Tom Engelhardt: The United States of Fear

The United States of Fear
by Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

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You Wanna Be Safer? Really?

You must have a friend who’s extremely critical of everyone else but utterly opaque when it comes to himself. Well, that’s this country, too.

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained and our treasure vanishes.

So you wanna be safer? I mean, actually safer? Here’s a simple formula for beginning to improve American safety and security at every level. End our trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; set our military to defending our own borders (and no, projecting power abroad does not normally qualify as a defense of the United States); begin to shut down our global empire of bases; stop building grotesque embassy-citadels abroad (one even has a decorative moat, for god’s sake!); end our overseas war stimulus packages and bring some of that money home. In short, stop going out of our way to tick off foreigners and then pouring our treasure into an American war machine intent on pursuing a generational global war against them.

Of course, the U.S. national security state has quite a different formula for engendering safety in America: fight the Afghan War until hell freezes over; keep the odd base or two in Iraq; dig into the Persian Gulf region; send U.S. Special Operations troops into any country where a terrorist might possibly lurk; and make sure the drones aren’t far behind. In other words, reinforce our war state by ensuring that we’re eternally in a state of war, and then scare the hell out of Americans by repeatedly insisting that we’re in imminent danger, that shoe, underwear, and someday butt bombers will destroy our country, our lives, and our civilization. Insist that a single percent of risk is 1% too much when it comes to terror and American lives, and then demand that those who feel otherwise be dealt with punitively, if they won’t shut up.

It’s a formula for leaving you naked in airports, while increasing the oppressive power of the state. And here’s the dirty, little, distinctly Orwellian secret: the national security state can’t do without those Yemeni terrorists (and vice versa), as well as our homegrown variety. All of them profit from a world of war. You don’t -- and on that score, what happens in an airport line should be the least of your worries.

The national security state is eager to cop a feel. As long as Americans don’t grasp the connections between our war state and our “safety,” things will only get worse and, in the end, our world will genuinely be in danger.

To Read the Entire Essay and Access Hyperlinked Sources

Lee Tien: Common Sense and Security -- Body Scanners, Accountability, and $2.4 Billion Worth of Security Theater

Common Sense and Security: Body Scanners, Accountability, and $2.4 Billion Worth of Security Theater
by Lee Tien
Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Transportation Security Administration is feeling public heat these days over its combination of whole-body-image scanners and heavy-handed pat-down searches, and deservedly so.

There’s no question that reform is needed to curtail TSA’s excesses. We especially applaud the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s efforts to increase public awareness about the body scanners. But will the heat now being generated produce the kind of light we really need?

Consider, for instance, the all-too-common response that we need to
accept the indignity and invasiveness of the body scanners and pat-down searches in order to be safer. That response assumes that body scanners actually make us safer — a dubious assumption that we explore below.

Do Body Scanners Address the Problem They Were Intended to Address?
Unlikely.

Body scanners are touted as a solution to the problem of detecting explosive devices that evade traditional metal detectors. The recent hard push for body scanners took off after Christmas 2009, when the so-called "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to board an airplane while allegedly concealing in his underpants a package containing nearly 3 oz of the chemical powder PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate). Within a few days, Sen. Joseph Lieberman called for more widespread use of the full-body scanners.

Indeed, TSA Administrator John Pistole told Congress last week that body scanners (which TSA calls Advanced Imaging Technology, or AIT) are "the most effective technology for detecting small threat items concealed on passengers, such as explosives used by Abdulmutallab."

Yet there’s no publicly available evidence that body scanners counter the threat from explosive powders. What we do know makes us extremely skeptical.

•A TSA document, which EPIC obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, shows that the scanners were intended to detect weapons, traditional explosives (C4, plastique, etc.), and liquids — but not powder (page 10).

•The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that "it remains unclear whether the AIT would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident based on the preliminary information the GAO has received."

•Ben Wallace, a member of Parliament who was formerly involved in a project to develop the scanners for airport use, said trials had shown that materials such as powder, liquid or thin plastic — as well as the passenger's clothing — went undetected. According to Wallace, the millimeter waves pass through low-density materials. High-density material such as metal knives, guns and dense plastic such as C4 explosive reflect the millimeter waves and leave an image of the object. He added that X-ray scanners were also unlikely to have detected the Christmas Day bomb.

•German border police recently reported folds in clothing were confusing the body scanners used at Hamburg Airport (the L-3 ProVision Automatic Threat Detection system). "NDR radio said the devices, introduced in September, had repeatedly given warnings about innocent passengers, mainly because of folds in clothes. It quoted guards saying the devices were unreliable in scanning through many layers of clothing too."

The Real Costs of Security Theater

Even assuming that there were some security value to the body scanners, an obvious question remains: are they worth it? The scanners cost about $170,000 each. The number of scanners jumped from 40 at the start of this year to 373 installed at 68 airports across the USA as of last week. The TSA is scheduled to deploy 500 scanners by December 31, and a total of 1,000 by the end of 2011. The GAO estimates the direct costs over their expected 7-year-life cycle at $2.4 billion. That doesn’t include the costs to passengers, such as missed flights and lost dignity.

A former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority who helped design the security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport the scanners are "expensive and useless . . . That's why we haven't put them in our airport."

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Glenn Greenwald: Anatomy of a journalistic smear job

(Courtesy of Firedog Lake)

Anatomy of a journalistic smear job
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon

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So The Nation quotes an anonymous TSA official who "wonders" -- without a shred of evidence -- if Tyner provoked the incident. That's both ludicrous and totally irrelevant. He posted the entire audio online, which demonstrates that he was unfailingly polite throughout; it was TSA officials acting imperiously, threateningly, and thuggishly -- not Tyner. And how could Tyner have possibly provoked TSA agents to include him in what it insists is its random selection process for passengers who receive the new screening procedures? Moreover, even if he did prepare his videocamera before entering the checkpoint area and provoke his selection, so what? He has the absolute right to do so, and given his obvious concern with government rights infringements, that's a completely sensible and civic-minded step to take.

What's really going on here is clear. These are Tyner's actual crimes in the eyes of these Nation writers, at least judging by the accusations they make: (1) he's not a good, loyal Democrat; (2) he did something that politically harmed Barack Obama; and, most and worst of all (3) he failed to submit meekly and quietly to Government orders like any Good, Patriotic "ordinary American" would and should do. That is what has created their "sense" that he's something other than an "ordinary guy" -- a "fake."

The article highlights three other individuals who object to the TSA procedures (out of the dozens -- at least -- who have complained) who also have (cue the ominous overtones) libertarian ties. That's not surprising. In order to do what Tyner did -- firmly assert one's rights against government agents and then vocally and publicly complain about rights infringements -- one has to take one's liberty seriously. After all, to do something like that is to risk being threatened by the Federal Government and smeared by journalists loyal to those in power. It's hardly surprising that many of the people willing to take that kind of a risky stand have incorporated the concept of individual liberty into their political identity. The Nation may want to ask someone what the "L" in the "ACLU" stands for.

And therein lies the most odious premise in this smear piece: anyone who doesn't quietly, meekly and immediately submit to Government orders and invasions -- or anyone who stands up to government power and challenges it -- is inherently suspect. Just as the establishment-worshiping, political-power-defending Ruth Marcus taught us today in The Washington Post, objecting to what the Government is doing here is just immature and ungrateful; mature, psychologically healthy people shut up and submit. That's how you prove that you're a normal, responsible, upstanding good citizen: by not making waves, doing what you're told, declaring yourself a loyal Republican or Democrat and then cheering for your team, and -- most of all -- accepting in the name of Fear that you must suffer indignities, humiliations and always-increasing loss of liberties at the hands of unchallengeable functionaries of the state. I don't really care what political label John Tyner applies to himself: we need far more of his civil resistance in our citizenry and far less of the mindless obedient drone behavior which these Nation writers seem to venerate.

I spoke with Tyner several days ago and he was very worried that his public stance would jeopardize exactly the ordinariness which The Nation claims is fake: his job, his family, his reputation, and the cost from government recriminations. This highly irresponsible, evidence-free Nation attack demonstrates how valid those concerns were. It may be that several vocal opponents of the new TSA process are Koch-funded -- that wouldn't surprise me -- but that has absolutely nothing to do with Tyner, and The Nation, for which I have high regard, owes him an apology and retraction for the innuendo it smeared on him without a shred of evidence. It's difficult enough for ordinary citizens to take a principled stand like this against the Government; knowing that they're going to be subjected to this sort of baseless hit job makes it less likely that other citizens will be willing to do so.

To Read the Entire Article

Paul Craig Roberts: TSA Gestapo Empire

TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.

(Anti-War)

TSA Gestapo Empire
by Paul Craig Roberts
Foreign Policy Journal

It doesn’t take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.

Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs?

That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.

Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers’ bottom lines.

There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.

With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America. But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.

Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed.

The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real terrorists.

If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.

Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane.

All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.

The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama regime’s slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same day.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Lindsay Beyerstein: Pilots’ Unions Say ‘No’ to Invasive TSA Airport Scans

[This is what the government spent 200+ million dollars of "recovery act" funds on? Come on Americans, is this how you want to live your lives?]

Pilots’ Unions Say ‘No’ to Invasive TSA Airport Scans
By Lindsay Beyerstein
In These Times

The nation's largest pilot's union, the Allied Pilots' Association, urged its 11,500 members to boycott the TSA's whole body scanners, which use x-rays to render a very lifelike nude portrait of the subject. The TSA installed new "Advanced Imaging Technology" scanners in 65 more airports earlier this month.

For those passengers who refuse to play a nude bit part in the security theater, the TSA has launched a new line of more invasive body searches in October, Consumerist reports:

"To call it a pat-down is a euphemism," said a spokesman for the ACLU in Massachusetts. "They really go for it."

He says that -- unlike the antiquated pat-down, which required TSA screeners to use the back of their hands when searching sensitive regions of your person -- the enhandced pat-down allows them to use their palms and fingers to feel and prod passengers.

Dave Bates, president of the Allied Pilots Association, told ABC News that pilots are already exposed to high levels of radiation simply from flying. Radiation exposure is cumulative. The union is concered about the potential consequences of piling even more raditiation into their day-to-day routine.

The unions point out that pilots fly an average of 15-18 days each month and may face two or three scans each day. The radiation exposure from a scan is about 1/2000th the amount of a chest x-ray.

The alternative isn't appealing to pilots, either. In a message to his brother and sister pilots, Bates described the "enhanced" pat-down as a "demeaning experience."

"In my view, it is unacceptable to submit to one in public while wearing the uniform of a professional airline pilot," he wrote, "I recommend that all pilots insist that such screening is performed in an out-of-view area to protect their privacy and dignity."

To Read the Rest of the Article