The last thing the TSA needs is a pile of crappy technology that isn’t even effective, that people refuse to use, right?

The “groping” technique was developed as a way to punish people into using the scanners — because there are $148 million more on the way. And just so nobody gets the idea to follow Tyner’s lead, the TSA is using threats and intimidation to guarantee the market for the porno scanners. Whether Tyner is prosecuted or not, people will hear about what happened to him and think twice before refusing to become fodder for their new machines.

This is a full-on outrage.

It’s time to investigate the TSA, not Tyner. Sign the petition demanding Congress investigate the TSA’s porno scanners, aggressive groping, and abuses of power.

You’ve probably heard of the “Don’t Touch My Junk” guy who chose to miss his flight rather than have TSA touch his genitals in its brand new “aggressive pat-downs” strategy. As if the experience wasn’t humiliating enough – and expensive, for missing his flight – the TSA has decided to make an example of John “Don’t Touch My Junk” Tyner. The TSA announced yesterday it would investigate, and may prosecute, Tyner for declining the porno scanners and groping.

Joe Lieberman’s Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing today at 3:15pm EST to discuss “Closing the Gaps In Air Cargo Security” with TSA Director John Pistole. Lieberman got a head start on the issue, of course. He was on MSNBC yesterday in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, who brought up conversing about full body scanners and security “pat downs.” When asked whether or not he believed that the procedures are invasive, he responded, “I come down on the side of pat downs.”

Many books about terrorism begin with a personal anecdote about where the author was on 9/11. Political Scientist Jocelyn Jones Evans was working on the Hill when the planes hit and changed the course of American national security policy.

“For the first and only time in my life,” she recalls, “I remember rolling down my windows to see and to hear the news for myself.”

One Nation Under Siege though, isn’t a book about policy. It’s a book about how 9/11 and its aftermath changed the culture of Congress, and how those changes have affected the work of government and the American people’s access to their own representatives. Drawing on dozens of interviews with Hill staff and legislators, Evans vividly depicts the impact of the threat of terrorism on congressional culture after 9/11 through a combination of narrative and political science.

The whole idea behind collecting this information and sharing it with private sector entities like oil drilling lobbyists arose as part of efforts to protect our critical infrastructure from terrorist attack after 9/11.

The Washington Post has been turning lots of heads this week with a big series on intelligence contracting. The series has gotten a lot of people in DC talking about the problem with contractors. But we here at FDL have been talking about it for years, not least when we hosted Tim Shorrock–who wrote the book on intelligence contracting, Spies for Hire–for a book salon two years ago. As I pointed out on Monday, one thing Shorrock emphasized was the degree to which the contractors are partnering with the government to develop longterm strategy.