The Case Against TSA
Christmas travel is upon us.
If you are a Texan, you live in the state with the country's second and fifteenth busiest airports (DFW and Houston-Hobby, respectively), so you will almost certainly encounter the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Formed in 2003 as a response to 9/11, TSA has become a nightmare for security and liberty–– and many great thinkers warned this would happen at the time.
Phyllis Schlafly warned of this possibility days after the September 11th attacks. Schlafly correctly identified that we did not have a security problem, but an immigration problem.
Yet it was not America’s overly generous immigration system that became the target of the enlarged security state but law-abiding American citizens.
Stories of abuse in the TSA are a monthly occurrence.
TSA was recently rocked by allegations that it is dispatching agents to follow travelers who were in Washington D.C. on January 6th, 2021.
That does not mean that TSA agents are following people involved in criminal misconduct on that day, most of those have been prosecuted.
(Still from video provided by Fox News, click image for full video on Twitter)
Rather, it means that TSA has created a list that has swept up people who never visited the capitol. Many of these people were merely in the “D.C. region” for job interviews, family visits, and funerals, “they have been on this domestic terrorist watch list just because of their geographic location,” Sonya Labosco, Director of Air Marshal National Council told Fox News, “These people did not commit a crime and were not even at the Capitol.”
Many of these law-abiding citizens are followed by TSA Agents without their knowledge, while others have been conspicuously marked by the TSA with special indications on their boarding passes requiring them to go through “advanced security” and accompaniment by Air Marshalls, Labosco told Fox.
This has come at the expense of national security.
“We are not doing our regular missions where we are out there looking for the bad guys” she continued, “so on most flights, you are not going to have Air Marshals.”
“We have followed the same people over and over, for three years, who were no threat to this country,” Labosco told Fox News.
Cowtown Caller filed FOIA requests to corroborate Labosco’s claims. So far, the TSA has denied expedited processing (which is usually granted in situations concerning alleged government action) and indicated that will not process the requests for months. Updates will be provided when they become available.
No matter TSA’s reasoning for these actions, the maintenance of a permanent surveillance list that is indifferent to suspects’ innocence is appalling. This soft repression is worsened by the fact that it does not serve a purpose, it is surveillance for surveillance’s sake.
However, this is not TSA’s first violation of due process, nor involvement with lists.
COVID Restrictions
TSA was part of several law enforcement bodies that made it possible for the airlines to create lists of thousands of passengers who refused to wear masks and impose bans against them without due process.
Further, TSA was at the forefront of enforcement for the unlawful interstate mask mandate that was struck down by federal courts in April 2022.
After years of TSA warning about gel bombs, the agency would expose its arbitrariness during the pandemic by allowing 12 oz bottles of hand sanitizer for passengers, nearly four times what is allowed for other gels. (Apparently, it is possible to allow bottles of sunscreen/lotion/shampoo without causing another 9/11).
Likewise, TSA has banned people from air travel for jokes on podcasts about beating up flight attendants who enforce mask mandates.
While TSA bureaucrats may find gallows humor distasteful, one should be exceedingly wary of allowing a citizen to be deprived of liberty, without trial, based on a joke made outside of an airport.
TSA Has Employed Members of the Terror Watchlist
Despite TSA’s endless lists, it somehow missed the fact it employed 73 members of the terror watch list, according to a 2015 investigation.
How did this happen? A lack of background checks a TSA spokesman said.
TSA Misses Almost Everything
A probe of the TSA revealed the agency failed to detect 95% of weapons sent or carried through checkpoints in 2015.
A later inquiry in 2017, found that the agency missed 70% of weapons.
Indeed, TSA was missing guns carried by Washington State Senators as late as last month.
One of the few times TSA passed a probe was during a bomb detection test in which the department attempted to cheat by forewarning agents about the identities of the undercover operatives in 2005. When the agency was caught, it lied. A statement from the agency indicated it tried to rig the probe because of concerns of terrorists impersonating TSA officials.
This response stretched credulity and was not supported by TSA’s own internal communications.
Other Abuses
TSA has;
Compromised privacy by collecting the “incomes, occupations, vehicle ownership information, number of children and Social Security numbers”, giving it to private contractors, and then lying to public about it when it got caught;
Leaked manuals that could help criminals make fake identity cards, including those used by the CIA;
Employed agents who used their positions to prolificly smuggle gungs;
Discriminated against U.S. states and citizens by imposing “REAL ID” requirements on jurisdictions that they have no authority over. Allowing TSA, without due process, to infringe the rights of citizens to travel merely because of their state of residence;
Been constantly mired in near-yearly new sexual assault allegations, including one from Sebastian Joseph-Day, a lineman for the Chargers, this year;
Mandated masks while withholding masks from its employees;
Obstructed transportation by creating lines that sometimes last for hours;
Had numerous instances of theft by TSA employees against travelers (video below).
TSA Would Not Allow TSA To Pass Through TSA
If TSA was a person trying to get through security at an airport, it would be arrested as a threat to national security–– and rightfully so.
TSA does not make us safer, nor does it defend freedom by preventing terror.
Notably, there are better ways to approach American security.
Primarily, we can simply refuse to issue visas to those from countries wherein the population (or government) is unusually inclined toward anti-American terror.
Similarly, we can stop accepting applications for legal status from those who originate from hotbeds of terror and break our laws. This would take a burden off the FBI, which recently intercepted an alleged planned terror attack by a Palestinian Jihadi in Houston, and it would allow intelligence agencies greater resources to intercept terror before it arrives at airports.
Secondarily, we can repeal and replace TSA with a more effective system.
San Francisco’s airport has privatized security and numerous inquiries have found that private airport screeners move faster and find more contraband than TSA.
Often, private airport security is cheaper than federal screeners, and reports from airports comparable to DFW, Lovefield, and Houston-Hobby have found savings potential savings to be near $40 million per airport.
One can not forget when a woman with a southern accent told Stossel San Francisco’s agents were “a lot more friendly than Dallas.”
This statement should read as a challenge. If San Francisco is embracing the free market more than Texans and is somehow friendlier than the friendly state, we’ve got some work to do;
We can start by getting rid of the TSA.
*Note from author: Cowtown Caller is a reader-supported publication. Our work fighting the global elite in defense of Texas’s forgotten man is made possible through the support of our many patriotic readers. If you have already donated or subscribed to the publication, we thank you for your support. If you have not yet decided to contribute, we encourage you to do so by using the button below, now.*