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20 years ago the TSA would have been a strong enough shock to the American public that they would have revolted. Now they accept that level of abuse. So the bar

20 years ago the TSA would have been a strong enough shock to the American public that they would have revolted. Now they accept that level of abuse. So the bar has clearly been raised to a very high level, and it keeps going higher. They're passing so many dangerous laws it's all but impossible to keep up with (and the taxes and regulations to go with them). The monster in DC expends a lot of effort and money trying to keep the people asleep. It's the story about the frog and the boiling pot of water. To roll it back would take a two term President dedicated to absolutely nothing else but that effort, and a Congress willing to go along. Scenarios like that only become possible during particularly extreme situations, either war or depression.

rhizome 14y ago
Now they accept that level of abuse. That's unfair. The TSA was established by people hiding behind 9/11.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Even this loses context. The suggestion here is that intrusive airport security was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. But that's not true at all; we've had intrusive airport security, supported Constitutionally by the framework of "administrative search", for dozens of years. What happened after 9/11 is that the government (rightly) acknowledged that airport security was run by a decentralized and largely ineffective hodgepodge of private and local security organizations. The TSA was a "reform" of airport security intended to centralize the practice and make it more consistent. The TSA is obviously terrible and much of airport security is a farce. But this isn't simply a result of people begging for farcical centralized security theater; it's a consequence of centralizing airport security in the federal government and thus making it far simpler for airport security to be "responsive" to "new threats". The TSA's incompetence and intrusiveness is largely an emergent phenomenon. It isn't a policy goal.
aqme28 14y ago
70 years ago Americans approved of imprisoning Japanese-American citizens simply for being of Japanese descent. It's hard to say how our views of civil liberties may have shifted, (except to say that if civil liberties have an enemy, it's War).

rhizome 14y ago

Now they accept that level of abuse. That's unfair. The TSA was established by people hiding behind 9/11.

tptacek 14y ago
Even this loses context. The suggestion here is that intrusive airport security was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. But that's not true at all; we've had intrusive airport security, supported Constitutionally by the framework of "administrative search", for dozens of years. What happened after 9/11 is that the government (rightly) acknowledged that airport security was run by a decentralized and largely ineffective hodgepodge of private and local security organizations. The TSA was a "reform" of airport security intended to centralize the practice and make it more consistent. The TSA is obviously terrible and much of airport security is a farce. But this isn't simply a result of people begging for farcical centralized security theater; it's a consequence of centralizing airport security in the federal government and thus making it far simpler for airport security to be "responsive" to "new threats". The TSA's incompetence and intrusiveness is largely an emergent phenomenon. It isn't a policy goal.

aqme28 14y ago

70 years ago Americans approved of imprisoning Japanese-American citizens simply for being of Japanese descent. It's hard to say how our views of civil liberties may have shifted, (except to say that if civil liberties have an enemy, it's War).