I received this release from the Republican Liberty Caucus on TSA violating the passenger’s right to privacy before boarding a flight.

AUSTIN, TX — The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) denounces the recent changes in the airport passenger screening practices of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

RLC Chairman Dave Nalle said the intrusive nature of new TSA procedures draws attention to the fundamental flaws in the government’s strategy of attempting to address the threat of terrorism through increasingly draconian domestic security measures.

“In the name of public safety, government agencies have been given more and more power at great cost to our civil liberties and in violation of the Bill of Rights,” Nalle said. “The emergence of an unaccountable state security apparatus in America is a reminder of Ben Franklin’s maxim that ‘they who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’.”

“The new TSA procedures of giving randomly selected passengers a choice between a full body, backscatter x-ray scan and an intrusive, hands-on body search are unacceptable,” Nalle contends. “These searches are a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights, because they are not reasonable and are carried out with no probable cause. The increase in security at airports with more technology and more violation of the privacy rights of passengers cannot be justified on the basis of any increase in the threat of terrorism, because there has been no such increase,” Nalle explained.

The Republican Liberty Caucus believes that Americans have seen enough abuses of the Constitution and calls on the federal government to curb abuses by the TSA and other agencies. We recommend putting control of passenger security in the hands of the airlines, which have a vested interest in making sure that flights are safe. We also support Representative Ron Paul’s “American Traveler Dignity Act” (H.R. 6416), which would make TSA employees accountable for their actions.

Nalle observed, “With the increasing level of government intrusion into our lives in the name of security, America reminds me too much of what I saw in the Soviet Union, where I lived as a teenager. How long will it be before police will be stopping us in the street at random to ask for our identity papers?”

The Republican Liberty Caucus, founded in 1991, exists to promote individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise within the Republican Party.
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One thing particularly interesting is how Congress is addressing this issue. Many of our elected officials are just as outraged. Recently, Rep. Ron Paul introduced H.R. 6416: American Traveler Dignity Act. This bill will ensure that certain Federal employees would be subject to the same screenings as everyone else.

During a recent floor speech introducing the bill, Paul said:

In one recent well-publicized case, a TSA official is recorded during an attempted body search saying, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” I strongly disagree and am sure I am not alone in believing that we Americans should never give up our rights in order to travel. As our Declaration of Independence states, our rights are inalienable. This TSA version of our rights looks more like the “rights” granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens — right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.

The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.

Source: Daily Paul

Hasn’t this gone on for far too long? Hopefully, Congress will end this treatment, but it looks highly unlikely at this point with the Democrats applauding the assaults.