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Toddler In Wheelchair Heading To Disney Cries During Run-In With TSA Agents (+video)

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Photo Credit: GMAA family’s run-in with Transportation Security Administration screeners at Missouri’s Lambert-St. Louis International Airport as they were heading to Orlando on vacation was caught on camera, and is raising questions about airport security rules.

Annie Schulte said it all started when TSA agents asked to pat down her 3-year-old daughter, Lucy, who is disabled and in a wheelchair. The agents also wanted to screen Lucy’s wheelchair.

Schulte recorded the incident on her cellphone. In the video, Lucy begins to cry and says, “I don’t want to go to Disney World.”

What made the toddler so distraught, her parents said, was the run-in with the agents. Agent: “It’s illegal to do that.” Schulte: “You can’t touch my daughter, unless I can record it.” Schulte said she asked to record the incident.

“To me, it was pretty offensive because I was really tuned in. When she said that, immediately I’m like, ‘OK, hold on, something doesn’t seem right.’ So, I did tell her I was going to wait because I was going to grab my phone,” said Schulte.

Read more from this story HERE.

It’s On: Rand Paul Plans Round 2 Against TSA

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Sen. Rand Paul is not giving up his fight to get the government off the front lines of airport security.

The Kentucky Republican said in an interview that he plans to refile legislation that would drastically scale back the Transportation Security Administration’s reach by privatizing security screening operations at airports and creating a series of passenger protections.

“I think we are going to,” Paul said when asked if he would take another crack at the oft-criticized agency. “We have two different bills, one to privatize the TSA and then we have another one which is a passenger bill of rights.”

As a policy, the TSA does not comment on proposed legislation. It declined to comment on Paul’s plans.

For Paul, TSA reform is personal. He drew viral media attention for resisting a TSA pat-down in 2012, which caused him to miss a speech at the March for Life rally. Following that incident, Paul introduced TSA privatization and flier bill of rights legislation last summer.

Read more on this story HERE.

Disabled Girl ‘Traumatized’ By TSA After Being Detained for ‘Bomb Residue’

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The 12-year-old girl left in tears after TSA agents detained her for nearly an hour at a Texas airport because they claimed to have found traces of bomb residue on her hands has revealed she is still ‘traumatized’ by the incident a week later.

Wheelchair-bound Shelbi Walser was traveling to Florida with her mother, Tammy Daniels, for treatment for her brittle bone disorder on December 8 when she was stopped at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas.

Shelbi Walser says she is still in shock by the event that caused a public outcry when video footage emerged showing Shelbi sobbing as officials detained her in front of hundreds of travelers at security, but refuse to allow her mother to get close enough to comfort her.

‘I didn’t know what was going to happen and what they were going to do to me. [I thought they might] take me away,’ she told RadarOnline.com.

The little girl makes the trip at least twice a year to receive treatment for brittle bone disease, which has left her wheelchair-bound. Her mom revealed that during the ordeal Shelbi told her that she didn’t want to go to Florida and that she wanted to go home. Shelbi said the unpleasant incident meant she would be more nervous in future and she would be washing her hands before going through security for fear that she might test positive again.

A TSA agent swabbed Shelbi’s hands and she tested positive for explosives. But the wheelchair, which is likely to have transferred any substance to her hands as she pushed it, was never tested, her mother said. Rather than ‘explosive residue’, her mom believes it was probably fertilizer they detected on Shelbi’s hands. The family live in the country and Daniels believes it could have transferred to her daughter’s hands via her wheels.

Read more from this story HERE.

TSA Misses Hatchet, Grenade, Knives & Body Bags on Passenger Bound for US

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Yongda Huang Harris arrived at LAX wearing a bulletproof vest and flame-resistant pants, having checked in a suitcase full of weapons.

The 28-year-old was on a stopover on a trip from Japan en route to Boston, and had an array of suspicious items in his luggage.

They included a smoke grenade, knives, body bags, a hatchet, a collapsible baton, a biohazard suit, a gas mask, billy clubs, handcuffs, leg irons and a device to repel dogs.

The alarm was raised when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers noticed he was wearing a bulletproof vest under his trench coat, along with flame-retardant pants and knee pads.

But no such red flags had been waved when Harris boarded in Japan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Convicted TSA Agent Blows the Whistle: TSA Stealing from Airline Passengers (+video)

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A former TSA agent who spent three years in prison for stealing from passengers’ luggage says the practice is “commonplace.”

Pythias Brown admits to stealing more than $800,000 worth of cash, clothing and electronics over a four-year period at Newark Liberty International Airport. He was finally caught trying to sell a stolen CNN camera on eBay.

“It became so easy, I got complacent,” Brown told ABC News.

Though Brown says he might have been one of the biggest thieves at the Transportation Security Administration, he believes the agency has a culture of entitlement — and of looking the other way.

“It was so easy. One day I walked out of there with the video game, the Nintendo Wii. I walked right out of the checkpoint with the Nintendo Wii in my hand,” he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s an interview with the agent:

TSA allows dozens of illegal aliens to attend flight school owned by . . . an illegal alien

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved flight training for 25 illegal aliens at a Boston-area flight school that was owned by yet another illegal alien, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The illegal-alien flight-school attendees included eight who had entered the country illegally and 17 who had overstayed their allowed period of admission into the United States, according to an audit by the GAO.

Six of the illegal aliens were actually able to get pilot’s licenses.

Discovery of the trouble at the flight school began when local police–not federal authorities–pulled over the owner of the school on a traffic violation and were able to determine that he was an illegal alien.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R.-Ala.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security, said he found the GAO’s findings “amazing.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: TSA Public Affairs

Say good bye to privacy forever: new DHS laser will instantly know everything about you – from 164 feet away!

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Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it.

The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded “in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress.” According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.

Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.

The machine is ten million times faster—and one million times more sensitive—than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: andrea.pacelli

TSA will confiscate your sealed soda but not your 300 lb pot-bellied pig

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Pot-bellied pigs must be granted passage on airplanes if they are used for “emotional support” by their owners, states the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) draft manual on equity for the disabled in air travel.

The DOT published its “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel: Draft Technical Assistance Manual” in the Federal Register on July 5, providing guidance that allows swine on airplanes if they are determined to be service animals.

The manual is designed to “help carriers and indirect carriers and their employees/contractors that provide services or facilities to passengers with disabilities, assist those passengers in accordance with” the Air Carrier Access Act. The manual open for public comments until Oct. 3.

Under the “Service Animal” section, the department lays out a scenario for airline carriers entitled “Example 1.”

The manual states: “A passenger arrives at the gate accompanied by a pot-bellied pig. She claims that the pot-bellied pig is her service animal. What should you do?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: tracie7779

Adult Diaper Removed for TSA

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