| The_Dunedan |
11-17-2010 06:41 PM |
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Furthermore, the more people opt out of the scanner and force the pat-down, the more likely it is to force TSA to come up with security policies that actually work without causing massive delays and inconvenience.
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Given my experiences with the TSA, both their concern for customer service and their frequent propensity for enjoying themselves when searching people, I doubt this very highly. All it would seem to do is encourage more scanners: that way one crowd of perverts can get off looking at pictures of their unwilling victims, and another crowd of perverts can get off by sexually assaulting those who decline to have their picture taken and turned into Gov't-sponsored soft-core porno.
Given TSA's remarkable willingness to hire sexual predators, this is hardly a massive leap of logic.
Pro Libertate
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Exhibit A is a former TSA employee known as Robert Joe Harrison Jr. who was a TSA security screener in Ketchum, Idaho.
In April 2006, Harrison was arrested by the local police after he had brought home a 10-year-old boy whom he had enticed into his pickup truck. After they arrived at Harrison's home, the adult put in a movie and left the room. The youngster quite sensibly bolted the premises, fled to his home and and described the incident to his mother, who called the police.
When police searched Harrison's apartment, they found (in the words of an MSNBC report) found "four additional Social Security numbers and documents showing four other dates of birth." The TSA hired Harrison (as I'll call him for the sake of convenience) without even establishing his actual name and identity.
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“TSA is a large organization with a large workforce, [and] unfortunately we have an individual who does things that are truly inappropriate, things that are intolerable for TSA,” insisted Melvin, who assured the public that the agency had a “zero tolerance” policy for behavior of this type. He didn't explain how a suspected pederast with five aliases and sets of personal ID could pass a federal background check. We simply had to take his word on the matter. After all, he was a clean-cut, respectable sort.
As it happens, less than a year after Harrison's arrest, Mr. Melvin was forced to resign as a result of his own public sexual misconduct.
“The now former Director of the Transportation Security Administration in Boise was arrested last week at an Idaho Falls hotel,” reported Boise's CBS affiliate KBCI on February 27, 2007. “Doug Melvin was busted after staff and hotel guests say they saw him walking around naked.”
The police report on the incident recorded that “Melvin entered the swimming area and removed his clothing before walking around, exposing himself.... Melvin was also reportedly masturbating while in front of the windows directly in view of the main elevator.”
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Melvin -- whose surname is one of God's little practical jokes --is not the only significant Homeland Security figure who publicly indulged in the behavior made famous in Philip Roth's most significant novel.
Frank Figueroa, the former head of a federal anti-molester initiative called “Operation Predator,” was arrested at an Orlando shopping mall on October 25, 2005. He was charged with exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl while, ah, manipulating himself.
Confronted by mall security as he tried to flee the scene, Figueroa whipped out something else he was unduly proud of: The badge identifying him as the special agent in charge of the Tampa office of the Department of Immigration and Customs enforcement – one of the main appendages, as it were, of the DHS.
Figueroa was a repeat offender: He was hired by the DHS and given specific responsibility to deal with child sexual predators despite a 1977 arrest on a charge of public sexual misconduct in Buffalo. Thanks to an incredibly generous deal struck with an inexplicably lenient judge, Figueroa was given a year's probation and a withheld judgment -- meaning that there is no record of his conviction.
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Given Figueroa's area of responsibility in the federal hierarchy, and his private inclination toward the very behavior he was assigned to investigate, I find myself wondering if he had any personal or professional dealings with former Homeland Security honcho J. Brian Doyle.
The same week that "Robert J. Harrison" was arrested in Idaho, Doyle was arrested in Silver Spring, Maryland. For several weeks Doyle had been conversing by way of an internet a chatroom with someone he believed to be a cancer-stricken pre-adolescent girl. Eventually he tried to arrange a sexual liaison with his correspondent, unaware that he was being set up by a detective from the Polk County, Florida Sheriff's Office.
At the time, Doyle was the second-highest ranking official in the Homeland Security Department's propaganda directorate. He did nothing to disguise his identity while making overtures to what he believed was a potential victim; in fact, he even used his position at Homeland Security as a come-on.
“What has this nation come to if bragging about being a spokesman for a federal agency can supposedly help a guy get laid?” asked the redoubtable James Bovard after the Brian Doyle story broke. While there have been “gross abuses in some previous online porn stings,” Bovard notes, there is reason to believe that “Mr. Doyle could be on the other end of the wand for a long time.” Given Doyle's behavior in an official capacity, it's difficult to feel so much as a particle of sympathy for him.
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