UPDATE: No wonder the TSA didn't want Schneier's testimony on the record. It's damning.

In what is becoming a trend on Capitol Hill, government officials have kept someone who doesn't agree with them out of a Congressional Hearing. Heaven forbid someone say something the powers that be don't like.

The last time this happened, it was when House Republicans kicked Josh Fox, the director of the anti-fracking film "Gaslands," out of a hearing on fracking, preventing him from filming for his new project.

This week, it's TSA preventing a security expert highly critical of the agency's smoke and mirrors from testifying at a hearing on TSA's performance in the realm of airport security. It's too bad TSA blocked Bruce Schneier from testifying to Congress about airport security in the US, because he has a lot of extremely important things to say — among them that the naked body scanners the agency has forced upon the traveling public don't work.

He writes:

On Friday, at the request of the TSA, I was removed from the witness list. The excuse was that I am involved in a lawsuit against the TSA, trying to get them to suspend their full-body scanner program. But it's pretty clear that the TSA is afraid of public testimony on the topic, and especially of being challenged in front of Congress. They want to control the story, and it's easier for them to do that if I'm not sitting next to them pointing out all the holes in their position. Unfortunately, the committee went along with them. (They tried to pull the same thing last year and it failed — video at the 10:50 mark. [Video below])

Schneier still left his mark on the hearing, however. It's called "TSA Oversight Part III: Effective Security or Security Theater?" Watch the video Schneier references above, below:

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