What follows is the text of an email I just sent to my representative in the House of Representatives. It is one thing to complain about the TSA. Only Congress can fix the problem. And it will only do so if we demand it to act.
Dear Congressman Kinzinger:
I am writing to request that you take action on the on-going abuses that have come to characterize the security theater charade of airport security through the TSA. The Transportation Security Administration has created a security apparatus that is built on smoke-screens and mirrors, one that results in a continual eroding of constitutional rights, and an illusion of security.
The TSA has demonstrated it is incapable of using common sense, through such things as targeting children; racially profiling individuals because of the color of their skin; utilizing un-proven body scanners where we have no real way of knowing the long-term health implications; subjecting American citizens to invasions of privacy that are patently unreasonable; treating people rudely and as if we are suspect just because we are foolish enough to want to travel by air. The TSA is a bureaucratic nightmare and an embarrassment to the United States.
The rationale for the TSA is to keep us safe, and is wrapped in the mantra of national security as a justification to ignore the Fourth Amendment violations it engages in on a daily basis. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. it is time to disable the TSA; to go back to the starting line, and develop a rational - reasonable - approach to airport security.
For almost a decade we have had to put up with gross invasions of privacy, always justified by unwarranted fears of terrorism. The TSA does NOT make us safer, it creates an illusion of making us safer through knee-jerk policy-making, and bureaucratic decision-making that boggles the mind in its lack of common sense (witness the news stories just this week of children terrorized by those very people who are supposed to keep us safe from terrorism).
As a constitutional law scholar and a student of privacy rights, I am appalled by how “we the people” have allowed this agency to continue to function. And while I have little faith that the Supreme Court would ever take action to rein it in, given the state of its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the reality is this is an issue that does NOT need to be resolved in the Courts. CONGRESS has the power - the authority - the responsibility - to take action to set things right.
You have always claimed to be a champion of individual rights. I urge you to not allow the irrational justification of sacrificing individual freedoms for the illusion of security to continue. Security Theater of the Absurd has gone on for too long.
Thank you for your consideration.
EVERY ONE NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT ON THIS ISSUE!!!! Will you?
