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Chertoff is going to make a killing from more than one new security measure being put in place at American airports.
Not only did he make money as a lobbyist in order to obtain stimulus money to be spent on possibly unsafe xray porno scans, he is also going to reap profits from a biometric verified ID system that will whisk you past long lines and undignified checks reserved for the unwashed peasants for the low price of $179.00.
He’s one of the investors that picked up the bankrupt company “Clear” at auction. This system appears to be already up and running in Orlando and is slated to open in Denver in Nov 2010. Perhaps by Thanksgiving?
Back in May 2010 the NYT reported:
The assets of Verified Identity Pass, the start-up that ran the Clear service in 18 airports in the United States and shut down about a year ago in a dispute with creditors, were acquired for $6 million in a federal bankruptcy proceeding on April 16.
The winning bidder, AlClear, is led by two former investment managers and backed in part by Robert V. LaPenta, chief executive of L-1 Identity Solutions, a biometrics company based in Stamford, Conn., that supplied kiosks and other technology to the original Verified Identity Pass.
The new company, to be renamed Clear, will be based in New York. Mr. LaPenta and Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will sit on its board.
Back in 2005 the Electronic Privacy Information Center appeared before congress and one concern was the security, storage, and possible alternate uses of private and personal data collected by a private company which is not subject to the same restrictions as the government would be:
The private company would be in charge of verifying identity documents and maintaining a database full of personally identifiable data and images of the identity documents submitted by U.S. citizens and permanent foreign residents. The private company, unlike TSA and other federal government agencies, is not subject to the restrictions of the Privacy Act of 1974.18 When passing the Privacy Act, Congress sought to restrict amount of personal information that federal agencies could collect and required agencies to be transparent in their information practices.19 The members of the Clear Registered Traveler program would be subject to the private company’s choice of what data to collect, how and where to store the data, and who has access to the data.
More here: http://epic.org/
Resist.
33 Comments
Decisions . . . decisions . . .
I’m not sure which is the better deal, I might have flip a coin to decide. :)
Thanks, shekissesfrogs.
Coincidence? Not a chance.
Skeletor helped to create a system so untenable, that desperate people will pay a lot for a remedy, and poof, Skeletor arrives in the nick of time with a very very profitable remedy.
I want to know how many current and former members of the administration, employees of DHS and TSA have investments in any of these companies cropping up to deprive us of our constitutional liberties.
Nice knowing you shekisses. FDL is banning me. 2+2=5.
Wow. He gets you any way you slice it, doesn’t he?
What’s interesting is that “Clear” was founded originally by none other than Steven Brill.
Is it just certain threads? I hope you don’t leave.
I know, I just heard this morning on the news Barbara Boxer wants to know if the Real ID system can be brought back to ‘help’ with this problem.
This fleecing is coordinated. I can’t see how Carly Fiorina would have been so much different than her.
Holy crap. Boxer wants a “trusted traveler” program. Is this what she had in mind? I was thinking more of a driver’s license type thing.
She wants a “trusted traveler” program. I don’t know if this is what she had in mind??? Is it? Ugh!!!
I’m unfamiliar with Steven Brill. How is he connected otherwise?
This card has everything wrong with it that it had wrong with it before, but if they privatize it, they don’t have to worry about protecting our rights.
Americans already won this argument but they are bringing it back.
If there is someone that really wants to put a bomb on a plane, and it’s AQ – they will specifically find someone that can get one of these ID’s so they can bypass screening at the gate.
So now, just like with HC, well have the government or TSA enforcing punitive measures to coerce us into into a private business services that exploit our rights. it’s a government enforced Hobson’s choice.
They will not stop until we are living in a police state without liberty, without freedom of movement, and completely devoid of justice.
I am assume Boxer has asked her staff to rework the Pledge of Allegiance.
Of course: occam’s razor. This has been planned it appears. It’s not just us, it’s Britain too. Pilots refuse to take part in national identity card trials
reglawyer wrote that American pilots are going to have these cards now and that management of the Air Traffic Control system will now be privatized as well.
Rep MIca and Sen Boxer participate in that wonderful bipartisan fashion to sell us down the river:
They beat privatization back for a long time. It’s disheartening that the Democrats delivered this for them, and to a foreign company. I wonder what will become of the Air Traffic Controllers union?
APA president advises against new body scanners
It’s okay for the hoi polloi, so long as they aren’t subjected to it. Maybe I don’t care so much about the pilots union now.
What better way to sell us Real ID than to make it the only alternative to naked pictures and molestation?
The depressing thing is our corrupt politicians may well succeed in selling the public on this false choice.
We are no longer the Land of the Free, much less the Home of the Brave.
“Do as I say, Don’t Do as I Do” as a *model* of governance? What a lunatic fantasy!
More food-for-thought:
“It would help if TSA’s “fact vs myth” didn’t include a myth of its own” by John Aravosis, Nov. 21, 2010, link: http://www.americablog.com/2010/11/it-would-help-if-tsas-fact-vs-myth.html
“The real reason for grope-athon and porn-scanners” by Ian Welsh, Nov. 21, 2010, link: http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-real-reason-for-grope-athon-and-porn-scanners
I seriously doubt that Boehner had bought the ID before he was whisked around the porno scanners and enhanced pat-downs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brill_(law_writer)
I really resent the idea that I am considered a danger and Boehner is not. Why? He’s just a person.
Not only is he just a person, he’s a really dangerous person. We’ve seen him in action. He does not have the public’s safety at heart, as he was seen passing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the House floor.
I’m not a fan of the whole security theater thing, but “Porno Scans?”
The idea that “human body = porno” doesn’t sound very progressive to me.
I’m not saying the scan is a good idea. Just that it’s a bad idea to call it “porn.” I haven’t seen any of these images, but I can’t imagine that any of them would be in any way ‘sexy’ to your average person.
It’s called a “rhetorical device”
It’s a phrase and image that most everyone can understand. A form of messaging that sets the desired image rather than letting the proponents set the messaging theme.
The scanners do not have to show every appendage that individuals may have for this message and phrase to resonate which is the point of it.
The actual erotic quality vs. commercial porn is not the point. It’s a human dignity thing. There are people with abuse issues, self-image issues, prostheses, etc. for whom the naked pictures, flattering or unflattering are particularly humiliating or offensive. I would think that for the same folks, very often, the molestation alternative is even worse.
It’s about the whole “secure in one’s person” Fourth Amendment business and standing up for the people I mentioned even if you aren’t one of them.
I understand all that. But this issue does not exist in a vacuum.
If you’re going to go on about “porno scans,” you’d better not complain if, for example, a woman sunbathing topless in her own yard is arrested for ‘lewd and lascivious behavior.’
Yes, it certainly is a human dignity thing.
But it’s not a ‘porno’ thing.
Strawman argument.
The woman would be in her own back yard.
This humiliating scanner is in public at the airport.
The more appropriate analogy would be for the gov’t to arrest a woman for going topless at the airport while taking these scan shots.
It’s not a strawman, and the woman sunbathing was not meant to be analogous to the TSA screening.
I’m saying that while refering to TSA scans as ‘porno’ may be effective, it sets a bad precedent.
I also believe the use of that language is disingenuous. I don’t think very many people on this blog are the kind who would see an image of the human body and think ‘porno.’
@VictorLazlo 4:46: As I said, it is a rhetorical device. No, people here are not going to see images of the scan and think it is porn.
We are having to create occasionally over the top rhetoric that gets people’s attention and penetrates the fog of Dancing With the Stars, Survivor and the other nonsense.
Porno Scanner is as effective a phrasing to use and gets attention just as easily as using the phrase “Catfood Commission” to describe Obama’s Deficit Commission.
Do you actually like seeing folks on the left continually losing the messaging battle?
You make a good point:
“Do you actually like seeing folks on the left continually losing the messaging battle?”
Though I stand by the gist of what I was saying above, you are right that all that high-mindedness needs to be balanced with practicality.
Though I don’t think too many teabaggers want to be scanned by the TSA either. There is some left-right aspect to the TSA debate, but not as much as some other issues.
Thanks for a good discussion, dakine.
I actually signed up for a Clear card a few years ago, and it does not really allow you to bypass security. All it does it get you into a much shorter line; all the luggage scanning and metal detecting was still on the program.
This was before the introduction of backscatter machines, but I doubt they acquired any new privileges.
Are you familiar with the terms “Tax and Spend Democrats”, “Socialized Health Care”, “Godless Liberals” “Pro-Abortion Leftists”, and “Death Panels”?
How’s these for precedents?
Porno scanners may be a bit hyperbolic but it’s not dishonest.
Jane Hamsher used Porno scanner when she went on Morning Joe, and she coined “CatFood Commission” which has really caught on. What they are doing to us is what is obscene.
The back scatter scanners are more dangerous than they are being portrayed. How much more dangerous, I don’t know but the democrats are going to lose even more support when the public realizes they’ve been lied to.
More importantly, is that we losing our rights and once they are gone, good luck getting them back. We should be worried about the creeping police state, Republicans didn’t get away with what Obama’s Administration is doing. Democrats wouldn’t stand for that.
From libby liberal(a good read):
There is more to Keeping America Safe™ than concentrating on smuggled weapons, which is reactionary. How about scanning cargo? Stop killing muslims- give up building the TAPI oil pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan? Using dogs in Airports that can recognize stressed individuals or chemicals?
What about natural disasters? The levies from the Katrina disaster haven’t been fixed due to lack of funds ..
I hope you are right, but there is still two distinct classes of people. Politicians and passengers on private planes shouldn’t be allowed to avoid what the rest of us are expected to endure. That would make it fair, but it still would be invasive.
Great post, Shek…! Will we ever be rid of Shrub’s minions…? *gah*
Can we just declare chertoff an enemy combattant and let cia interrogators deal with his crazy ass?
Boxer’s “trusted traveler” program makes me want to vomit.
I thought we HAD trusted travelers, called Citizens.
Who may travel their country without threat of unreasonable search and seizure.