Former DHS/NSA Official Says You Should Blame Privacy Advocates For The TSA Groping You
from the wait,what? dept
Remember Stewart Baker? He's the former Homeland Security and NSA officials who recently argued that civil liberties activists were to blame for 9/11. Apparently, that sort of thinking (blame the activists for what it leads the government to do) worked so well the last time, he's back for more. According to him, all the bullshit you've had to go through with the TSA at our airports is because of those darn meddling privacy advocates. Yes, we've now learned that the reason a TSA measured the weight of my little friend and his bag of tricks is because privacy advocates just wouldn't let the TSA do invasive background checks on all of us. The privacy advocating jerks.TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions.Of course! It isn't the TSA's fault the TSA debased me. It's because privacy advocates (also me) didn't want the TSA to debase me by massively invading my privacy. It makes perfect sense! Never mind that this is all a theater show ostensibly designed to up the suicide count of Americans worldwide, because they sure aren't catching anyone important. It's the privacy people who are to blame. Also, all those women who are sexually assaulted? Pshh, they were dressed to provocatively. Blame the short-skirt makers or whoever.
Then, because apparently Stewart Baker hasn't been reading the news lately, he testified that instead the government just needs more data on all of us, while driving home the point that the current security screenings are stupid.
No one wants to be against privacy, but we've tried the privacy campaigners' preferred solution, denying even the smallest scrap of data to the government, and they saddled us with ten years of stupid screening at our airports, where a lack of data forced TSA to treat everyone like a suspected terrorist. No one liked that solution, with good reason. It's time to recognize that failure and encourage experiments in smarter, faster, more informed screening based on data-sharing.Okay, no. The TSA has not tried the privacy campaigner's preferred solution, because I've yet to hear a privacy campaigner stamp her feet over the fact that her nipples haven't been tweaked lately. And, while everyone would like better and safer solutions for traveling, making the "our government just doesn't have enough data on us" argument at this point in time might be the most tone-deaf thing since Bob Dylan. The TSA is full of misconduct, the government is collecting too much data on us and is overloaded with it, all while even the TSA's advocates are calling their current screening processes "stupid."
Drop the curtain on this theater, because the show has been going on too long and it sucks anyway.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: blame, civil liberties, privacy, privacy advocates, stewart baker, tsa
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Next: Environmental activists responsible for British Petroleum disaster on the Gulf - brought to you by Stewart Baker and Green Leprechaun
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
-TSA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Confiscating baby bottles and partially filled bottles of water doesn't count as a real security value.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tell us what you really think. :-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
love the image, feisty girl
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Preferred solution
When did we try that? I must have missed it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Slapstick
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TSA stands for there's something amok!
TSA=Thousands Standing Around
TSA=Tough S#*t Airlines
TSA=Tough, Stupid & Arrogant
From a former TSA "officer" who got fed up with its incompetence and left years ago.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]