By Maui Curmudgeon

If you are coming or going to Hawaii, you’re experiencing the destruction of your personal rights every time – for no reason.

It’s that last bit that urks me. Hawaii being the only state in the Union you can’t drive to, the TSA gets to violate you before you get to experience your Hawaiian dream.

The recent frufru over the Somali terrorist on a Detroit plane from Amsterdam has sent the TSA into a tizzy once again. There are times when I begin to suspect the government of staging these embarrassing failures just to make the gullible American traveler pliant enough to accept the next level of invasive personal search. As I wrote the other day, we’re living in Joseph Stalin’s wet dream.

The latest thing now is a huge push to get complete body scanners into the airports so the TSA can see your genitalia – yes, genitalia, which is where explosives have been hiding. Since they were first discussed, these machines have been highly controversial. Rep. Jason Chaffetz has said, “I don’t think anybody needs to see my 8-year-old naked in order to secure [an] airplane.”
It turns out the TSA says, yeah, it does, and there’s not a damn thing you, or even a Congressman, can do about it. Fuck off. (Former KGB officials weep in envy.)

So, let’s review why this latest TSA overture in the “war on Terror” is useless, expensive, and dangerous. And just to end the year on a positive note, I’ll present a six-word solution to to this Gordian dilemma.

1. The TSA is a pack of liars. In its short history, the TSA has lied about nearly everything it handles. The latest scanners are the most recent example. When it first discussed them, the TSA said it was only going to try the machines, and perhaps install them in a few test sites or key locations, and would not install them universally. At the first excuse, they’ve thrown that promise out the window.

The TSA should have learned from what happened to cops. In the Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, the Court ruled that it was just peachy for cops to lie in the execution of their duties, to obtain a greater good (catch a bad guy). The court ruled that it was NOT acceptable for a cop to lie to other cops or to the “system.” i.e. to a judge to obtain a warrant. But lie to the public? Sure!

A sixth-grader could predict the results. In poll after poll, respect for cops has plummeted around the country. The bottom line is now you can’t trust a cop. He or she is just as liable to be lying to you as any criminal would. The days of “trust me I’m here to help you, but you’ve got to help me” bullshit are over.

It’s no different with the TSA. Respect is gone. Distrust and resentment are here to stay, and they don’t help make the system work.

2. The TSA is useless. Many people feel the TSA suffers from the same drawback as cops do – they are after the fact. For cops, it’s true, and this is one reason why cops – around the world, not just in the U.S. – are grossly ineffective at handling crime. The majority of crimes in the U.S. are never solved.

However, in fact the TSA is NOT “after the fact.” Rather, the TSA has as cushy a job in law enforcement as you can find anywhere in the world. They stand and wait for potential criminals to come to them. Further, the TSA has a battery of technologies with which to greet these criminals. And whether it’s with private internal tests of their systems (which the TSA failed 80% of the time last year) or in individual incidents such as the Somali terrorist, the TSA fails anyway. Hence, the “pathetic” in my title.

3. The TSA is a ripoff. $120 billion a year and climbing for TSA services, and that number will skyrocket with the installation of expensive machines which will count the folds in your scrotum, if you have one.

I do not argue for no security. Planes would be falling from the skies. I argue for effective security, a concept foreign to the United States government and the TSA. (C’mon, powdered explosives have been around for decades. You mean NO ONE at the TSA has been thinking, “Hey, someone is going to use these things, how can we prevent that?” Evidently not.)

I am beyond surprised why no one is talking about the solution to this mess. Here it is, in six words:

1. Abolish the TSA.

2. Hire the Israelis.

Yeah that’s right. Think: what has been the number one target of terrorists since it was created in 1947? Israel. You don’t really think that Muslim terrorists haven’t tried hundreds of times to destroy El AL aircraft, do you? Of course they have. And just how successful have they been? To this day there has not been a single incident aboard an Israeli aircraft.

Not one.

Israeli security is so good and effective precisely because we don’t know what it really is. When you pass through security at Tel Aviv, for example, you aren’t removing your shoes. Hmmm, why? Could it be that Israeli security is exercising forethought in their procedures?

I do. I think they are way ahead of us, anticipating, preparing, systemizing, and often without the least sign of their activity invading travelers’ perceptions. Now THAT’S security. Their track record proves it. They are successful professionals.

Who do we have? GED-educated, $17/hour wanks who will shortly be staring at your labia in the name of “security.” Is this the America you were taught existed? Do you sign on for this bullshit? Does it make you feel safer?

I didn’t think so.

Let’s outsource our airport security to the Israelis. (Hell, we outsource damn near everything else.) Yes, it will be expensive. yes it will take up our time.

But it will be worth it.