stories filed under: "ron paul"
TSA Likely To Face Multiple Sexual Assault Charges For New Searches
from the tipping-point dept
Think the complaints about the TSA are beginning to reach a tipping point? There's a whole bunch of new news on this front, starting with a California district attorney saying that he's ready to charge TSA agents with sexual assault if evidence is presented that the new pat downs go too far (apparently multiple DAs are now saying this).Hopefully, some other DAs are willing to do the same, because some are ready and willing to file sexual assault charges. Richard Kulawiec points us to the news of how a nursing mother in Dayton feels she was sexually assaulted by the TSA. Contrary to claims from the TSA, she was not informed that her private parts would be touched (repeatedly, from the sound of it). She was not given the option of having it happen in a private area. And, she notes, this was not about her refusal to go through a full body backscatter scanner, since those aren't even in operation at that airport. The account is pretty chilling as the woman is clearly quite troubled by the experience (as she should be).
Along those lines, at the federal level, Ron Paul has introduced new legislation that would make it clear that TSA agents are subject to sexual harassment laws. You can see him speaking about it here:
TSA doesn't require much at all, it turns out. This government agency-gone-wild performs a background check to weed out applicants who are convicted felons, but TSA does not test at all for applicants’ psychological soundness.In fact, it's so silly that the parody video below, of a "porn-addict applying for a job at the TSA" really doesn't seem all that far-fetched these days:
These are low-wage government employees granted full authority to touch passengers however they like. There is no indication that TSA agents have selectively abused their authority, but as with all government programs: If there are no checks in place to limit power, authority will be abused. Forget racial profiling; if there no limits to officials’ power, what would stop them from claiming the most attractive powers need a more thorough patdown?
That said, apparently legislators in New Jersey and Idaho have introduced legislation banning the naked body scanners (oh and in New York as well). Of course, I'm sure the TSA will just claim that in the absence of the machines, they'll just have to do more groping.
As for the TSA? Well, it's still trying to defend its position. Its latest is to claim that 130 prohibited, illegal or dangerous items have been kept off airplanes in the past year. What, like nail clippers and bottles of water? Where are the actual details? What has been caught? Who has been arrested? What happened to them?
Filed Under: ron paul, searches, sexual assault, sexual harassment, tsa
Companies: tsa
Can Someone Channel Ron Paul Supporter Energy For Good Instead Of Annoyance?
from the note:-this-doesn't-make-you-look-good dept
Are you familiar with the horror movie Candyman? In it, naive victims-to-be summon the titular character by repeating his name five times while staring into a mirror. Unpleasantness ensues.Strangely enough, the exact same phenomenon applies to Republican presidential contender Ron Paul. But you'll need a web browser instead of a mirror, and you only need to say his name once.
The online omnipresence of Paul's supporters is impressive to the point of being terror-inducing. Virtually any online poll in which Paul appears can be counted on to swing wildly in his favor — in the wake of one such incident, the National Journal begged Paul's supporters "please stop emailing us." Stories involving Dr. Paul make it to the front page of Digg on a daily basis, and any blog post that triggers a Google Alert for his name is sure to see a flood of comments arrive shortly thereafter.
Now some of his supporters have been caught promoting their preferred candidate using decidedly unsavory means. SecureWorks has released a report detailing the mechanisms behind a four day pro-Paul spam flood (one that we noted back on November 1). Apparently a botnet was employed to send unsolicited emails via infected computers, in much the same illegal style that's used to hawk pirated software and disc0unt v1agra.
Dirty pool, to be sure — and foolish on the part of the Paul fans behind it. The spam and rigged online polls aren't fooling anyone, and only make it easier to dismiss the campaign's online prominence as a the work of a handful of talented geeks. But there's no CPAN module that lets you create a blimp via Perl script; most of the pro-Paul comments left around the net contain enough context that they appear to have been written by actual humans; and incidents like the one that occurred at the San Francisco Republican Straw Poll make it clear that Paul's campaign has some real grassroots support behind it. I'm not buying Ron Paul contracts on Intrade just yet, but it would be nice to see his online armies knock off the transparent internet antics and start channeling their energy toward more productive — or at least dignified — ends. Unfortunately, as my fellow Techdirt Insight Community member and blogger Tim Lee has discussed elsewhere, the odds of this happening don't seem to be very good.
Spammers For Ron Paul
from the who-knew? dept
It's no secret that Ron Paul's candidacy for president has captured the attention of many technology-savvy voters. This isn't all that surprising given Paul's libertarian views and the widespread support of libertarian ideals by many in the technology world. However, Wired News is now reporting on the fact that spammers seem to be supporting Ron Paul too. Pro-Paul spam messages are being sent out, even with typical spam obfuscation gibberish in the subject lines: "Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO" and "Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO" are two examples in the article. Of course, while the article suggests that Paul's supporters may be doing the spamming, it might be something different. Spammers are well known for responding to news events with current event-related spam -- knowing that it's more likely to catch the attention of readers. Even if the current batch of spam isn't selling anything (other than support for Ron Paul), that could just be to get through filters so that the next batch of spam advertising stocks or drugs is more likely to get through. Of course, another possibility might be that spammers figure that a President like Paul would likely try to do away with anti-spam legislation which could be seen as a violation of the First Amendment. Somehow, that seems unlikely though.
