US Airport Cops Now checking Highways Too!

We just love getting an anal probe at airports don't we and you know what they say, US sneezes and we get the cold, so is this a look at what is to come in the UK?

"Oh Great. The TSA is Now Doing Highway Stops"

ou missed it if you blinked, but there was an incident over the summer where TSA agents entered an Iowa Greyhound bus station and conducted a security sweep. For this they were roundly derided, which is what you'd expect given that many people, much of the time, don't particularly enjoy their encounters with the nation's airport security organization.

Now TSA is expanding its surveillance efforts beyond airports and bus terminals, and onto the nation's highways. The agency held an exercise recently, deploying teams to 5 weigh stations and 2 bus stations in the state. Because if there's one thing Americans have been clamoring for, it's more TSA.

The operation was conducted under TSA's Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response program, the abbreviation for which is VIPR, because giving things spooky names is fun. These are the TSA operations that revolve around highways, ports, tunnels, rest areas, etc. The sweep of the Iowa Greyhound station was a VIPR operation and the Tennessee highway stuff is under VIPR as well. Given the program's increasing scope, you'll be glad to know—per Wikipedia—that "various government sources have differing descriptions of VIPR's exact mission." Terrific. 

So if you're a conspiracy theorist who thinks that TSA is just a covert way to soften Americans up for a police state, it's a very good week for you (or a very bad week, depending). As for the rest of us—who just think that national security has become kind of a bumbling, bureaucratic, directionless mess—the prospect of dealing with the agency's notorious incompetence in more and more of daily life is also less than thrilling. Source/full story