Quote:
Originally Posted by Tervuren
It is the regular walking through a system where guilty is a base assumption over innocence.
Look at comments about the guy who may hold the line up from not having flown before and not inherently knowing what to do.
A little compassion would be patient. Instead there is an uncompassionate herd through the check point.
Standing legs spread with my hands up through a scanner in the same posture as a guilty criminal being searched for arrest can't be good for the human mind on a regular basis.
Each time you go through you give up being human temporarily.
Now some pick it back up on the other side, but the continual laying down of what we consider basic human rights and dignity to transform into animals at the airport has got to wear on some of those folks that do it regularly.
I know it is a necessity for some folks, and some may handle it better than others. Still, if you can avoid stepping in to such a situation you are better off.
It has been a gradual increase of one thing at time, so frequent fliers may not be aware of just how harsh things feel to someone who is not a frequent flier and is confronted with the "new ways" in all their glory.
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I used to love to fly and I used to do it with relative frequency, but I stopped when the scanners came out. The government has no right to inspect my naked body to prevent me from committing a crime. It's a perversion of due process and it is a presumption of guilt. The courts, in the ways that lawyers often twist things to mean the opposite of what they say, have basically ruled that you have no rights from the moment you step foot in an airport until the moment you leave the airport at your destination. Along the way, TSA agents may steal your belongings, they may call over coworkers to ogle your naked body, or the airline may have someone punch you in the face when they decide to give your seat to someone else. The way people get treated by airlines and the TSA is unconstitutional, immoral, and unethical, but
it's for our safety--which is always the excuse given when violating our civil rights.
Imagine if you had to remove your shoes, have your bags inspected, strip naked (which is essentially what a body scanner does), and then be molested to do any other activity? No one would stand for these things if introduced all at once. But because they were done gradually, and
for our safety, people blindly accept exactly the kind of warrantless searches and seizures our constitution is supposed to protect against.
The saddest part is that all of the violations airline passengers endure are largely just expensive and ineffective security theater. They do almost nothing to really improve safety other than reassuring those that don't think too hard about their loss of dignity and fooling casual criminals into thinking they will probably get caught--all the while punishing millions of otherwise innocent passengers along the way. There are security methods that are less expensive, less intrusive, preserve dignity and civil rights, and far more effective--but we don't do them, why? I have to conclude that "airline safety" was just an excuse for an unconstitutional power grab rather than an effort to really protect us.