He first started his concern for the scanners back in early September when he wrote:
"As professional pilots, some colleagues and I recently issued a statement to our airline. We voiced our rejection of the policy changes being enacted by the Transportation Security Administration at airport security checkpoints across the country, including Memphis International (Sept. 18 article, "Virtual strip search / Random full-body scans launched at Memphis airport").
We do not consent to the indignity of virtual strip searches as a matter of course in performing the duties of our profession. Neither can we conscientiously accept being physically frisked by federal agents every day as a reasonable alternative.
Obviously, our work places us inside the flight deck door by necessity. We wouldn't have to smuggle a weapon into the airport to take control of an aircraft. After running the gantlet of required background checks, security training and screening procedures, it's just plain silly to confiscate pilots' pocket knives and corkscrews before we enter the cockpit. In short, here's hoping the crew for your next flight is on the home team.
But that's not even the point.
We are appalled that any citizen who is not under arrest, has made no threats, nor raised any suspicion of terrorism or other malice should be made to submit to either of these "options" in order to move about within his or her own national borders.
Federal airport security guards are often unskilled, entry-level responders to help-wanted ads affixed to pizza boxes. Perhaps novice agents lack the perspective to grasp the full implications of their work. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. But please don't show them your naked body. Don't let these strangers put their hands on you or your children. Their abuse protects no one. No, the good citizens of a free society must resist such authoritarian overtures at least as much as any foreign threat.
I offer my condolences if your flight should be delayed or canceled because the TSA won't let us in the door. But I suggest that your freedom is more important. At any rate, ours certainly is. "
Michael Roberts
Memphis
I found one of the replies from another airline pilot most interesting:
"Actually, the situation in many European countries is far worse." "To the poster who stated this, the difference lies in our claim to being the land of the free and home of the brave. This is our home, and it's our own government that has taken this despotic vector.
Tell me, does it really give you a warm, fuzzy, safe feeling to know that federal agents will be able to see whether you, if you are male, have been circumcised - or whether your wife, if she is female, happens to be menstruating on the day she travels?
What's being done here isn't about security - at least, not yours or mine. It's about money. It's about the transference of power away from ordinary citizens like us into the hands of the criminals in Washington.
But if I did snap at 35,000 feet, my hands would already be on the controls - what would I need a gun for? Strip searches and frisking wouldn't stop me from showing up to work drunk, either, which is a little beyond the scope of TSA's mission anyway (though I have no doubt they'd use it to further justify their jobs).
I'm no 'sky-god' - just a regular guy supporting a family. And, if my paycheck is any indication, I'm definitely no elitist. Telling the truth about TSOs being (mostly unwitting) pawns in the hands of the true political elite in D.C. isn't dismissive. It's just my assessment of an agency with such a horrible track record that it must be either deliberately trying to fail, or else run by people with motives not truly related to air transportation security. It's just not that easy to be that incompetent. If security were simply left to the security folks, United 93 would have reached its intended target, the underwear and shoe bombers might have actually hurt someone, and there are endless other examples where disaster has only been averted by the people on the plane - not those on the federal payroll."
Honestly, most people I've talked to - including pilots - understand the problem well enough, but at the end of the day will tolerate what they deem necessary in order to make a living or get where they're going after having paid several hundred dollars airfare. In other words, they know it's evil and they hate it, but they still put up with it in the end. That's what I find most disturbing. How many atrocities throughout human history have been perpetrated as 'necessary evils'? Where do you suppose these measures in our own day will lead us?
Better people than I have sacrificed far more than their jobs or the convenience of air travel for the cause of liberty. This madness and the people who support it dishonor them.
I think Benjamin Franklin's words are too relevant to ignore here. He wrote:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
If I'm going to get naked, or physical, it's going to be on my own terms. And it'll probably be with people I know and trust, unless I just decide to start exposing myself to total strangers, in which case (in any other context) most people would say I'm the one infringing upon THEIR rights.
For those sycophants who will choose to degrade themselves with this abuse, I hope you'll remember this when you come out on the other side of the security line feeling not so warm and fuzzy and safe, but rather dirty and ashamed. It's normal. That's how being molested and exploited is supposed to make you feel.
If you have ever flown El Al, or to/from TLV at all, then of course you know they don't use these ridiculous peep show machines in their security screening program. In fact, their security experts have resoundingly commented that the body scanners are ineffective and a waste of money.
The waste of money part, of course, explains our own government's insatiable appetite for them. It's a racket. Your stimulus dollars at work.
