[Peace-discuss] Nader unites with libertarians against the body snatchers.

[E. Wayne Johnson]

  Nader unites us all in the fight against 'federal fondlers'

By Mike Riggs - The Daily Caller 
<http://dailycaller.com/author/mikeriggs>   3:13 AM 11/12/2010

The X-ray security
<http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/print/#> 
machines coming to an airport near you have been called "dick-measuring 
devices 
<http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/>" 
by seasoned travelers, inspired TSA employees to commit crimes of 
passion 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/tsa-screener-attacks-coll_n_568229.html>, 
and eaten up the Transportation Security Administration's allocation of 
stimubucks 
<http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/11/airport_insecurity>. 
In short, no one likes them.

Consumer rights advocate and perennial presidential vote-splitter Ralph 
Nader is here to help. Not only has he joined forces with the Electric 
Privacy Information Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations 
<http://www.fastcompany.com/1700811/ralph-nader-and-epic-take-on-full-body-airport-scanners> 
to protest the machines 
<http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2210-Letter-to-Members-of-the-Senate-Committee-on-Homeland-Security-and-Governmental-Affairs.html>, 
he also told The Daily Caller that he paid a visit this week to Grover 
Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform meeting to recruit conservatives in 
his fight against "federal fondlers."

"I said to 'em, 'I want to say a few words to this group, who are fully 
employed, fully insured, and fully clothed.' And I said, 'Get ready for 
naked insecurity.'"

Airport X-ray machines, says Nader, are a bipartisan issue. Republican 
Senators Tom Coburn, Susan Collins, and Richard Burr have all raised 
concerns that the machines emit a dangerous amount of radiation, "and 
you should know," Nader added, "that the Libertarian Party, at my 
urging, came out with a tough statement last week against them."

The list of critics is growing by the day. A group of 11,000 airline 
pilots have objected to the scanners on the grounds that they could be 
dangerous. (They've also whined that it's unprofessional for TSA to give 
full-body pat-downs to pilots who decline to use the X-ray machines in 
full view of their passengers.)

The travel industry is frustrated because the machines cause delays, 
pilots are upset because the machines are degrading, consumers are upset 
because strangers get to see their genitals, and "academic scientists" 
are upset, said Nader, because the backscatter X-ray machines emit a 
radiation dose "10 times higher than what the government 
<http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/print/#> 
says."

Italy, after a 6-month trial period using the machines, is abandoning 
them. "Italy called them 'ineffective and slow,'" Nader said.

"Susan Collins has requested information from TSA, but DHS is an 
exceptionally secretive and inaccessible, unresponsive bureaucracy. So 
it's very hard to get information."

TSA "knows best," said Nader. Or thinks it does. "They just blew $32 
million on puffer machines. You ever see one of those?"

The Daily Caller admitted that we had, in fact, seen the puffer machines.

"They blow air. You get into a cage and they blow air at you. Too many 
false positives."

The backscatter X-ray machines are more of the same, Nader argued. "They 
don't work how they are supposed to, they are hazardous in terms of 
radiation, and they are wild invasions of privacy."

Also: "They store these images of you naked."

If you don't want to go through the machines, "they grope you like you 
would not believe," said Nader, who has yet to face either an X-ray 
machine or a pat-down. When asked if he would submit to a groping in 
lieu of having naked images of himself stored on a machine, Nader 
said, "I don't think we should have government gropers or federal fondlers."



Read more: 
http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/#ixzz158NsbQFx
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20101113/5214c1ae/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: grey_loader.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 1797 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20101113/5214c1ae/attachment.gif>