Airport security workers will now be told to make repeated attempts to screen young children without resorting to invasive pat-downs, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday. The agency is working to put that change in place around the country, and it should reduce, but not eliminate, pat-downs for children, an agency spokesman said.

The only real acceptable change would be to eliminate the TSA.

Terrorists in other countries have used children as young as 10 years old as suicide bombers, Pistole said, although that hasn’t happened in the U.S. “We need to use common sense,” he told lawmakers.

Unfortunately, the low-paid, low-skilled TSA workers lack common sense. You need skilled individuals who can ask pertinent questions to determine risk. If you hire people from the lower rungs of society, you aren’t going to get employees who can do the job adequately.

“Not only are we going to hold you accountable, but we’re going to watch you,” says Wilson.

This is absolutely about punishing them again. It’s just tossed under the “protecting the children” guise so that people will feel better about unjustly continuing punishment against sex offenders.

The registry and notification system is for a sex offender life, even if the crime was committed as a juvenile.

That’s right, sleep with your girlfriend when you are both under age and you’re labeled for life in South Carolina. The sex offenders don’t have a chance to ever get off the list. It does little to actually help children or keep them safe.

One of the proposed changes is to remove a person if they haven’t re-offended in 15 years. This is a first step in changing the stigma of sex offenders as the lists do not provide details of what happened and the circumstances involved. If murderers, rapists, burglars, and thieves get a second chance, why no sex offenders?

Read the rest of my latest article at The Daily Censored.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.

Although the TSA claims that there are no children on the list, he shares a name with someone who is. Thus, this little boy is harassed every time he flies.

The TSA need to revisit all the names on the list and add photos and more detailed information to those who are on the list. It should be obvious that an 8 year old boy is not a terrorist and does not resemble the person who is on the list. The TSA also need to admit their mistake and remove Mikey from the “random” screenings that he endures every time he flies.

Starting next year, parents will have the option to block 16 Sirius radio channels from the car’s dial, among them Howard Stern, Playboy, and Hip-Hop Nation. Optional radio censorship isn’t the only new feature for MyKey, which allows owners to program a key to fit their specific level of paranoia — the new version allows parents to set top speeds between 65 and 80mph, instead of the previous fixed cap of 80mph.

Other controls carrying over from the original system include a chime that sounds at 10mph intervals, starting at 45mph, and an advanced notice when fuel levels are low. The new features will come standard issue on the 2011 Ford Taurus and Ford Explorer, and will eventually reach across both the Ford and Lincoln brands.

One way children can get around the blocks is simply by taking their parent’s key. System defeated.

If your child is old enough to drive, they should be old enough to take on the responsibilities of driving a car. If you do not trust your child with these responsibilities, then do not let them drive.

The service is optional, for now. Once insurance companies start giving major discounts for having it installed, it will become a defacto installation in cars for younger drivers.

The new rules came into power at the beginning of this year, but have only recently drawn attention as daycare centers have received letters reminding them that they need to sign contracts with GEMA before distributing sheet music to children to sing.

GEMA said that the need for licenses would not have any effect on singing in kindergartens.
“It doesn’t cost anything to sing in kindergartens,” said Peter Hempel. “If a school does not make any copies of music, then of course they don’t need to pay anything.”

This is absolutely ridiculous. The schools aren’t making copies and passing them out to the public. They make a handful of copies so each child has a copy to learn the songs from. Performers are not losing out on any money in this manner.

The copyright rules only concern the rights for modern songs. Songs written by an author who has been dead for over 70 years are automatically in the public domain.

Fees start at 56 euros ($74) for 500 copies of a song, a rate charged annually, not per child.

I predict Germany’s preschools are going to start singing many more traditional songs in the years to come. The German Pirate Party has released a song book in response to the new GEMA rules. It contains only music that is not in copyright. The German Pirate Party also created their own sheet music, which is also not under copyright. It can be freely used and distributed.

While this new law is questionable, it is less intrusive than Belgium, where preschools are charged for playing music to children.

He was ordered held on $15,000 cash bail with the conditions that he has no contact with children under the age of 18, no employment or volunteer work with children under the age of 18 and does not use a computer or the Internet.

While Cheever is an ex-TSA employee, it should also be noted that he used to work for the TSA. That means, he had access to children. Think of the fact that it is highly likely there are more like him currently working for the TSA. Then think about the new, invasive pat downs and how the TSA has encouraged employees to make the pat down into a game for these children. It’s not funny anymore now is it?

Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is “one of the most common ways” that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact, Wooden told Raw Story.

Children “don’t have the sophistication” to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator, he said.

The TSA policy could “desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children,” Wooden added.

“How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game?” Wooden asked in an email. “To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years.”

TSA regional security director James Marchand thinks anything that makes the process easier for his staff is perfectly fine.

“You try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier,” said Marchand, promising to make it part of TSA training.

TSA administrator John Pistole has said he may change the pat down procedure for children and victims of sexual abuse. He has not said how adults could identify or prove that they were victims.

The TSA is truly ignorant and stupid if they think this was ever a good idea.

Email the TSA and let them know what you think about the illegal pat downs and scans:

John.Pistole@dhs.gov

DHS Janet.Napolitano@dhs.gov