The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is tightening its grip on domestic travel. I don’t mean the random, unpredictable security checks at bus, subway and train stations which already exist. I mean a coordinated and systematic police control of internal travel within America. Groundwork is being laid.
Application to Make U.S. Into an Airport Screening Zone
The application was tucked away on page 71431 of Volume 77, Number 231 of the Federal Register (November 30). It was surrounded by soporific references to forwarding “the new Information Collection Request (ICR) abstracted below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).”
The application for funding from the TSA constitutes a preliminary step toward systematically expanding TSA’s authority from airports to highways and almost every other means of public travel. The expansion would erase one of the last remaining differences between the US and a total police state; namely, the ability to travel internally without being under police surveillance. The total police state you experience at airports wants to spill into roads and bus stops, to subways and trains. Or, rather, the TSA wants to solidify and spread the fledgling and erratic presence it already has.
The official request reads, “TSA’s Highway BASE program [Baseline Assessment for Security Enhancement] seeks to establish the current state of security gaps and implemented countermeasures throughout the highway mode of transportation by posing questions to major transportation asset owners and operators.” An example would be an owner and the employees of a long-haul truck company. The application continues, “Data and results collected through the Highway BASE program will inform TSA’s policy and program initiatives and allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to enhance the overall security posture within the surface transportation community.”
Meanwhile, the Government Security News Service provides additional details on TSA’s plans. TSA wants funding to conduct “security-related assessments” on about 750 “transportation assets” including “140 public transportation agencies.” An example would be bus depots or train stations.
Security Magazine (May 30th) offered a sense of how sweeping the definition of “assets” might be, including “trucking, school bus, and motor coach industries, privately-owned highway assets that may include bridges and tunnels, and other related systems and assets owned and operated by state departments of education and transportation.”
At this point, the goal is merely “an assessment.” But when did a government agency ever conclude that it didn’t need funding, expansion and more power? This is especially true of the militarized TSA that treats the public as “hostiles.”
The fact that the agency lamented the lack of a “single database” on public transportation is not reassuring. (
Federal Register, Vol.77, No.104, pg. 31867, May 30.) The entire push seems aimed at not merely expanding but also centralizing information, efforts and authority, with BASE itself being a consolidation of several other TSA programs.
Travel Authorities Will Comply
Private companies and public travel authorities will co-operate with this “voluntary” program of assessment and with whatever policies result. They will co-operate for two reasons: the stick and the carrot.
The stick: The BASE program is voluntary in the same sense that compliance with TSA demands at airport screening are voluntary – which is to say, not at all. A company that refuses to comply is likely to receive the same harassment and extra scrutiny as passengers who refuse to be screened.
The carrot: the May 30th Federal Register report listed one use to which data from the TSA assessments would be put. It would “inform…the most effective application of available resources, including funds distributed under the Transit Security Grant Program.” In short, government money will flow to the compliant.
The case of Amtrak is instructive.
On March 3rd, 2011, Trains: The Magazine of Railroading ran the headline: “TRAINS Exclusive: Amtrak police chief bars Transportation Security Administration from some security operations.” The article went on to describe how TSA personnel “took over” an Amtrak station on their own authority and “thoroughly searched every person who entered.” When Amtrak Police Chief John O’Connor found out, he was reportedly “livid” and insisted on restricting the TSA’s authority before he would consider “allowing them back on Amtrak property.”
On October 9th, 2012, Homeland Security Today - the official magazine of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - announced that DHS had forged a partnership Amtrak by which “over 8,000 frontline transportation employees and Amtrak Police Department officers” will be trained.
How did Amtrak go from threatening to evict the TSA (an agency within DHS) to joining enthusiastically in the harassment of passengers? What happened in a year-and-a-half?
Money happened. In 2011, Amtrak received $1.5 billion in federal funds and broke records with 30 million passengers; it still lost money. Amtrak’s losses were so huge and persistent that one of Mitt Romney’s campaign promises was to privatize the behemoth. By partnering with national security in October, however, Amtrak guaranteed both funding and survival no matter who won the election.
No wonder so many transit authorities are scrambling to be “golden.” The Gold Award is the highest score a transportation provider can receive from the TSA. It is achieved by obtaining high ratings in 17 categories in Security and Emergency Preparedness. Who do you think will be first in line for federal hand-outs? Compliance with the TSA will be high.
The Amtrak dynamic also points to how the TSA will solve a major problem in monitoring internal travel; namely, it doesn’t have enough personnel to cover the vast stretches and variety of internal transportation. The TSA doesn’t need them. All it needs to do is co-opt the existing personnel of railroads and buses, of trucking and subways. If it does so, then the TSA will acquire 100,000s of de facto agents who are trained to report back on any suspicious activity or people.
Airport-style control of travel within America is coming. Some would argue it has been here for decades in the form of speed limits. But what’s coming is different in kind. The unmarked police cars hiding in bushes are after your money; the uniformed TSA agents and their “partners” want your freedom, your obedience, and control of your life.
Conclusion
The Constitution will not protect the right to travel. Although many legal scholars consider it to be a Constitutional right akin to freedom of association, the word “travel” or its equivalent does not appear in the document except to guarantee the right of Congress members to travel back and forth from ‘work’. The Supreme Court case Sáenz v. Roe (1999) rejected the Constitutional basis of free travel and rooted it instead within judicial precedent. These are weak roots and shallow soil.
Those who fret over their continued ability to travel abroad should glance over their shoulders to glimpse what is happening to travel within America. The two are politically connected, intimately so. Many of the same methods that now restrict foreign travel will be used within America because the same agency will handle both: the TSA in its many manifestations. They might be called BASE agents or VIPRs (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response), like the ones who partnered with law enforcement in 2011 in Tennessee to conduct random “terrorist” checkpoints on highways. They may be the specially trained clerks who sell you a ticket . But TSA agents in whatever guise are coming to the highway, bus stop and train station you frequent.
http://www.safehaven.com/article/28024/tsas-grip-on-internal-travel-is-tightening
We know that none of this nonsense has anything to do with the security of the people. I’m not even sure it has anything to do with the security of the deceiving filthy bureaucrats.
I think that every implemented security measure, be it TSA, or security cameras, or Tasers, or any type of bullshit they feed us “is going to make our lives safe”. It’s is all done in the name of one more corporation, bank backed and funded, to fleece the tax base out of millions.
I can’t think of one time that a government plan worked. I can think of every time that some group of people, bureaucrats included, that made bank and the money once again just disappeared.
Imagine having an unlimited credit card that you can spend on anything and never be held accountable for it; instead, some strangers you hate are liable. Wow, it must be a special thing to be a government man.
This like the billion+ rounds of ammunition, fema detention centers, militarized cops, etc. are all preparation for the planned collapse of our economy.
New West Bank and Gaza, courtesy the same folks who did such a wonderful job there.
TSA, DHS, FDA, FSIS….and so on, take your pick, there is a regulatory body ready to ruin the life of every freedom loving American. TSA is on everyone’s mind, but do not forget the rest.
A text book Communist takeover, riding the wave of regulatory bodies.
And the moral of this story (which happens to be the moral of a Chinese story, believe it or not) is that “Greed will imprison us all.”.
Thank you transportation companies for imprisoning us all because of your greed.
Why do the TSA workers HATE America? Because of Our FREEDOM!
George “W-rong” Bush hired the former head of the East German STASI, Marcus Wolf, to design Homeland Security. Why? Well look at the results ….
It is a well documented FACT that TSA has never caught a Terrorist, but, TSA Human Resources has found a whole lot of TERRORISTS. As a matter of fact, TSA Human Resources only hires Terrorists. The best “anti-terrorist” move the USA could make, would be to arrest everyone that TSA Human Resources hires because that is all they hire, Terrorists. Rapists, Thieves, Muggers, Pedophiles, Drug Smugglers. —————– George “W-rong” Bush hired the former head of the East German STASI, Marcus Wolf, to consult Homeland Security. Why? Well look at the results ….
Conditions for sociopaths in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day. Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.
“Integrity, Team Spirit, Innovation” is sewn around the border of the newest TSA patch. Have you ever seen an organization that had to SEW A REMINDER not to STEAL, LIE, and CHEAT on their own shoulders!!!! They STEAL from the “abandoned” items, BACK-STAB the PASSENGERS and their CO-Workers and “INNOVATIVELY” CHEAT on their own tests.
Supervisors PADDING their hours to make house payments.
Supervisors staggering in drunk.
Supervisors yelling all NON-Christians should leave the country
Supervisors expressing their desire to see certain U.S. Senators DEAD
As is easily proven by doing a few relatively easy hours of research on the Web, which reveals that the rising police state / USSR style security complex within America is heavily, and I do mean, HEAVILY – infested with Israelis and these sleazy war and terrorism profiting dual-citizen, greasy cockroaches like Michael Chertoff. I would keep a very sharp eye on the ‘private’ security companies who will be handed these no-bid contracts and I’ll make a bet right here and now that the vast majority of them will have connections to Israel and be owned by jews here in America.
These Satanic rats are turning the North American continent into one gigantic, open-air, prison camp – and they are bleeding what little money is left in the American tax payers pockets to pay these rats to imprison us inside our own nation.