Yor Fucking Papers Please, And Hand Over That Snow Globe

Surprise! TSA Is Searching Your Subway, Truck, Ferry, Bus, AND Plane

"Think you could avoid the TSA's body scanners and pat-downs by taking Amtrak? Think again. Even your daily commute isn't safe from TSA screenings. And because the TSA is working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol, you may have your immigration status examined along with your "junk".

As part of the TSA's request for FY 2012 funding, TSA Administrator John Pistole told Congress last week that the TSA conducts 8,000 unannounced security screenings every year. These screenings, conducted with local law enforcement agencies as well as immigration, can be as simple as checking out cargo at a busy seaport. But more and more, they seem to involve giving airport-style pat-downs and screenings of unsuspecting passengers at bus terminals, ferries, and even subways.

These surprise visits are part of the TSA's VIPR program: Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response. The VIPR program first started doing searches in 2007, and has grown since then. Currently, the TSA only has 25 VIPR teams doing these impromptu searches: in 2012, it wants to get 12 more.

The searches are in the name of passenger security, and the TSA says it wants to prevent incidents like the 2004 Madrid train bombings. But if the airports' TSA searches miss security risks like large knives, loaded guns, and explosives, there's certainly the chance that screenings at train stations would be similarly flawed.

Not to worry: security isn't the only goal of VIPR. A recent VIPR operation/screening at a Tampa Greyhound bus station was conducted with US Border Patrol and ICE. "What we're looking for is threats to national security as well as immigration law violators," said Steve McDonald from US Border Patrol. An ICE representative said that they were also looking for smuggling, and Gary Milano from Homeland Security said that although that was the first time the Tampa bus depot had been screened, VIPR would be back again sometime in the future and was using the element of surprise as a deterrent to "the bad guys."

We're the bad guys now, in their eyes.
And it has nothing to do with our safety, but their safety from us.

Government 'surplus' stores now selling personal items TSA steals from passengers

"If you have ever wondered what happens to the countless barrels of personal items that the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confiscates (steals) from air travelers every single day, you might be surprised to know that state governments are now reselling these supposedly "dangerous" items in government surplus stores for extra revenue.

According to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, Texas state surplus stores are reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue every year for the state by selling travelers' "legally" stolen goods.

Formerly reserved for legitimate surplus items, state surplus stores in Texas are making a killing on the thousands of new "security threat" items being stolen by the TSA, which is, of course, the result of artificially-generated government paranoia. So harmless personal items like snow globes, for instance, are now in great supply at the surplus stores because they contain more than the three ounces of liquid permitted by the TSA.

Most travelers, of course, would never in their wildest imaginations think that a snow globe is a security threat, which is why many are shocked in the security line to discover that their simple souvenir is considered a terrorist threat by the TSA. But apparently that threat magically diminishes once the government decides to resell that same snow globe for cash to fill its coffers -- because surely the thousands of snow globes the shops receive are not inspected for the mythical explosives they could contain, prior to hitting surplus shelves.

Humorously, both the TSA and the agencies that are selling the stolen items refuse to admit that they are even confiscating them in the first place. According to the Statesman, a worker at a Texas surplus shop said, concerning how the items were obtained, "We say willfully surrendered." Using this same logic, of course, a man who holds up a woman and steals her purse did not actually steal -- the woman merely "willfully surrendered" her purse upon having a gun pointed in her face."