Opt-Out Day Promotion: Let TSA Touch You, Win an IPod Touch

Submitted by Anne Landman on

TSA CheckpointThe mobile app developer Loopt is running a promotion aimed at encouraging Thanksgiving holiday fliers to participate in National TSA Opt-Out Day on Wednesday, November 24. The prize? A free I-Pod Touch for travelers who refuse the backscatter X-Ray scanning machines and opt for the controversial, aggressive pat-down search instead. Loopt is a social-mapping service that lets you use the location of your phone to find out where your friends are, what they're doing, tell them about places and events around you, share directions, photos and more. The company is instructing travelers to check into the airport using Loopt on Wednesday, November 24 on an IPhone, IPod Touch or Android, type in a brief description of their TSA experience and send the message to Twitter using the hashtag #touchedbyTSA. Lucky participate may win an IPod Touch. Loopt is giving away ten of the units free.

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Main Source: 
Loopt blog, November 18, 2010

Pat This! Nov. 24th: National TSA Opt-Out Day

Submitted by Anne Landman on

TSApatdownThe day before Thanksgiving is the first National TSA Opt-Out Day, in which airline customers are being urged to protest the Transportation Security Administration's invasive new X-Ray scanners by bypassing them and asking instead for TSA's aggressive pat-down search. The new scanners show travelers naked, so TSA officials can see under their clothes, and travelers who refuse to submit to the scan must instead submit to an aggressive "pat down" by TSA officials that involves the touching of breasts, genitals and groins. The new search policy requires TSA officials use the fronts of their hands, instead of the back of the hands, which was the old procedure. The new screening methods have created an uproar among airline passengers who complain that the new searches constitute sexual assault. Jeffrey Goldberg, a blogger for the Atlantic, is suggesting men make the search process more problematic for TSA by wearing kilts. Advocates of the Opt-Out day hope that if even a small percentage of travelers demand the pat-down search instead of the scan, it could jam up the entire system and demonstrate more clearly to people how they sacrifice their personal privacy and civil rights upon purchase of an airline ticket.

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Seattle Times, November 19, 2010

A Verbal Slip on Countdown

Oops signWhat a difference a word can make -- nothing short of the difference between good and evil.

During my interview on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Wednesday night, I explained the sinister work of an industry-funded front group to discredit Michael Moore as a filmmaker and citizen and especially of his 2007 movie, Sicko. The PR firm hired by health insurers to do the evil deed set up and operated a front group, named "Health Care America," to conduct a fear-mongering campaign designed to scare people away from the movie's core message: that every developed country in the world except the United States has been able to achieve universal coverage for their citizens largely because they don't allow big insurance companies to call the shots like they do here. I wrote about this in my book, Deadly Spin, in the chapter entitled "The Campaign Against Sicko."

I inadvertently called the front group "Health Care America Now" in response to a question from Keith Olbermann. That misstatement has led to some confusion, so I want to set the record straight. Health Care for America Now is one of the good guys, in my view. It is a real grassroots organization comprising a broad range of groups throughout the country advocating for "quality, affordable health care." Health Care America was what is commonly known as a fake grassroots or "Astroturf" organization. It was set up and operated by a big PR firm and funded by Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

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