Shrieks for Full-Body Scanners Grow

Power is unwielding and intoxicatingly opportunist so that upon each hint of possible crisis becomes a welcome chance to enact radical and sweeping change. It was Rahm Emanuel, presidential Chief of Staff who put it best when he told the Wall Street Journal, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." "And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you that you didn't think you could do before."

After the failed Christmas Day plane bombing, another fearful atmosphere of crisis now prevails. While Americans remain aware of the attack, the general non-chalance toward the so-called failed terrorist attack contrasts starkly with the behooved huffing voices on the District of Columbia's congressional floor.

News reports over the weekend indicate increased congressional calls to intervene in Department of Homeland Security policies setting Transportation Security Administration procedures of screening passengers boarding aircraft in the United States. In particular, loud voices call for legislation enacting mandatory full-body scanning of all passengers.

To those unaware, full body imaging entails passengers being X-rayed, similar to what occurs to carry-on luggage. These high-ray machines produce lifelike bodily images of subjects, literally seeing entirely through all clothing, revealing a nude image.

Yet, the TSA insists their scanning limits what remote scanners view as facial features and genitalia are blurred. The TSA also maintains viewers monitoring the scans are placed in a remote location unable to see or be seen by the photographed subject.

Legislation mandating high X-ray scan imaging whose product borders on pornographic and involves certain moral and ethical violations, if not legal crimes, should never be forced on American people simply attempting to travel. If enacted, disastrous results will follow and an even greater curtailment of liberty will ensue. Domestic and international travel will become grounded and the world will revert to an isolationism in travel far grander than ever existed during Cold War times. Full body image scanning must be stopped!

Congress' hawkish calls to punitively harass, humiliate and degrade the blameless traveling public are open warfare upon the American People. These calls remain incongruous with public opinion and imply regulations which are legally questionable and ethically bereft. If the Union is to survive intact and in spirit, liberty must be preserved. For what little remains, the Union may, as some suggest, be beyond the pale.

Enhanced: Security State

As the aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day plane bombing sizzles on, an internal debate is raging amongst populace and ruling class alike over the lessons learned by this foiled plot. While much of the political commentary provided by CNN, the New York Times and the BBC focuses on the security breaches by alleged hijacker Farouk Abdulmutallb, few have dared discuss the motivations behind the attack.

And in the wake of the hatched plan, the conversation turns to the failure of security. In evaluating this topic, however, the analyses given by the so-called "experts" fail to pass the bar.

With reports indicating that the Nigerian born student acted in response to U.S. bombings in Yemen in early December that killed nearly 100 (reportedly including many civilian deaths), no newscaster will discuss the importance of such motivation in preventing future similar attacks.

While President Obama announced a comprehensive TSA airport security review in both intelligence-related and physical screening procedures shortly after the attempted bombing, it is unlikely even with more restrictive procedures that the American public will be made any safer.

To pursue a response-activated strategy that is guided by the principle we must retroactively address possible threats by insulating ourselves with another 'layer' of security is pure fallacy. If anything, more invasive physical screening procedures for average Americans will distract from true threats. With a "stay-the-course" foreign policy continued into the 2010s, threats remain possible and likely.

It is clear terrorism became a political football long ago. But as it continues in a new era, there appears no end to the Democratic-Republican enforced use of it to scare the people, then coddle them in an effort to break their will. By discouraging simple freedoms and introducing new humiliating screening procedures, which are at best, invasive of privacy and morally dubious, the American government is clear in its message of retributive action against the People, who are evidently blameless in the intelligence security breach which occurred on Christmas Day.

After investigation, Farouk Abdulmutallab was actually on a terror-watch list but was not flagged before boarding his flight. Clearly, there was a failure of screening on the front line intelligence level, which remains the best tool for authorities in the modern War on Terror. However, when this very list does not serve its purpose and the suspect's fathers reported him to authorities over two months prior to the incident, questions arise as to the viability of international security. Some have even suggested Abdulmutallab was helped to board the plan without holding a passport, aided by a well-dressed and explanatory American. While unsubstantiated, it certainly adds to the questions of how Abdulmutallab passed through security and who may have assisted in the act.

Simply put, security is not perfect nor will it ever be close to it. It is especially true with an organization as inefficient as the federal government running it. To expect the government (honestly folks, only so limited) to protect every person pre-emptively from any violent act in any part of a giant nation of 300 million people is absurd and untenable.

Just imagine the attempt! Stationed police and screeners at every private business or public place, all in efforts to "prevent terror". How far does this faulty paradigm have to go? What type of sane society would ever accept this arrangement!?

Stereotypically, the government has again decided to collectively punish an entire nation for one failure of airport security in a foreign land. Clearly, the failure here occurred due to negligence on behalf of Dutch and Nigerian authorities, not those working at the TSA. Mind yhou, the whole incident even ended prior to the plane touching down in Detroit, Michigan. And at that, the heroes of the failed attempt at terror were in fact those who will now be punished retroactively.

Without recourse or even a frank public debate, it appears the sheltered security-obsessed screening bureaucrats will win the day with morally-misguided and further repressive screening. Passengers have to contend with possible passage of a federally-backed "Rules of Behavior" enforced in all airports and all planes nationwide, and perhaps internationally. As Peter Greenberg of CBS reports, the more extreme of the privately-implemented security reforms in recent days include provisions prohibiting passengers from accessing any carry-on items for a whole hour prior to landing.

As old Aunt Ethel will be scolded and shunted for trying to finish that last page of the chapter in that paperback romance novel, little time will be left to deal with real possible threats who've been flagged by intelligence communities.

Meanwhile, political commentators call for mandatory full-body image screening for each person boarding aircraft in the United States, and this time with no "pat-down option". For those who are unfamiliar with full-body image scanning, the machine takes amazingly lifelike X-ray body photographs, seeing entirely through all clothes and producing a real nude image, with genitalia and facial images later blocked out from the generated picture.

Yet, it remains hard to believe agent Jim won't be looking even for a split second at grandma's kahoonies or little Tommy's rear. To assure against this possibility, the TSA has assured the American public no images are ever recorded and that all private parts are scrambled.

While it's likely there will be some compromise on this highly debatable front, security will be tightened in upcoming times and the American people will face greated frustration with the TSA. Fronted by the Department of Homeland Security as a self-appointed agency, the TSA is too laughably a creature of its own creation. 'Til that creature seriously catches up with reality and the reckoning of Americans, it is assured to drown in its own inept mediocrity and ineffectiveness.

Technology without Reason: DHS Plans to Scan Bodily Functions

In the strangest yet predictable twist in the eight year long Department of Homeland Security saga, CNN reports that the DHS is planning to enact the use of bodily function scanners in selective airports in two short years. This high-tech surveillance initiative which RawStory.com reports has been dubbed FAST (Future Attribute Scanning Technology) seeks to measure such functions as personal heartbeat, eye movement and even muscle twitch data that would be compiled into a fused database used for screening purposes. This sort of lie detector would then place travelers through the appropriate screening process levels according to the perceived threat they could pose. Hence, if an extrapolation of the data reaches conclusions that a person may be in some way nervous or uncomfortable, any accusation of that could be considered probable cause for futher investigation and detention.

While government officials are lauding FAST as a way to combat terrorism and get closer to isolating unruly flyers as potential threats, the program has little scientific value. It is a mere tool to gather information that never will qualify as conclusive reason for needed interrogation or detention. It is simply absurd that through detections of bodily functions one can determine another's sole intent in acting in a certain fashion. This scheme is no other than a data-mining operation launched for the sheer purpose of getting more information on citizens, information which may be used after the fact to stipulate and accuse of them of wrongdoing and misconduct.

These sort of guilty-until-proven-innocent paradigms are dangerous to liberty and a direct violation of innate human rights. The creation of a science of "microexpressions" is a precursor and a promoter of pre-crime conviction and an evil that defies logic itself. The Orwellian Department of Homeland Security's continued march toward fascism is a crime of grand proportions and a farce of security.

The Might of Sovereignty

As reported last week, the United States and Pakistan shared an intensely tenuous moment when American helicopters incurred across the Afghan border and into the sovereign nation. Giving a stern warning, the Pakistani military fired warning flares, and a short exchange of warning shots, prompting the Americans to leave and return back into the seven year old colony. In the Khost Province right across the border, the American military has been known in the past months to pursue terrorists into Pakistan, incurring anger from Pakistani officials. While the military dictator Perez Musharraf might have encouraged such blatant violations of national sovereignty, the new Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will not allow it. The widower of recently assassinated Benzair Bhutto sent a strong message to the United States: respect our borders.

Even in the midst of a region engulfed with a US militaristic nation-building enterprise, Pakistan is not afraid to stand down. Not only must they deal with American incursions, but also historically tenuous relations with nuclear neighbor India, and China's growing influence in their hemisphere. While Pakistan seems prompt to allow the United States a sphere of influence in the region, the new president is not afraid to draw the line on what is termed acceptable in America's obsessed War on Terror.