The #TSA has quietly announced that they will be expanding facial recognition technology in major airports to "verify a passenger's identity" simply using computers. Initially this is an opt-in service that you have to sign up for after you have paid for TSA's extortion-pre-check. Although the TSA claims they keep none of your information on record, they both contradict that claim since a photo must be kept in a system for biometric scanning purposes, and boldly lie since this was the same narrative spewed about body scanners, which turns out were keeping what were essentially 'nude' photographs of passengers.

But the Transportation Security Administration's assumption of guilt over innocence is merely a small cog in the incremental erosion of perceived rights in the name of safety, security, and effectiveness. We have become so accustomed to check-points, pat-downs, body scans, detainment, etc., that its hardly a matter of realization, let alone interest or concern, for anybody. All of it was sold to a terrified, traumatized, and terrorized public after 9/11. Trauma induced bodily-and-mental control.

The 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor this years also reminds us of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 which incarcerated nearly every person of Japanese descent, including U.S. citizens, in isolated camps. About 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly removed from their homes. Likewise, even Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus in the early 1860s, giving commanders authority to detain virtually anyone considered a threat to the Union. These violations occur every day thanks to the TSA. Now, instead of focusing on civil liberty violations, which are reported by the thousands annually, the TSA is looking at why facial recognition is racist and how the overall screening process is transphobic based on a few complaints.