Conspiracy Theorists Proven Right as TSA Body Scanners Rolled Out at Subway Stations

 Los Angeles, CA — For years, those who have been paying attention to  the ever-expanding police state that is the United States, have been  warning of the slippery slope of TSA expansion. For years, these same  people warned that TSA would soon be present at bus stations, malls, and  subways. 

And now, this has begun to happen. Indeed, the Free Thought Project predicted this years ago when several  U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle expressed their desire to  make travelers lives’ a veritable hell of red tape and insidious  surveillance by increasing putative ‘security’ for rail lines, highways,  and marine routes by adding presence and screening procedures at  Megabus depots, Amtrak stations, and more. 

Now, it is finally here. According to a press release  from the TSA, they have “partnered with the Los Angeles County  Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to deploy a new advanced  portable passenger screening technology that will help detect weapon and  explosive device security threats on the county’s transit system.”

 The Los Angeles Metro system becomes the first transportation agency  in the United States, according to TSA, to purchase such “an advanced,  high-tech security device” — ironically from the agency responsible for strip searching babies, removing colostomy bags, beating up blind cancer patients, and fondling your genitalia, all in the name of security. 

For now, the scanners will not be deployed like they are in airports  in which travelers wait in gruelingly long lines only to be exposed to  radiation and groped by the infamous blue gloves one by one. Instead,  the Thruvision machines, coming in at $100,000 each, will scan every  single passenger as they walk through the machine and pick up on the  waves emitted by the human body. Not surprisingly, the scanners will be easy to beat because they  require waves emitted from the human body to reveal hidden objects.  

According to the TSA, “the devices identify objects that block the  naturally occurring waves produced by a person’s body. When an object is  hidden in clothing or strapped to a person, these waves are blocked and  detected by the system’s software. The software generates generic  avatars and creates either a black spot on the area of the body where  the item is concealed or overlays a color indicator.” As Reason magazine reports, 

Because they rely on those waves emitted from the human  body to reveal hidden objects, these scanners can only detect things  that people are carrying on their person. In the case of terrorism  prevention, that would be suicide vests or maybe pipe bombs (like the  one used in an unsuccessful attack near the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal in December 2017). A would-be terrorist with any kind of guile could get around this  security precaution by simply carrying an explosive device in a  backpack.

The scanners are merely one more step toward a totalitarian state in  which Americans are intimidated as they attempt to travel freely—and  their ineffective nature highlights this perfectly. Nevertheless, the TSA is taking this landmark police state measure and using it to pat themselves on the back. 

“TSA applauds the leadership of L.A. Metro for its proactive efforts  to evaluate, procure and use state-of-the-art technology designed to  detect potential threats to the transit system,” said TSA  Administrator David Pekoske. 

“TSA is pleased to have been a partner  during the evaluation and testing process, which ultimately led to the  purchase of a recommended system to help detect and deter potential acts  of terrorism while keeping the traveling public safe.” 

However, if we look at their actual history at keeping people “safe,” the TSA has failed miserably. 

An internal investigation of the TSA in 2015 revealed “failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials.” 

But fret not free Americans, the TSA will likely be coming to a bus  station near you to employ their $100,000 scanners that can’t even stop a  bomb in a book sack, but that give the impression that the all seeing  eyes of the state are everywhere—a move far more powerful and  influential than any terrorist detonating an IED in a bus station.