well? One slogan could be, “It was more fun with Michael Jackson”.

“GETTING OFF?”, “LOVE USA, FUCK TSA”, …

What is the benefit of this degrading exchange? Don’t tell me it’s “enhanced security” during airtravel. They are doing the same damn thing to the PILOTS OF THE AIRPLANES- the very people who could, at any time, decide to crash the plane into a building. So that argument is disingenuous at best- idiotic at worst.

The bodyscanners are just another giant boondoggle- a gift from War State Lackey Politicians to their friends in War Industry Profiteering… If you don’t believe me, then why not go to youtube and watch Michael Chertoff, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, showing up on every damn news channel possible- trumpeting the wonders of these new machines (while NOT admitting that he is on the payroll of the company that makes and installs the machines!) Do you get it now?

The “War On Terror to Protect Us From The Freedom-Hating Enemy” is a big crock of crap. We’ve had more freedoms taken away from us by our own government than our theoretical enemies could ever take away by concocting low-budget schemes from caves in Afghanistan…

The solution to the 9/11 hijackings was to fortify cockpits in all planes. It would’ve cost under $20M to make all cockpits in commercial jets impenetrable.

Instead of that, we built up yet another massive government bureaucracy, “The Department of Homeland Security”. We spent billions on machines to detect bomb-making residue in 2002-2003- making some OTHER War State cronies super wealthy… And then a few years later, we forgot about those and are now spending billions on naked-body scanners sold to us by the former head of the Department of Homeland Security. These scanners will actually result in increased incidents of cancer, to say nothing of the further degradation of an American population who has already suffered a great deal under the incompetence and corruption of the political class over the last decade…

In the end, the biggest terrorist risk to airplanes are ground-based stinger missiles being fired near a runway. No drug-sniffing machines, no x-rays, no genital fondling government lackeys are going to change that fact. Our government knows that- but they don’t care. They’re not really trying to protect us in the first place- they’re trying to crush us.

So- if you don’t care if the government has photos of you and your kids naked… Maybe you should care that it is robbing you blind to enrich corrupt plutocrats who are wiping their arses with the Constitution? And it’s just going to get worse-and-worse until enough of us stand up and tell them to we’re not taking it anymore.

Meh, choosing not to fly doesn’t do a lick of harm to the national economy. If you’re not spending it on plane tickets you’re spending it elsewhere.

Well, that’s a really weak argument. Tourism does more than spread the wealth, it allows the population to communicate on a grassroots level. Staycationing fosters insularity. Insularity breeds division.

And it’s not just domestic tourism and business travel, of course. I literally(and I know what that means and implies), know several dozen people overseas that have, over the last 8 years or so, restricted their travel to the US based on the perception of the indignities they would have to put up with visiting here. Europeans, Oceanians, and ex-pat Americans, alike.

Second paragraph: Airlines have always had a hard time. Before deregulation allowed airlines to drop unprofitable routes, air travel was expensive. That meant a smaller customer base. After, it’s been cut-throat competition for market-share leading the industry to shave margins.

There isn’t much of an airline lobby. They can’t afford it. Their margins are razor thin. Politicians in DC that don’t have government-paid air travel do depend upon the airlines to get them back ‘home’ to campaign for their jobs, so I guess they do recognize some self-interest in perpetuating the industry.

Personally, I think the TSA in its present form should be disbanded entirely. It’s the illusion of security and is nothing more than harassment.

* I don’t want them to take nekkid pictures of my kids, and expose them to radiation of a dubious, medically unnecessary nature.
* I don’t want them to grope my kids.

I’m Seriously Not Interested in them terrorizing my kids. The last time they patted down one of my kids, he was about a year old, and he was bawling because of it, and that was pre-enhancement. There wasn’t any serious groping involved.

Now that it’s so blatantly obvious that the intent is humiliation to force compliance, people are actually wising up and trying to put these thugs in their place.

It isn’t that I’m a coward, but I have better things to do with my life than being forced to travel overseas by cruise ship for the rest of my life because I annoyed random TSA official #2782 into putting me on the no-fly list.

Then again, I’m not really much of one for activism, protests and the like. I’ll leave the rabble-rousing to people with a higher degree of righteous indignation than I’m capable of summoning.

i lol in the sad way that the manufacturer of the scanners is called Rapiscan. Say it with me: rape-y-scan!! Everybody!

great, all the joys of flying and now this…