I guess these perverts won't stop. I have friends say that they would rather have the TSA feel them up so they can get on a safe plan, i feel the opposite. When non radical muslims start highjacking plans, but come on really they must strip search 80 year old woman. They do things to minors that if the parents did it they would get arrested. Please stop, the joke is to sad to make me laugh.
Passenger advocate sought for US airports
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Two New York lawmakers have called for a passenger advocate at airports to immediately act on complaints by passengers over security screenings.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and state Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens want the Transportation Security Administration to create the position at all airports.
The proposal, released Sunday, was prompted by an elderly woman's recent claims that she was strip searched by security officials at Kennedy Airport, which the TSA denies, saying it doesn't conduct strip searches. Others have since made similar claims.
The TSA said Saturday that it is planning its own advocacy service.
"The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) strives to provide the highest level of security while ensuring that all passengers are treated with dignity and respect," the agency stated Saturday night. "TSA has programs in place for the screening of people with all types of disabilities and medical conditions and their associated equipment."
TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee said that last week senior leadership talked to several national groups that advocate for those with medical conditions, including colostomy bags. After the first claim, another woman reported she was stopped because of a bulge that was a colostomy bag.
Lee said that after consulting with advocates for those with various medical conditions, the TSA is planning to establish a toll-free telephone hotline in January for passengers that may need help during screening.
"This hotline will give passengers direct access to guidance and information specific to persons with disabilities or medical conditions, which they will be able to call prior to flying," the TSA stated. "Additionally, TSA regularly trains its workforce on how to screen travelers with disabilities and medical conditions and has customer service managers at most airports to answer questions and assist passengers."
Under the Schumer-Gianaris proposal, an advocate could be summoned in person by passengers if they feel they were inappropriately searched.
"While the safety and security of our flights must be a top priority, we need to make sure that flying does not become a fear-inducing, degrading, and potentially humiliating experience," Schumer said.
Gianaris and Schumer were scheduled to make the announcement Sunday with relatives of the women who made the claims.
"I appreciate the TSA's work to keep air passengers safe, but passengers should not be humiliated and degraded during their travels," Gianaris said.
A week ago, an 85-year-old woman said she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at the airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner, allegations that transportation officials denied.
Lenore Zimmerman said she was taken to a private room where she said female agents made her take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening. She had worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one 2 1/2 hours later, she said.
But the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement Saturday no strip search was conducted.
"While we regret that the passenger feels she had an unpleasant screening experience, TSA does not include strip searches as part of our security protocols and one was not conducted in this case," the TSA stated.
"Private screening was requested by the passenger, it was granted and lasted approximately 11 minutes," the statement read. "TSA screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy and that occurred in this instance."
The private screening wasn't recorded.
On Sunday, the TSA stated that a misunderstanding led to the removal of the woman's back brace. The TSA said the equipment was mistaken as a money belt. Refresher courses are planned for JFK employees, the TSA stated.
"We work regularly with a coalition of advocacy groups that represent those with disabilities and medical conditions to help TSA understand their conditions and adapt screening procedures accordingly," the TSA said.
A review of closed-circuit television at the airport showed that proper procedures before and after the screening were followed, TSA spokesman Jonathan Allen said in a statement.
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=209&sid=2665492
Overkill on Internet piracy
Over the weekend, First Amendment impresario Floyd Abrams addressed two controversial Internet piracy bills, the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the House version, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). He argued that the bill, designed to stop Internet theft of intellectual property, has been denounced by critics for setting up “ ‘walled gardens patrolled by government censors.’ Or derided as imparting ‘major features’ of ‘China’s Great Firewall’ to America. And accused of being ‘potentially politically repressive.’ ” He contends, “This is not serious criticism. The proposition that efforts to enforce the Copyright Act on the Internet amount to some sort of censorship, let alone Chinese-level censorship, is not merely fanciful. It trivializes the pain inflicted by actual censorship that occurs in repressive states throughout the world. Chinese dissidents do not yearn for freedom in order to download pirated movies.”
I don’t quarrel with his assertion that it is hysterical to regard enforcement of libel and copyright infringement on the Internet as the beginning of a totalitarian state. But he misses the real point of sober-minded critics: The bill is unnecessarily overbroad and a formula for a host of undesirable and unintended consequences.
ABC News reported last month on the overbroad nature of the remedies that would be available:
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said the bills would overdo it — giving copyright holders and government the power to cut off Web sites unreasonably. They could be shut down, and search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo could be stopped from linking to them.
“The solutions are draconian,” Schmidt said Tuesday at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “There’s a bill that would require ISPs [Internet service providers] to remove URLs from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked.”
Harvard law professor and Supreme Court advocate Laurence Tribe (whom I don’t always agree with but who takes the Bill of Rights quite seriously and was instrumental in developing the jurisprudence that confirmed the Second Amendment is an individual right) has submitted a memo detailing the multiple ways in which SOPA runs afoul of the First Amendment . For example, “SOPA provides that a complaining party can file a notice alleging that it is harmed by the activities occurring on the site ‘or portion thereof .’ Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement. Such an approach would create severe practical problems for sites with substantial user-generated content, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and for blogs that allow users to post videos, photos, and other materials.”And likewise: “The notice-and-termination procedure of Section 103(a) runs afoul of the ‘prior restraint’ doctrine, because it delegates to a private party the power to suppress speech without prior notice and a judicial hearing. This provision of the bill would give complaining parties the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website,merely by filing a unilateral notice accusing the site of being ‘dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ — even if no court has actually found any infringement. The immunity provisions in the bill create an overwhelming incentive for advertisers and payment processors to comply with such a request immediately upon receipt.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have introduced a competing bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (the “Open Act ”), which seeks to address legitimate concerns about SOPA/PIPA and focus more specifically on the real problem without knocking down robust, protected speech in an indiscriminate fashion. Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Mozilla, Yahoo!, and Zynga have signed on to support this alternative to SOPA/PIPA.
The Hill recently reported on OPEN: “The draft proposal would instead authorize the International Trade Commission to investigate and issue cease-and-desist orders against foreign websites that provide pirated content or sell counterfeit goods. The ITC would have to find that the site is ‘primarily’ and ‘willfully’ engaged in copyright infringement to issue the order.” Rather than take down entire websites and potentially interfere with perfectly legitimate and protected speech OPEN, would, after a court order, “compel payment providers and online advertising services to cease providing services to the offending website. The approach comports with current copyright law and hews to the ‘follow the money’ approach favored by Google and other tech companies.”
In short, this is not a fight between protectors of copyrights and Internet anarchists. Rather, there is a legitimate policy dispute about how broad and how disruptive government enforcement powers should be when core First Amendment rights are at issue. No doubt the Motion Picture Association of America, headed by disgraced former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, has spread plenty of money around Congress to try to give the government the bluntest, heaviest weapon to fight piracy. But that doesn’t make it good policy. And it sure doesn’t make for constitutional legislation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/overkill-on-internet-piracy/2011/12/11/gIQA9TK6nO_blog.html
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