I feel safe now.

While Benny Hill's play acting exploits were funny the same can not be said for the security play acting by the TSA.

Title 49 §1540.107 Submission to screening and inspection.

(a) No individual may enter a sterile area or board an aircraft without submitting to the screening and inspection of his or her person and accessible property in accordance with the procedures being applied to control access to that area or aircraft under this subchapter.

Click photo for full size.

The TSA has cultivated a culture of arrogance and impunity. History has shown that those that feel they are above the law or they are the law, like the TSOs pictured above, are the ones most likely to break the law.

The TSOs working at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) on April 26th, pictured above, do not walk through the metal detector nor do their large backpacks get a hand check or even a courtesy ride through the x-ray in violation of the very law the TSA created.

If we rarely heard about TSOs breaking the law I might be willing to cut them some slack on this security hole the TSA has intentionally created. Sadly not a month goes by without a story of a serious breach of trust perpetrated by the TSA's employees.

The stories of TSA employees using their positions to steal, run drugs and weapons, or abuse a passenger's rights run rampant on the news outlets and most of the stories do not document a one of event but a pattern of abuse. It begs the question, do any of the TSOs pictured above routinely break other laws that are supposed to provide security and safety to the citizens of this country and their property?

It would be all too easy to blame this culture of arrogance and abuse on a few petty tyrants and bad apples at the security checkpoints, but the infection runs much deeper than that. Gale Rossides, the acting head of the TSA, recently signed off on a 60 day test run to violate the 4th Amendment rights of private citizens at Logan International (BOS) with the use of the passive MMW device SPO-7.

The use of the SPO-7 goes far beyond the administrative search right that the TSA has a statutory right to conduct at the checkpoints. Francine Kerner, the chief legal counsel of the TSA, is fully aware of the Supreme Court ruling forbidding the warrantless use of technology not readily available to the common citizen, to peer beyond what is in plain sight in order to generate probable cause. (KYLLO v. UNITED STATES 533 U.S. 27) Francine Kerner is also aware of the Supreme Court ruling that upholds the principle that the 4th Amendment protects people, not places. (KATZ V. UNITED STATES, 389 U. S. 347) The Katz ruling effectively eliminates any argument that the common area of an airport is special when it comes to searching citizens that may or may not be seeking access to the sterile area.

The systematic abuse of our rights by the TSA has got to stop!

I need the readers of this blog to help me by submitting photos of checkpoints, hidden signage, TSA employees that are violating the law or any other photos that show the TSA in a true light.

To be fair, if you see a TSA employee that is one of the "good guys", acting within the law or being helpful and professional, take their photograph too. Just don't get the pictures mixed up, I would hate to paint them all with the same brush.

Send me a message via this blog include your email (I won't publish email addresses) and I will email you with instructions for sending the photos.