Could your next trip to the food court at your local shopping mall include an enhanced patdown? Its more likely than you may think, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
In addition to repeating her references about the hopes of spreading the onerous “security” apparatus from the airport to trains and subway stations, Napolitano also tapped hotels and shopping malls as the next targets on her wish list.
The first in this effort came earlier in the month, when the Department of Homeland Security started installing video screens to chide shoppers to rat on other suspicious-looking shoppers. It won’t end there, however.
Though Napolitano stopped short of explicitly calling for the TSA’s “enhanced patdown” systems and heavy handed full body scans for shoppers, when security becomes a goal the DHS’ only answer seems to be major moves against personal privacy. The TSA is clearly the administration’s model for protection, and whether it is flying the friendly skies or getting a pretzel from Hot Sam’s, official eyes, and inevitably officials’ hands must fall on the general public.
What will be the excuse to call it part of the transport system?
We know the TSA uses the arguement that one doesnt have to fly, and one gives up thier rights when they buy a ticket, but we also know the wish list includes trains planes AND AUTOMOBILES and Pedestrians.
Thank GOD I dont live in the US!
and for the blind fools who blame the current adminstration remember back and blame Bush he started the organisation and the initial Unconstitutional searches.
So right, bush is a war criminal running around loose, and the US government IS the axis of evil. What the so called "Ai-Quada started the government is finishing. The rape of our constitution is one of the criminal acts bush is guilty of, the killing of almost a million innocent Iraqi's, and 4,000 American troops all based on lies, is the most anti American act ever committed on American's, and bush still lives, I don't get it.
TSA go ahead. I never go to the mall in the first place. Most malls are owned by corporate gangsters, and are predominantly filled with national chain type stores that by taking business away from local store owners suck monies out of home town economies. I care not to patronize them.
Maybe the TSA will encourage others to to the same.
I've heard this crap is being spewed at Wal-Mart. Well, just another reason NOT to shop there. If I'm going to be subjected to propaganda of this sort then I'll tell the managers, store owners, whomever, about this and they can live without both my presence and money. Just like the flying debacle it's only money, the lack thereof, that speaks to these bastards.
The day I see this implemented at a store will be the last day I will shop there.
Natural progression of every Nazi, Commie,Theocratic and any totalitarian regime, Happy gropings!
Give that billious bimbo enough room and she'll become a latter day Rosa Klebb. I wonder if Dubya is having any second thoughts about this monster he created…or any thoughts about anything at all? (Don't answer…it was a rhetorical question.)
He is part of the ELITE CLASS so he does not have to submit to the indignities hoisted on the rest of us – so I suspect he doesn't think about it – even if he could.
His "base" are making $billions of the DHS. which was created for the purpose of graft and corruption,
Best get your self a Homeland security degree.
cause that the only part of the economy that is gona grow
i said it before and ill say it now, israel is our future.
LOL.
Fat, lazy, and stupid americans will let themselves be humiliated by this latest assault on their supposed " freedoms ". Instead of rising up and throwing off the rope that encircles their scrawny necks, they will allow this further tightening of the noose to occur. And they will still say that they are a free society. What a joke.
Did you ever read Watership Down? There was a group of rabbits on a farmer's land. He put out vegetables for them, and also set snares to pick up a bunny or two for supper. These rabbits came to decide that the loss of a few was worth the free veg. As the author put it, "They learned to love the shining wire."
Americans are like those rabbits, trading freedom for a bucket of moldy safety turnips.
Are they trying to get all Americans to emigrate elsewhere? That way Mexicans, neo-cons and TSA zombies can have the country all to themselves.
Oh, what a lovely nightmare that will be! As soon as my elderly parent no longer needs my care, I am so out of here!
This is not the country I enlisted in the Army to defend. Why defend sheep? They're born to be controlled and die. It's their fate in life. We, at least, can choose to be sheep. Personally, I like sheep with mint jelly.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any stupider…
Oops – I had to go and say it out loud.
Don't forget that places like shopping malls, or, indeed, individual business premises on a public street, are private property and, as such, their owners are entitled to require persons entering the premises to submit to a security check of the owner's choice as a condition of entry. As long as everybody is subjected to the same check, the civil rights laws (for example) are not infringed. The idea may be, not so much to impose DHS checks, but to encourage owners to do it themselves.
True but unless the DHS manages to make it mandatory for all shopping outlets it seems like the ones who opts for excessive TSA-style screening are going to lose business. The American public may have been buffaloed into accepting the full-body scan for a flight, but I doubt they'll make a visit to Hot Topic the same way.
Right, but how are private businesses going to hook up with the TSA or whatever agency of zombies? Will businesses hire the TSA for security purposes voluntarily? Will the tyrants in Washinton via a Patriot Act demand that malls do it? If not the TSA, who will screen? Some specialized israeli "security" firm? Sure sound like a good place for entrepeneurs to start. Are we witnessing the next bubble raising? The security bubble.
Please forgive me if this comment comes across as a bit obvious because I don't intend it to be, but if they install metal detector machines, and pat people down who go to shopping malls, won't more people just order their stuff online, which would make going to the mall unnecessary? With greater online shopping, wouldn't that cause mall stores to close, and then we end up with a bunch of empty buildings? Also, wouldn't it negatively affect the economy because while online shopping store profits would skyrocket, unemployment also would increase because mall stores closed? It seems to me DHS needs to rethink the implications of this.
Well, one might wonder first whether there is even enough money and manpower in the system to install all those detectors, find and train uniformed personel, do the daily logistics and data management and whatnot. Maybe a second D.C. will be opened in New Mexico?
But talking about economics, of course people won't shop online much more. Consider that many don't even know which way to turn the mouse or don't care for the interwebs at all. And if most were in their bunker teleshopping – these mall stores won't close! You will still need to house the wares, and of course the whole new fleet of delivery vehicles. Get Bernanke on the phone and tell him where the saving Bubble may be found: logistics. Those people made redundant won't be out of a job! If they can't land the TSA sinecure, they can become WALMART DELIVERATOR. So it's all good.
They may rethink it, depending on one major factor. Will the American public dumbly follow along and submit, or, as you say, shop online instead?
What if so many people quit flying that it put a serious hurt on the airlines? Would they complain about lost income, or just demand a bailout from the government that made flying suck?
Will the malls feel the pain too, or will people just submit in exchange for the privilege of buying cheap Chinese garbage in a mall setting?
I am hypothesizing what if the American public will not follow along and submit, and therefore shop online instead? I realize this is giving the public credit, perhaps too much credit. But, you raise a key question: will the government bail out the shopping malls a la taxpayer (shopper) money? If modern times are any indicator, then yes the government will bail out the stores, in which case, whether there are any shoppers or not in the stores is irrelevant, because the stores still will get the shoppers' (taxpayers') money. I guess I have my answer.
American Citizens Alert!
Leave the country quickly while you still have time and are able to do so.
Australia will accept American refugees!
Oh man, 'land of the free', hilarious stuff, if it wasn't so bloody serious.