New TSA Security Features

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That's funny Ragusa - seriously, you can't make that stuff up.

Overall, I think there may be a rather obvious reason why most people are in favor of the regulations and scans: Most people don't fly all that often. I remember reading a statistic somwhere that the top 10% of air travelers purchase something like 60% of all plane tickets. The frequent flier crowd.

I imagine most Americans average less than one plane flight per year. In the past 10 or so years, I've flown to a few places for work, and once for recreation (my honeymoon), but certainly it's less than once per year, and I'd say I probably fly a bit more often than someone who never needs to travel for work-related reasons.

So any method or procedure that gives the perception of added safety (I'm not sure these scanners do, but I assume a decent number of people think so), but does not personally inconvenience or affect them, will be viewed favorably. I'd be more interested in hearing from people who fly regularly what they think about it.

 

I don't think anyone else has this. There were a couple of talking heads arguing on TV about it this morning, and one claimed the not even Israel was this envasive at their airports. So I don't know. I have not researched it myself to find out if any other country does this on a routine basis.

I despise the airline industry so much that I refuse to fly any longer, unless I was leaving the country. I hope they all go out of business and we get a national airline.

 

That's something I was wondering about! And what if you leer lecherously at them the whole time?

I said that restrictions were justifiable (or did I say 'reasonable'), so long as they're balanced with costs. What I meant by that is that the government can make a reasonable arguement in support of the restrictions. That doesn't mean everyone will agree with them, or even that it's necessarily warranted. I don't know, maybe I'm getting into a grey area of language here.

A recent article I saw by a doctor said that the odds of getting cancer from the x-ray backscatter scanner is about the same as the odds of your plane being blown up by a terrorist. Considering that these scanners and pat-downs probably can't detect most of the methods employed so far to bring down planes (the box cutters could be replaced with ball-point pens and proper training), that means they're actually spending all that money to double your risks of death from flying! Ok, so double 1/300,000,000 is still only 1/150,000,000, but it does mean there's a serious flaw in their logic.

I don't know about titillation, but history shows it's long enough to prompt consistent and regular 'teasing'.

Again, history shows that they can be, no matter what the TSA says.

Well, in their defense, the shear fact that you can insist on someone of the same gender implies that sexual titillation is a concern.

EDIT:
Oh, and something I meant to mention before. Why, exactly, are we using these abominations and not bomb dogs? They'd do a better job anyway, and most people don't complain about a dog sniffing their crotch nearly as much as an overweight man grabbing it.

 

My hunch is that their primary concern is their own titillation.

I have seen their website. They are obsessed. They have enough pics of naked manly gay men on their web site to make it nsfw. IMO that leader of theirs is a classical closet case. I know a couple folks who have become psychologists to tackle their own issues. I can easily imagine that logic driving people who feel guilty about their gay desires into anti-gay activism.

And this thread may be getting too dour:

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A Taiwanese take on the body scanners.

 

Honestly, I think there's a greater chance that a gay passenger requests to be "searched" by someone of the same sex for a cheap thrill than the TSA employee getting off on searching a passenger. Although they are required to feel up your legs, and (for women and very overweight men) under and around their breasts, so I can see why people would not be comfortable with some of these searches.

Because they are looking for a lot more than bombs - concealed weapons and the like. I'm sure there's some terrirost willing to hide a box cutter in their butt crack that a bomb dog wouldn't find.

 

And the crotch and buttocks. It's apparently VERY thorough.

Thus we still use metal detectors for most of the stuff and realize that a plastic comb could become a lethal weapon if the person is really determined for the rest of the stuff. There's also the distinct possibility that a terrorist will stick the explosives up their rectum (it's apparently been done before to get through security), in which the only way to catch them is either a full x-ray (none of this pansy 'backscatter' stuff) or a body cavity search. I don't see either making it in as the norm.

 

Metal detectors don't work on everything. I've got piercings that don't turn up on them

 

I know. They don't work for plastics, either. But, like I said, you can kill someone with a plastic comb if you're really determined. We'll never keep every potentially lethal weapon off the planes, simply because you and I are potentially lethal weapons.

 

ABC producer says TSA agent felt inside her underwear

I cannot understand how she could possibly object if it makes flying safer. Actually, it is irresponsible that she was spared an even more thorough 'body cavity search' since that would have been even safer. If she opts out of the scan, that clearly means she must have something to hide, so let's better find out rather than be sorry later.

I wonder why Americans are only scanned and not x-rayed yet, considering the many ways in which dangerous contraband could be hidden inside the body. Just think about the obvious security risks posed by sword swallowers. Want those guys on planes, risking that they would pull their hidden blades from their bodies and bring down aircraft? Something needs to be done about that!

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WTF? I mean, first of all, how/why was she able to feel inside the underwear? (I guess I can assume she was wearing a skirt perhaps?) Secondly, while you cannot opt out of the search, you can certainly opt out of getting fingered by a TSA agent. Thidly, I find it impossible that the TSA agent wouldn't know that she was both inside her underwear and fingering her. Fourthly, why didn't the woman just take a step back and ask her to remove her finger from her vagina? I mean, really, this story defies beleif on a couple of levels.

 

Re: Why she didn't protest - Can't speak for her, but I presume the setting of TSA frisking, and the consequences of protesting, don't lend themselves to protest. She wanted to fly after all, probably had a plane to get.

i.e. they can ruin your day and everybody knows it. Now of course, protesting is feasible, theoretically speaking, if you have the nerve and a couple hours excess time.

PS: I mean, what an overreaction. To firsk a detained person for weapons, a police officer needs to have a reasonable suspicion that a person may be armed. The TSA is allowed to frisk just anybody who wants to fly (to which considering the distances in the US there often is no alternative), and that for the sole reason that people refuse to have naked pictures taken of them? There's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

I get that, but simply taking a step back and saying, "I don't think you're supposed to finger my vagina as part of the screening process - I prefer that only my gynocologist and boyfriend/husband do that." and then let the pat down otherwise continue, wouldn't get you in too much trouble.

 

You don't know how creepy exactly that TSA screener was ... and my hunch is anyway that she was simply startled.

 

Not to be a wet blanket, but "feeling inside the underwear" is what she said, she didn't mention any vaginal penetration. My understanding of the underwear thing is that they pull out the waistband of your trousers and run their gloved hands around the inside of the elastic at the top. Now, IMHO that's still over the line, but it's not anywhere near to digital rape.

 

LKD,

She said it was "worse than going to a gynecologist", and last I checked, they were a little more invasive than checking your underwear band. Maybe I was being a bit hyperbolic in saying she was fingered, but it certainly suggests it was more than just the waist band when she compares it to a gynecological exam.

 

I interpreted it as hyperbole on her part. I think if she were fingered there would be a MUCH bigger snipstorm than is currently blowing. I sincerely doubt any genital contact occurred. If it did, then something has to be done ASAP about this sort of horsesnip.

 

You know, whether the screener was actually in her or just in her underwear is only a gradual difference in what is already a substantial invasion of privacy. As I said, a cop needs a reasonable suspicion of someone being armed to frisk, but the TSA is allowed to do that by default?

Finally, you're entitled to sincerely doubt, but there is little in the story to suggest you have a reason to.

 

Actually, there are several that currently are happening.

Maybe, maybe not. TSOs are not guaranteed to be mature, responsable, or reasonable, as a case from 2008 where a woman's whole blouse was pulled down, revealing her breasts in public, and where TSOs later joked to her about watching it later on the security footage shows quite clearly.

The woman claims that the agent 'felt her way around'. Now, that could hypothetically simply mean that she felt her way around the waist band (already too far in my book), but I think it means she felt around deeper than that. How much deeper is a detail I don't need to know about. Like Ragusa, I find it offensive no matter how far under her underwear it was. And, of course, cases like this only raise the risk of TSOs spreading diseases.

Combine this with the recent admition (after having the math plainly laid out) that these security features aren't actually mean to catch terrorists, so much as deter them (from committing suicide... with the threat of prison) and the slew of ways that have been pointed out by average Americans that the terrorists already know to get past such security, and I think we can all see that this is nothing more than security theater. Invasive, offensive, possibly dangerous, and probably unconstitutional security theater.

Tomorrow should be fun.

 

And now this has happened. Apparently the TSA is willing to imprison you, without trial, for following their procedures.

A young mother wanted to avoid the problems she had with her bottles of breast milk last time she went through screening, so she even brought along a print-out of the TSA procedures and rules to help the agents along. Breast milk is treated as a medical fluid and should not be x-rayed. They decided that she was making trouble and put her in a glass cell in the middle of the screening area for half an hour, causing her to miss her flight.

You know, I'm starting to understand Mordea. And that's scary.