Security → Alex Jones Detained By TSA

It shouldn't matter who the TSA kept records on. The fact that they do should matter.

...I can't find out whether in fact the TSA ever "admitted" that they kept records on A. Jones.

one has to use their own judgment based on the history of the TSA etc.

I hadn't heard of him until today

Alex Jones believes, among other things, that the US government was involved in the Oklahoma City bombings and the 9/11 attacks...

It's my duty as a citizen to know government powers.

I also know TSA has a bit of a PR problem due to illegal detentions and unreasonable targeting.

Are they needed? Yes.
Are they doing it wrong? Completely.

One of Jones’ primary concerns regarding the removal of shoes was the fact that he had caught athletes foot from that very process in another airport years previously, meaning that he now carries a spare pair of socks to change into when he boards the aircraft. Jones emphasized that he was not a “clean freak” but that he never encountered such issues before having to take his shoes off at TSA security.

Fair enough. That said I hadn't heard of him until today but I have been reading articles about the TSA for many years. From those I've drawn conclusions about how they operate. The claims are consistent IMO. YMMV.

Aren't the TSA glorified security guards?

Can we disband these idiots yet, burn it down, and try again with maybe 60% less stupid?

Turns out the TSA goes to NFL games and political conventions and all kinds of places that have little or nothing to do with air travel. It even has a special division called VIPR -- an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team -- that conducts these searches.

Few people know that $105 million of their taxpayer dollars are going to fund 37 VIPR teams in 2012, whose purpose is to "augment" the security of any mode of transportation. They don't realize that these VIPR teams can show up virtually anytime, anywhere and without warning, subjecting you to a search of your vehicle or person.

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TSA needs fully dismantled, top down. Reorganize as security, not security guards believing that they're the secret police.

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Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that "If we can't feel your nipples, they must be a bomb", the agency's craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra "If you don't like it, don't fly!"

This callous disregard for travelers' rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying "people [who] want to travel by some other means" have that right. (In other words: if you don't like it, don't fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA's snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA's air marshal training center since the agency's inception: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."

I blame who ultimately runs the TSA because without their oversight or perhaps with their blessing the TSA would not be running roughshod.

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Following the national opt out day protest in 2010, the TSA was forced to admit that it had kept records on Alex Jones and Matt Drudge, another prominent TSA critic, but refused to release details even after a FOIA request by former Congressman Bob Barr.

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