Texas governor supports TSA ‘anti-groping bill’
SAN ANTONIO—The fight against enhanced passenger-screening measures at airports gained new support in Texas. On June 20, Texas Gov. Rick Perry added to state lawmakers' special session agenda a measure that would criminalize "enhanced pat-downs" by Transportation Security Administration agents at airports in Texas, reported MSNBC.
The bill passed the Texas House, but was then pulled from the Senate floor without a vote after U.S. Attorney John Murphy circulated a letter to senators warning that TSA has the authority to prevent airplanes from taking off from Texas airports if the agency cannot certify that they are safe.
The bill would make it a Class A misdemeanor—punishable by up to a year in prison or a $4,000 fine—for a TSA agent to "touch the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person, even through that person's clothing" for the purpose of "granting access to a building or a form of transportation," according to the news outlet.
The TSA defended its pat down procedures in a response to the governor’s bill. "Americans rely on TSA to put in place effective procedures to resolve security threats, and screen passengers who decline to be screened by technology. Aviation security agencies worldwide have relied on pat downs since long before TSA was created, and we have adjusted our pat-down procedures based on what we have learned from intelligence and the tactics used by our adversaries," according to a statement published in The Statesman.
During special sessions, the Legislature may only consider items that the governor puts on the agenda. It is unknown when a vote will take place.
Comments
In the United States of America our legal and political system has the US Constitution as its founding principles, for which several hundred thousand Americans have died to preserve these principles. Because of this, I kind of like that document.
I do care because the government cannot arbitrarily make up illegal and unconstitutional procedures. For example, the police cannot stripsearch people who are arrested for jaywalking or for littering. The Supreme Court just took up the case of a citizen who was held for 8 days and stripsearched twice despite proof he had paid a minor fine. The Supreme Court has also overturned the handgun ban in Washington D.C., which shows they do support the constitution over the security risk in that city.
So, I care because hundreds of thousands have died to preserve the freedoms of my country. When I see the government overstep its bounds, I will fight that.
I have no issues with accepting what it legally called an "administrative search" at the airport; I have issues when the search is illegal and unconstitutional. The legal methods have worked quite well for 49 years, and especially since 9-11. The stripsearch scanners and the sexual groping of children is illegal, and does not enhance security. We know the stripsearch scanners failed every time in Dallas/Ft.Worth testing, and we know that we have had 49 years of flights in the US with zero/nada/zilch airline passenger bombings.
I personally think we should profile all international travelers who are not subject to our rights, quite frankly, and that is the source of the only 2 incidents in the last 10 years. One of those incidents we knew about the guy but the US intelligence services bungled it bigtime. Also, both of these airline bombing attempts failed miserably so it must be pretty hard for airline passengers to even set off a bomb, much less bring a plane down.