WHO PROFITS FROM NEW TSA SCANNERS?

The following is from Rep. John Duncan Jr, former Chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee and the current top Republican on the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, where he questions the role of lucrative government contracts in TSA’s new naked body scanning machines (November 17, 2o10).

“Mr. Speaker:
A nationwide revolt is developing over the body scanners at the airports, and it should.
Hundreds of thousands of frequent fliers who fly each week are upset about getting these frequent doses of radiation. Parents are upset about being forced to have their children radiated or being touched inappropriately by an unrelated adult.

There is already plenty of security at the airport, but now we are going to spend up to $300 million to install 1,000 scanners.

This is much more about money than it is about security.

The former secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, represents Rapiscan, the company which is selling these scanners to his former department.

Far too many federal contracts are sweetheart, insider deals. Companies hire former high ranking federal officials, and then magically, those companies get hugely profitable federal contracts.

The American people should not have to choose between having full-body radiation or a very embarrassing, intrusive pat-down every time they fly, as if they were criminals.
We need a little more balance and common sense on this.”

Coming from a Republican, Republicans being the party who, when in power, got us into this war to begin with, and who initiated the whole Color Coded Alert system post 911 to "warn" us all (ergo keep us in a perpetual state of fear), this can be, correctly, interpreted as strictly a political ploy to discredit the Obama Administration. For, if in power, the Republicans would be declaring anyone who dared to criticize the new security measures as "unpatriotic."

But putting that aside, this is one area I agree on, the TSA has acted rashly and recklessly, to the point where lives are endangered (health-wise) by the very devices seeking to "make us all safer". And now, almost worse yet, we learn the connection behind some in Govt (such as Michael Chertoff who was Bushes Secretary of DHS) who have made, and stand to make, millions upon millions of dollars by foisting this awful system on all americans who fly.

Now that americans have voiced their outrage, it will be interesting to see just how much "power" the american public has to affect change, or if its a little too late to close the barnyard door now that the horses have already been let loose.


I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on man unless they act. ~G.K. Chesterton