The slide into the surveillance state picks up the pace as TSA to expand facial recognition scanners from 30 to over 400 US airports

 TSA Expands Facial Recognition Scanners to 400+ Airports...

 “The CAT-2 units are currently deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide, and will expand to more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years,” the TSA official said, noting that it is currently optional for travelers to participate in facial recognition screenings. Those that decline to do so can notify a TSA agent and go through the standard ID verification process instead. ... During a discussion at the South by Southwest festival in March 2023, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said “eventually we will get to the point where we will require biometrics across the board because it is much more effective and much more efficient.”

Currently optional, eventually required.

Lesson of the Florida "bomber": They don't "x-ray" the mail at any point in the system to keep bombs out

Rush Limbaugh confidently misinformed millions of his listeners this week that the USPS scans suspicious packages in order to intercept them and keep them away from the public.

For his part, radio personality Michael Savage laughably spent most of the week wondering how all these "bombs" could be "hand-delivered" all over the place supposedly without entering the postal system, because he believed fake news to that effect. It must have been a conspiracy! The van was too clean after all that driving up and down the east coast and to California and back! The stickers on the windows were too recently affixed because they weren't yet faded!

What we learned once again, however, was that the USPS only isolates suspicious packages for scanning by outside authorities. The cost of installing such scanners in every postal sorting facility would cost billions of dollars the already bankrupt USPS doesn't have. In this instance, the USPS was alerted to the package M/O by the outside authorities after the fact, after some of the "bombs" had already been delivered. The USPS was told what to look for, not the other way around. 

This affair exposes the fact that the entire USPS system remains vulnerable to penetration by serious terrorists at any time, and that a person who really intended to harm others, say with bombs, could do so as long as the intended target isn't too famous. That's why the more serious threats are the poisoners, who can still reach their intended famous targets occasionally with letters, such as Vanessa Trump. The contents of mail are not "scanned", only the fronts and backs are imaged and the images stored. That's how the authorities, once alerted to the problem in Florida, "were reviewing mail streams in and out of Florida, attempting to pinpoint locations where the parcels may have originated", as reported in the USA Today story linked below.

A real bomber in this instance would have rigged his packages to blow up as they are opened by the designated target, as when a box lid lifted on its hinge triggers a circuit with a detonator. Of course, the difficulty of getting such a package into the actual hands of famous persons with staff protecting them from such an eventuality is a thought which cannot have escaped the mind of Cesar Sayoc.

A real bomber does not stuff active devices into padded envelope mailers as Sayoc did, where they could blow-up indiscriminately under normal, rough handling, including in his own hands. A real bomber does not leave finger prints behind on his mail bombs, especially if his fingerprints are already in the crime reporting system due to many prior arrests and convictions.

It's almost as if poor Cesar Sayoc, aged 56, suddenly homeless and forced to live in his van, intended to get caught so that he could finally escape all his problems and finally get a roof over his head and three square meals a day for the rest of his life after so many years of struggling with poverty.

CNN reported here:

Bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc had been kicked out by his parents, so he has living in the van that we have seen in pictures today, according to a law enforcement official. ... Sayoc was initially somewhat cooperative, the official said. He told investigators that the pipe bombs wouldn’t have hurt anyone and that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

USA Today reports here:

The total number of bombs reached at least 14 Friday after more suspicious packages were recovered: one in Florida addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, another in New York addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a device recovered at Sen. Kamala Harris’ office in Sacramento, California, and another package that was intercepted at a mail facility in Burlingame, California, addressed to billionaire Tom Steyer.

Harris’ office says it was informed that the package was identified at a Sacramento mail facility. The FBI responded to the facility in a South Sacramento neighborhood that’s been blocked off by caution tape.

A package addressed to Clapper was recovered at a Manhattan postal facility. Like some of the previous packages, the one found in New York City on Friday had the office of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the return address, a photo obtained by CBS News showed. ...

The suspicious package intended for Clapper was spotted by a postal worker at the Radio City Station facility at around 8:15 a.m. The employee contacted U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and they contacted the NYPD and FBI.

NYPD Bomb Squad officers scanned the package and saw what appeared to be a pipe bomb, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said at a Manhattan news conference.

Trump expands infrastructure of the coming police state, body scanners coming to LA subway system

This will be in mass transit countrywide before you know it, and then in every public building and on every roadway. And then on your street, and on your house. There will be no escape from the surveillance of Big Sis.

If you object to the surveillance, you won't be able to ride or eventually do other things you take for granted now under the free republic. In effect this will be no different than the Chinese social credit system, which denies travel, and other "privileges", to people who receive low scores for not cooperating with the state's demands in matters of politics or religion.

From the story here:

Los Angeles' subway will become the first mass transit system in the U.S. to install body scanners that screen passengers for weapons and explosives, officials said Tuesday.

The deployment of the portable scanners, which project waves to do full-body screenings of passengers walking through a station without slowing them down, will happen in the coming months, said Alex Wiggins, who runs the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's law enforcement division.

The machines scan for metallic and non-metallic objects on a person's body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet (9 meters) away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. ...

Signs will be posted at stations warning passengers they are subject to body scanner screening. The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not to be screened won't be able to ride on the subway.

What a shock: Big Sis thinks students' protests are crap

That's also what she thought about objections to speed cameras in Arizona, and to surveillance by Homeland Security generally and to naked scanners at airports specifically.

The arrogance is par for the course with liberals.

Video here.

TSA Claims All Nude Scanners Now Gone

Nice belt!

Story here:

"[A]s of May 16, all US airports scanners equipped with the ability to produce the penetrating images will now only show a generic outline of a passenger to the operator."

The Invasion Of The Body Scanners: Nude X-Ray Scanners To Be Out By June

TSA is getting rid of the invasive nude x-ray technology by June to comply with a Congressional directive.

But you're still being searched, and whether you get felt up or not is beside the point, because the generic image scanners will stay.

The Fourth Amendment means nothing in an airport, and I predict this "compromise" will speed the way for the invasion of the body scanners into every sphere of public transportation, including busses, subways, commuter trains and even tollways and interstates.

Story here.

Supremes Rule Unanimously Against Warrantless GPS Use By Police

As reported by The Washington Post here:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.

The GPS device helped authorities link Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction.

NOW WE NEED A SIMILAR RULING ON . . .

SPY DRONES

SCANNERS

AND SATELLITES.

Naked Scans To Be Replaced With Generic Silhouettes On Millimeter Wave Machines

So says The Washington Post, here.

A similar change for backscatter scanners is still in development and is not available.

Miami Police Want Honeywell Spy Drone to Stare into Homes and Backyards

The story is reported by CBS Miami here:

Police admit the MAV, if flown low enough, has the ability to look into people’s home, but that is not its intended purpose.

For a description of the Honeywell (designed-for-the-military-backpack-able) Micro Air Vehicle, see here and here:

The story uses the word "scan," which is alarming and is reminiscent of the backscatter scanners being used at airports, but these MAVs are equipped with cameras only, as if that isn't bad enough. The technology isn't developed enough to make scanners this small (13 inches in diameter), but don't say you weren't warned when I'm telling you again that that's coming.

Undercover Agent Repeatedly Gets a Handgun Through Scanners

And the screeners missed it on the images.

So all that money for the machines and the personel, and all the inconvenience and humiliation for the public simply boils down to security theater after all?

The story is here.

TSA De-deputizes Pilot For Posting Video of Sacramento Security Theatre

The story, with video, is here.

Apparently the TSA is upset that you find out from this story that ground crews don't go through the invasive screening that you and flight crews have to endure. Ground crew members swipe a card reader and get access to your plane, by-passing metal detectors, naked scanners, and enhanced pat downs.

Do you feel safer?

Well, do ya, punk?

They Make The Scanner Vans That Spy On You

as-e.com

Much Touted CBS Poll Never Asked About Scanners Exposing Nakedness

So says Jacob Sullum in a story exposing the tendentious claims made by the TSA and the servile media who defend the backscatter scanners and the groping:

The TSA likes to cite a CBS poll conducted a few weeks ago that found 81 percent of Americans support the new scanners. But the pollsters did not mention that the scanners reveal passengers' naked bodies. 

TSA Represents Danger to America, Says Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen for The New York Times says a word here on behalf of the Fourth Amendment, and seems to see in Homeland Security and the TSA an incipient threat to our American way of life:

The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year.


The trouble is, Roger Cohen has commented half-approvingly (here) that the large-scale targeted killings of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been "more eloquent than words," killings made possible by the use of predator drones, which, before long, Homeland Security and the TSA might very well use here at home to invade the privacy of the American people as surely as do these scanners.

Consider that the very same predator drone used by the military was already tested out of Fort Drum over northern New York in the summer of 2009 to evaluate its utility to law enforcement, according to this story. Not a year later five such drones are on active duty flying missions over America's southern and northern borders for US Customs and Border Control, as reported here by TheHill.com. The technology for drones has advanced so rapidly that their size is down to 3' in diameter and they are virtually silent, meaning they are becoming increasingly attractive to law enforcement. Three examples of law enforcement use of drones in 2006 and 2007 have been discussed here at The Rutherford Institute. Obama has been described as "in love" with the things.

The airport scanners represent only one element of the new national security state Obama and his surveillance enthusiasts Janet Napolitano and John Pistole want to erect in America. They are equally eager to install thousands of cameras all over the country, and they are funding them. Security check points are going to spring up everywhere if they get their way.

We'll see how eloquent people think all this is when the government comes looking for Roger Cohen and other American citizens with a complete portfolio of your movements and associations in hand, matched to your naked image.

Most Newark Backscatter Scanners Idle on National Opt Out Day

The majority of Newark’s full-body scanners were idle throughout much of the day, depriving most passengers of the chance to opt out of the controversial screening procedure even if they had wanted to.

As reported here.

Traveler Wears Bikini To Avoid Scanner and Enhanced Pat Down

Her story is here.

Numerous Reports of TSA Chickening Out, Not Using Naked Scanners

TSA is co-opting the date set for the protest.

The backside of Thanksgiving may look very different.

Isn't it comforting to know that PR is more important than "security"?

See here for the story at gizmodo.com.

Obama To Transform Bush's TSA Into National Security Force

How do you spell Gestapo? KGB? How about TSA?

Remember how Obama said on July 17, 2008 (video here) that he wanted a national security force as powerful, strong and well-funded as the US military? Here are his words:

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

People on the left went ballistic when conservatives and Republicans suggested that those words could be construed as sinister and ominous. Some on the right were upset enough about the tone that they grasped at anything that fit them as Obama's regime unfolded. Some even thought they discovered a "health care army" buried deep in the weeds of the Senate healthcare bill.

But now with Homeland Security's decision to go full steam ahead with scanners in airports after last Christmas' Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident, we're getting a clearer picture of Obama's commitment to the national security state, and that picture centers around a radical expansion of the role and scope of the TSA. How else do we explain these comments from the new head of the TSA, John Pistole, made in July and reported here in USA Today?

Pistole said he wants TSA workers, including 47,000 screeners at 450 airports, to operate as a "national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into US government efforts."

"I want to take TSA to the next level," Pistole said.

In other words, Obama's vision for a national security force is going to come to fruition through the expansion of the TSA George Bush created after 911.

We now know that that expanded scope will involve putting scanners everywhere. TSA's mandate covers all modes of transportation, not just those over which the federal Department of Transportation has jurisdiction. Train and subway stations and points of maritime embarkation immediately come to mind. But also federal highways, where the feds use scanners to detain and inspect truck traffic. In fact, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano just recently went on the record saying as much:

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

Think also of stationary federal jurisdictions: all federal buildings. Scanners have already been deployed in a Colorado courthouse according to this report, and expanded use of them has not been ruled out:

"Although we have no current plans for deployment, the US Marshals Service believes in the technology," said Washington-based Michael Prout, assistant director for judicial security for the US marshals. "We will continue to explore the use of body scanners as a security measure for the federal judiciary."

Can you imagine reporting for jury duty but being treated like a common criminal having to submit to a full body naked scan?

Being a surveillance enthusiast whose installation of cameras everywhere on Phoenix highways was rebuffed by its freedom-loving population, Janet Napolitano as head of DHS has made it a priority to fund cameras in New York, which is nearly half way to its goal of 3000 cameras in the city, 90% funded by DHS. She made a high profile visit to Chicago last summer to praise its commitment to camera surveillance.

Will introduction of small, silent 3' spy drones be next?

TSA's mandate currently involves security "in all modes of transportation." Obama appears to be concentrating his efforts on the "all." Expect to see thousands and thousands of new federal hires by the TSA to man the national security state. They will interfere with your every movement, unless you stop this now. Today is a good day to begin.

Opt out!

Lefty Jane Hamsher Mocks TSA Stooge Pistole as a "Genius"

In the story here.

But her reasoning is as muddled as Pistole's. 

National Opt Out Day is not about opting out of enhanced pat downs, as Pistole seems to present it. It's about opting out of the scanners and forcing delays through long pat down lines to protest the scanners.

A person refusing a pat down will be escorted out of the airport, says Pistole. If he tries to come back in, it will be considered a security breach and make himself subject to arrest. But the protestors aren't going to refuse the pat downs. They're going to refuse the scans.

And why does Hamsher think this telegraphs to a terrorist posing as a protestor how to shut down the airport? He could, but he'll also get arrested in the process. Hardly worth blowing one's cover for, is it?

The interesting thing is Pistole's focus on the pat downs. That shows how important they are to the TSA. Without the threat of them, the public would not easily comply with the scanners.

It's all about humiliating and subjugating the resident population. They think you are sheep and intend to treat you like sheep, to get you to do what they want.

So, whatever it is they want, opt out of it. It's that simple.

Napolitano, Like TSA Head Pistole, Wants Scanners Everywhere

I told you so.

The story is reported here in "Next Step For Body Scanners Could Be Trains, Boats, Metro":

“[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,” Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose." 

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

These people will stop at nothing until your every movement is no longer free.

If you want the country you remember, you must stop Obama and company now before it is too late.