TSA is moving closer to conducting random bag searches on local transit across the country.
Originally only at the airports, the TSA has since began to expand across America in the form of Visible Intermodal Preparedness and Response or VIPR Teams. Most recently cropping up in Amtrack stations in Florida and other cities, and setting up illegal checkpoints on state highways in Tennessee. Now, Houston will be taking part in a national pilot program known as Bus Safe involving the DHS, TSA, Metro Police, Harris County Constables, and Congress woman Sheila Jackson Lee. The program is designed “to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior“.
The program will allow for Houstonians to have their 4th amendment violated by forcing them to submit to random bag searches, K-9 sweeps, as well as the presence of uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms. Interestingly enough, the title of Metro’s Press Release makes no mention of the TSA or random bag searches, instead it is listed under the title "METRO ROLLS OUT BICYCLES AND BUS RACKS FOR 2012 HOUSTON BIKE TO WORK DAY".
Houston Free Thinker, Phillip Levine was present at the press conference at the Wheeler Station off 4500 Main and witnessed DHS, and Metro Police question passengers who were exiting buses about their destinations and their reasons for riding the bus. “When I arrived at Wheeler I got off the stage and instantly noticed the massive police presence. The police presence consisted of DHS, metro police, HPD, TSA, and Harris county police officers. They were going on to buses searching and stopping people for questions. Apparently Shelia jackson Lee was there pushing for more security like what I was viewing. I asked the TSA agent if there was gonna be a bigger presence of metro or TSA. He said both,” Levine said in an email.
This is a wake-up call for Americans who had hoped to avoid being harassed by TSA agents by not using airports.
TSA agents are now being used to literally occupy America with an expansion of the 9,000 plus checkpoints that were already operational last year. 12 more TSA VIPR teams (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) will be added to the 25 who are already present at transportation hubs throughout the country.
“We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national security state,” Jack Balkin, a Yale University Law School professor, told the New Yorker in a 2011 feature about a prominent NSA whistleblower. “The question is not whether we will have a surveillance state in the years to come, but what sort of state we will have,” he wrote in a prescient law review article published early in Obama’s presidency.http://houstonfreethinkers.com/all-news/79-local-news/2551-sheila-jackson-lee-partners-with-dhs-brings-tsa-to-houston-metro
http://www.alternet.org/rights/155045/how_obama_became_a_civil_libertarian%27s_nightmare/
http://www.infowars.com/tsa-to-search-bags-question-passengers-on-houston-buses/
METRO's counter-terror intitiave draws criticism.
"TSA is an anti-terrorism organization," said Doyle Rains with the TSA.
But a week later, METRO admits there was no specific terror threat in Houston. Friday's sting didn't find any, and critics are angry.
"This isn't about terrorism -- they're not busting terrorists, they're not finding bombs. And that's not even what they're trying to do," said Mark Bennett, a Houston criminal defense attorney.
Bennett's concern started when he saw a METRO blog saying that TSA and METRO did random warrant-less bag checks of bus riders. METRO now says they didn't do that.
"We did zero random bag checks," Rodriguez said.
"I don't believe they didn't do any searches. The reason I don't believe it is before the operation, they announced there were going to be random bag checks. And after the investigation, they announced in their official blog that there had been bag checks," Bennett said.
If it was wrong, METRO had time to correct it. The blog posted three days after the operation was over and it was still there this Friday -- a week later when we asked the chief about it.
"It's still there? Oh, I did not realize that," Rodriguez said.
It was corrected minutes later.
Regardless of what happened last week, Rodriguez said will continue in the very near future and when they do, he maintains he does have the right to search your bag and may tell his officers to do it.
"If the facts and circumstances change, it could be at some point," Rodriguez said.
"When you say to a poor, working-class person, either we search your bag or you can't ride the bus, it says you can't go to work without our permission," Bennett said.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/in_focus&id=8629966