The Airport Police State Strikes Again!
In case you missed the memo, no one has any rights at US Airports. Of course, US citizens’ rights outside the airport have also been degraded significantly by George Bush, his cronies, and the limp-dick congress, but, at the airport, forget it. Assume you are in the good old USSR once you pass through security and you’ll be fine. There’s no accountability, no real rules, and no way to seek redress for abuses by the security theater folks at the TSA, the secret police working for the DHS or the local police who are just as clueless as you are.
The one thing that the TSA/Airline Security Theater Troupe hates most is being recorded. When they’re recorded, they lose plausible deniability and can’t just lie their ass off and say it never happened. In this case, a 56-year-old woman videotaped an on-air altercation from her seat, by all accounts disturbing no one, and was arrested, threatened with blacklisting, and banned from JetBlue:
“The police, a JetBlue rep and a TSA official all looked at the video and agreed that it was too dark to really see who was on it and that it clearly had been shot from my seat, so I had not interfered with anything that was going on,” Parver said. “I assumed that was the end of it.” At that point, the representative with JetBlue requested that she delete the video, Parver added.
“He informed me that if I didn’t immediately delete it, I could never fly on JetBlue again,” she said. “He said that he would be filing a report that would be shared with other airlines, and I might have a hard time getting any airline to let me fly.”
Parver requested a written notice that she was going to be denied service from the airline, as well as possibly others. The representative and LVMPD officers then asked her to leave, Parver said.
Parver then asked for everyone’s name, when the officer told her to leave or be arrested, she said.
“I said, ‘Then arrest me.’”
At that point the officer arrested her, pushed her against the wall and forced her down a flight of stairs, Parver said.”
Lesson: Ben Franklin said “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” and thus his prophesy has come to pass.
