What Say To Background Checks In Order To Skip Groping? ACLU Still Mostly Silent

I’m torn on this idea: on one hand, we have all had our backgrounds checked for one purpose or another, from applying for a credit card to applying for a job. On the other hand, those are all simply voluntary, and here you’ll have the government checking your background like you’re a criminal to see if you will be allowed not to be groped in order to take a privately owned airline flight

If Americans don’t want the government touching their “junk” to improve air security, the alternative may well be greater scrutiny of passengers’ travel histories and personal backgrounds, security experts say.

The public backlash against the aggressive pat-downs the federal government rolled out this month could put more pressure on the government to introduce security measures previously rejected on privacy grounds, including in-depth interrogations of travelers at airports, government scrutiny of passengers’ airline information, and even creation of a secure, standardized national ID card.

Now, measures like this are used in many countries, such as Israel, and actually have worked very well. Of course, those countries do not have the same Constitutionally guaranteed Rights that we do, not too mention that Israel uses other measures such as profiling and heavily secured cockpit doors. Oh, and remember, El Al was actually a government entity, until it was fully transferred into private ownership in January 2005, so, people became used to the idea, and they were entering secured government property.

Yet, would this actually catch terrorists? That would depend, mostly, on how often the background checks are done, and how intensive. Also, whether Los Federales would actually have the cajones to deny the people most likely to be terrorists from receiving whatever groping waiver the background checks would provide. And, remember, Richard Reid and the Crotch Bomber all came on international flights, so, these background checks would have not caught them, unless the other countries do the same.

Would the TSA give out background check “cards” or something well in advance, which would allow terrorists to go through training afterwards, or, would they do a check at the time of ticket purchase, or even at the counter? The story suggests at the airport, but, that did not come from an actual TSA official.

Would they chicken out on profiling when issues in the background pop up? Take 9/11 for example: would TSA have had the fortitude to put four Muslim men per flight, with all sorts of worrisome past travel destinations, such as Taliban controlled and al Qaeda supporting Afghanistan, through advanced and intrusive body checks? Or, would they wimp out in the face of lawsuits from CAIR and the ACLU?

Speaking of the ACLU, did you know they have received more than 900 complaints so far over the enhanced gropings, er, pat downs?

The American Civil Liberties Union has received over 900 complaints in the month of November from travelers who have been subjected to the Transportation Security Authority’s (TSA) new “enhanced” screening procedures. The procedures include sending travelers through backscatter X-ray machines that produce naked outlines of travelers’ bodies and subjecting them to thorough pat-downs that include TSA agents touching their breasts and genitals on the outside of their clothing.

The story lists several stories of gropings, and you can read more stories here. Yet, for all that, the ACLU is mostly silent. Many people (I can guess which side of the political aisle they sit on) criticized me in my previous two posts about the ACLU being absent (interestingly, they mostly cited the exact same ACLU article I provided in the first story), yet, my point still stands: the ACLU is mentioning the issue of enhanced pat downs (without even the courtesy of dinner and a movie), but doing nothing about it. Usually, one can count on the threat of a lawsuit, or even an actual lawsuit, from the ACLU. Or, they might be DEMANDING records and government information. Remember the so-called “domestic wiretapping” issue, which was anything but, and, of course, not actually intrusive? They went ballistic. Here? It’s all “just send us your groping stories.” Maybe the ACLU plans to submit them to Penthouse letters or something.

TSA Groping motivator

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. sit back and Relax. we’ll dRive!

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