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A blogger on Tuesday published a video showing how he had snuck a small metal case through the Transportation and Security Administration's (TSA) "billion dollar fleet" of so-called nude body scanners.

Engineer Jonathan Corbett, who runs the blog TSA Out of Our Pants, explained that the problem lies in how the scanner uses dark colors to highlight potential threats like weapons or explosives.

"Again that’s light figure, black background, and BLACK threat items," he explained. "Yes that’s right, if you have a metallic object on your side, it will be the same color as the background and therefore completely invisible to both visual and automated inspection."

"To put it to the test, I bought a sewing kit from the dollar store, broke out my 8th grade home ec skills, and sewed a pocket directly on the side of a shirt. Then I took a random metallic object, in this case a heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the 'old' metal detectors, and walked through a backscatter x-ray at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport."

Again at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, Corbett successfully carried his small, empty metal case through the scanners.

"While I carried the metal case empty, by one with mal-intent, it could easily have been filled with razor blades, explosives, or one of Charlie Sheen’s infamous 7 gram rocks of cocaine," he warned. "With a bigger pocket, perhaps sewn on the inside of the shirt, even a firearm could get through."

Last year, Corbett filed a lawsuit (PDF) against the TSA, claiming that the agency had violated his Fourth Amendment rights. That suit was dismissed earlier this year and he filed another lawsuit on 21 additional counts, including false arrest, violating the Civil Rights Act, infliction of emotional distress and conspiracy.

"Now, I’m sure the TSA will accuse me of aiding the terrorists by releasing this video, but it’s beyond belief that the terrorists haven’t already figured this out and are already plotting to use this against us," he opined in his Tuesday video. "The TSA is worse than ineffective: they are an epic fail placing us all in danger. ... We must all stand together and demand an end to the organization that molests our families while placing us in danger by directly ignoring blatant security flaws."

(H/T: Mashable)

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The Transpiration and Security Administration (TSA) is coming under fire for allegedly doing "peep show" naked body scans of women who agents think are attractive.

Ellen Terrell told CBS 11 in Dallas that agents at DFW International Airport asked her to go through the invasive scanner three times because "[t]hey wanted a nice good look."

A female agent at the checkpoint surprised Terrell by asking, "Do you play tennis?"

"And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘You just have such a cute figure,’” the Texan recalled.

Speaking to agents viewing the scans in another room, the female agent claimed the images had been "blurry" and asked Terrell to go through a second and third time.

But after the third scan, the female agent appeared to get frustrated as she radioed her co-workers.

“She’s talking into her microphone and she says, ‘Guys, it is not blurry, I’m letting her go. Come on out,’” Terrell said.

While only female agents are allowed to pat down female travelers, the agency does allow male agents to view body scans of females.

After looking at over 500 TSA complaints, CBS 11 found a pattern of possible sexual harassment of female passengers.

"I feel I was targeted by the TSA employee to go through the see-you-naked machine because I am a semi-attractive female," one woman wrote.

“TSA staff ‘trolling’ the lines looking for people to pull out was unprofessional,” another accusation said. “I know he went to that room to see my naked body through the machine with the other guy.”

“When I looked around, I saw that there were only women that were 'told' to go through this machine. There were no men,” one complaint noted.

This comment seemed to sum up most of the women's charges: “Making American citizens unwilling victims of a peep show by TSA employees using full body imaging devices is an over-the-top invasion of privacy to which I strenuously object.”

In a statement, the TSA said that any person could opt-out of the body scanner by requesting a pat-down.

"TSA does not profile passengers," the agency insisted. "All of our millimeter wave technology units including those in Dallas have been upgraded with additional privacy enhancements that no longer display passenger-specific images. Even prior to this upgrade, officers reviewing the images were located in a separate room and would have never seen the passenger being screened."

A spokesperson told CBS 11 that it is against protocol to make more than two attempts at a full-body scan before requiring a pat-down.

(H/T: Wired)

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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said on Sunday that airport security should be turned over to private corporations because the Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) effectively "voids" the Fourth Amendment.

Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), claimed last week that he had been "detained" by the TSA for refusing an intrusive pat down at an airport in Nashville, Tennessee.

"You have been raising money on your website on the notion of ending the TSA," CNN host Candy Crowley told the presidential candidate Sunday. "If you got rid of the TSA, what would you put in its place?"

"Well, it shouldn't be government," Paul replied. "You know, the people who protect very dangerous chemical plants, they're private sources. They have their police cares, they have their fences, they have their security, and they do a very good job. The assumption that the government has to do this is the wrong assumption."

"I voted against the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, and it's a bureaucratic monster," he added. "It totally voids the concept of the Fourth Amendment -- searches and prodding a poking, you know, with no permission. And they trap us into into it, and there's no way you can travel if you don't do it."

In 1973, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to airport security, "noting that airport screenings are considered to be administrative searches because they are conducted as part of a general regulatory scheme, where the essential administrative purpose is to prevent the carrying of weapons or explosives aboard aircraft."

Paul did not say how privatizing airport screenings would circumvent the Ninth Circuit's ruling.

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While discussing Rep. Peter King's upcoming McCarthyesque hearings on the threat of terrorism from Muslim Americans, even Joe Scarborough says that King is walking a fine line here and Ezra Klein agrees with Rep. Keith Ellison that King needs to back off and is not holding a serious investigation but just trying to raise his public profile by fear mongering. Pat Buchanan of course doesn't think anyone should pre-judge what King is up to.

BUCHANAN: Look the Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to an approach from abroad to try to make... radicalize them and make them enemies of America. That's legitimate. Every politician frankly raises himself up with hearings like that. I think we ought to wait and see what Peter King does.

When asked if he thinks there is a threat of a small group Muslim being radicalized in America as we've seen in parts of Europe, Klein responds that there's no reason to think we're going to see that in the U.S. because the Muslim community here is very different here. Pat Buchanan of course disagrees and uses the example of the Fort Hood shooting and Major Hasan as an example of how Muslims are being radicalized in the United States. And of course MSNBC's favorite bigot Buchanan thinks we shouldn't be demonizing Muslims, as he proceeds to demonize all Muslims.

KLEIN: How does this not demonize Muslims doing this? (crosstalk) You gave one example here and we're talking about an investigation into an entire religious community. We've gone from the one to the whole very quickly and people need to be very careful doing that.

BUCHANAN: Who is most susceptible or vulnerable to the recruitment coming out of the radical Islam? It's American Muslims.

KLEIN: Why do you think they're so vulnerable to it? There are radicals everywhere. (crosstalk) There are neo-Nazis who claim they're Christians? (crosstalk) Is the Christian community in America so deeply vulnerable to neo-Nazism?

BUCHANAN: I think the FBI would be watching those guys if you got Hitler over here broadcasting in the Unites States?

KLEIN: Uh, but we do have those guys there and we've got seen a ton of evidence.

Update: MSNBC's Martin Bashir has a few things to say about Rep. Peter King's hearings, what it's like to be mistaken for a terrorist, and why Rep. King's hearings are something to be endured, like airport patdowns and no-fly lists.

h/t Karoli

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During the "Tell me something I don't know" segment of The Chris Matthews Show, conservative columnist Reihan Salam suggests that after this dust up over the TSA's invasive searches, the right is suddenly going to start caring about Americans' civil liberties being violated.

SALAM: The conservative backlash against the TSA is just part of a bigger revival of civil liberties talk on the right. We’re going to see a lot more of it in the next year or two.

I'm sure those concerns will end again just exactly as soon as another Republican gets elected president. I'd like to know where their concerns were when the Bush administration was still in power.

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Unlike Chris Matthews who wants to pretend this is not what goes on daily in D.C., Cenk Uygur goes through what is pretty much standard operating procedure in Washington; lobbyists influencing legislation, the revolving door between holding office and working for corporate America and the influence campaign donations have on our politicians.

And the end result, we have the TSA using useless scanners that violate our privacy and don't detect explosives or putting up with overly intrusive pat-downs.

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Chris Matthews is a piece of work. Rather than do his homework on the subject of these full body scanners and Michael Chertoff's conflicts of interest with his lobbying group representing their manufacturer, Rapiscan, he accuses EPIC's Ginger McCall of slandering Chertoff for pointing the conflicts out to him.

Matthews claimed he's going to have Chertoff on to "defend himself" and answer the charges. Maybe Matthews can bother to go look up his lobbying ties before he has him on, if he has him on. There have been countless articles written about Chertoff and these machines over the last year or so, this just being one example.

Full Body Scanner Lobby: Michael Chertoff & Rapiscan:

Michael Chertoff, Former Department of Homeland Security, is the head of the Chertoff Group, the lead cheerleader for what is being called the Full Body Scanner Lobby, reports the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner.

Ever since the Christmas Day Bomb Scare, Chertoff has been making the rounds championing the Full Body Scanners as a way to detect hidden explosive devices.

Here is a Chertoff quote from the New York Times on December 29th.“If they’d been deployed, this would pick up this kind of device,” Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, said in an interview, referring to the packet of chemicals hidden in the underwear of the Nigerian man who federal officials say tried to blow up the Northwest Airlines flight.

A few days later the Washington Post revealed that Chertoff represents Rapiscan - a maker of full body scanners drawing criticism of groups who oppose full body scanners.

"Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to abuse the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of explosive," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners.

Rapiscan has already sold 150 full body scanners to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with a price tag of $25 million. Rapiscan full body scanners, like the Rapiscan WaveScan 200, seem to be the preferred scanner of choice because they obscure the "private parts."

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Count Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as another traveler who is not a fan of the new security procedures at airports.

CBS' Bob Schieffer asked Clinton Sunday if she would submit to a pat-down by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent.

"Not if I could avoid it," she replied. "No. I mean who would?"

President Barack Obama defended the TSA body scans and pat-downs as necessary at a NATO press conference Saturday. Obama sympathized with the passengers who complain about the security procedures but said balancing privacy and security is a "tough situation."

"One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes a huge inconvenience for all of us," Obama said.

As president, Obama is not personally subjected to security checks.

Clinton agreed with Obama that the TSA should work to make checks less invasive.

"I think everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public," Clinton told NBC's David Gregory.

"I mean obviously the vast, vast majority of people getting on these planes are law abiding citizens who are just trying to get from one place to another. But let's not kid ourselves. The terrorists are adaptable," she continued.

"Striking the right balance is what this is about. And I am absolutely confident that our security experts are gonna keep trying to get it better and less intrusive and more precise," Clinton said.

"Everybody is trying to do the right thing and I understand how difficult it is, and how offensive it must be for the people who are going through it."

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Saturday Night Live didn't waste any time spoofing the TSA and their new overly aggressive "junk touching" pat down procedures with an ad portraying TSA agents as sex workers.

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No big surprise here. Republicans want to use the recent outrage over the aggressive screening tactics being used by the TSA at airports as an excuse to privatize it. As Steve Benen noted this weekend, that of course doesn't solve the problem and just brings with it a whole new set of concerns.

Mica is poised to become chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, so he'll be in a position to advance this issue.

There are a variety of angles to consider here. Note, for example, that private companies that stand to benefit from privatization also happen to be generous campaign contributors to Mica's re-election campaign.

Even more importantly, several domestic airports already use private screeners, but it's still the TSA that establishes mandatory security standards. If Mica or other Republicans want to have a conversation about whether those security measures are appropriate, that's fine. But whether those doing the screening are public employees or private contractors doesn't change the standards themselves. Selling this as some sort of cure-all for frustrated travelers is silly.

As Josh Marshall joked yesterday, "Watching cable TV this morning it seems like the new idea is that this would all be better if private sector workers rather than government employees were inspecting Americans' crotches, boobs, etc."

But via email, reader V.S. noted another angle that's worth paying attention to: legal restrictions. Existing standards, as written by federal officials, have to take constitutional issues into consideration. If Mica scrapped the TSA and let airports hire Blackwater-style private security to screen passengers, it's easy to imagine legal safeguards -- against racial profiling, for example -- suddenly being cast aside.

Mica of course also blew off accusations that any of the companies that provide airport security that have made campaign contributions to him might be influencing his push to privatize airport security. As News 4 in Jacksonville noted:

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