Rich Zeoli: Abolish The TSA
By Rich Zeoli
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It is time to abolish the TSA. A local man's horror should serve as a wake up call.
I have thought long and hard about how our liberties are routinely been violated since the terrorists attacks of 2001. When the Department of Homeland Security was created, I feared as did many conservatives and libertarians, that another federal bureaucracy would mean more government power and less individual liberty. With the passing of the Patriot Act, I cringed because now the government had the right to essentially detain anyone it wanted, even an American citizen, without any due process.
Fourteen years later, things have only gotten worse on the freedom front. And an innocent man was taken into custody, denied due process, and terrified by his own government.
Yesterday I interviewed John Malone who is the attorney for a Roger Vanderklok, a man who was unlawfully detained at Philadelphia International Airport by the Transportation Security Administration and later the Philadelphia police for over fifteen hours because he was rude and flippant to the TSA "officer." It is hard to understand just how liberty could be so brazenly violated in the city that gave birth to the Constitution.
LISTEN: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/audio/rich-zeoli/detained-by-the-tsa-the-rich-zeoli-show/
We have all heard the horror stories of TSA targeting senior citizens and children in their politically correct effort to ensure they aren't profiling. And we stand helplessly as they rummage through our personal belongings, see images of our nude body, and treat us not as passengers, but suspects.
The TSA is not a police department. They don't have the training police do and all too often have an inflated sense of power. Why did a TSA supervisor decide to falsely accuse and detain an innocent American citizen who wanted to file a complaint? Because he could. As one retired Philly cop told me on the air, just be thankful these guys don't carry guns. How true.
The ensuing horror that Roger went though is the kind of thing you would expect at an overseas CIA prison, not in the United States of America. He was left in a cell for hours without a phone call to anyone. His wife had no idea where he was. She was terrified. He was terrified. Would it have been such a stretch if they put a black hood on him and took him to Gitmo? Nope, that would be entirely legal under the rendition powers of the Patriot Act.
It is time to ask ourselves how long we will continue to let the terrorists win as our own government continues to shred our liberty in the name of keeping us safe. I hope you will take a moment to listen to my interview with his attorney so you can hear firsthand the horror his client experienced. Let this be a wake up call for us. It is time to disband the TSA and replace it with either private security that will have to compete for business by treating us as customers not suspects, or trained police, who are accountable at the local level.
The TSA is a gigantic federal monolith that we the people don't like. So why do we the people keep tolerating their existence as they shred the constitutional protections of the 4th and 5th Amendment in the name of "keeping us safe?"
