Apparently the TSA Can’t Decide:

A 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy was targeted by the TSA this week when her crutches and leg braces set off the airport screeners at JFK. Dina Frank’s parents claim the screening agents were particularly aggressive during an initial patdown of their daughter. They say the TSA then caused the family to miss their flight by requiring Dina to return to the screening area for additional inspection after they’d already been released to their gate.

“They’re harassing people,” said Dina’s father, Dr. Johsua Frank. “This is totally misguided policy. Yes, I understand that TSA is in charge of national security and there’s all these threats. For her to be singled out, it’s crazy.”

TSA Cares, a program specifically designed to assist airline passengers with disabilities, was launched in December.

[ibt]

To be serious for a moment: this is the problem with the TSA.  The mission of the TSA is such that they have to treat even the most unlikely, sympathetic passengers as potential threats.  So-called terrorists in Iraq have gone so far as to plant remote-controlled explosives on mentally disabled suicide bombers.  Is it really such a stretch to believe that they would do the same with a physically disabled individual, adult or child, to accomplish the same task?  When TSA performs these kinds of searches, it is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

This is the choice that America is faced with: we can either to choose to live free of these invasive procedures, and live with the risk of a terrorist attack succeeding, or live prostrate and humiliated by our own government everyday so that we can fool ourselves into thinking we’re safe.  And make no mistake: we are fooling ourselves if we think this form of security theater makes us safe.

So one must ask themselves: do you want to live in an America where strangers feel up disabled 7-year old girls to check them for bombs?  Or are you willing to live with the relatively low probability threat of another terrorist attack occurring?  I’ll take my chances with the lightning, thank you. 

1. nextinoffice likes this
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5. grapefruitunhinged reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian and added:

   They probably wouldn’t be as concerned with (misguidedly) making a big show of patting down disabled children if they...

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19. truthstream reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian and added:

    Exactly. Even the former TSA chief has admitted on record that airport security in America is “broken and should be...

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26. tofueggsandbakey reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian and added:

    All of this.

27. illtakebombay likes this
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29. epitaphfortheraceofman reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian and added:

    As I saw (and reblogged) elsewhere: “It doesn’t matter if you’re...7-year-old girl,...

30. mattyb182 reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian
31. the-altar reblogged this from hipsterlibertarian and added:

    ‘security theater’ I couldn’t

32. the-altar likes this
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34. hipsterlibertarian reblogged this from letterstomycountry and added:

    Yesterday: Little girls. Today: Little girls with cerebral palsy. Tomorrow:  ?

35. This was featured in #Politics
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38. wizard-syphilis reblogged this from letterstomycountry and added:

    We’ve always been lucky enough that they haven’t decided to pat down my brother, but every time I see stuff like this it...

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48. baileybubble reblogged this from laliberty and added:

    Two weeks ago I went through the Kansas City International airport with pepper spray in my purse. Perhaps they were too...

49. maxlibertarios reblogged this from laliberty and added:

    I was thinking that a little girl like that would be perfect for smuggling shit or hidding a bomb.

50. laliberty reblogged this from letterstomycountry and added:

    False choice. Just because there isn’t a government agency performing security duties doesn’t mean we’d be less safe. In...

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