TSA Worker Jailed In Body Scan Rage Incident

A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after he attacked a co-worker for making fun of the size of his genitals. Rolando Negrin walked through one of the new body scanners during a recent training session and a supervisor started making fun of his manhood. From the article: "According to the police report, Negrin confronted one of his co-workers in an employee parking lot, where he hit him with a police baton on the arm and back."

Comments

good idea there, buddy

[jollyreaper]

If you just shrugged it off then only your coworkers would know you have a small dick. Now the whole world knows.

Re:good idea there, buddy

[sznupi]

The best part is that this story plays nicely with one opinion about such institutions, popular here and there - that working for TSA appeals to people who need to compensate for their emotional insecurity.

Re:good idea there, buddy

[butterflysrage]

and these are the kinds of people who will be looking at what are basically naked pictures of your kids? how is this a good idea again?

Re:good idea there, buddy

[jkauzlar]

thanks to the scanners, it also now appeals to perverts, wankers and child molesters

Re:good idea there, buddy

[iamhassi]

"Now the whole world knows."

Yep, and judging by how willing the supervisor was to make fun of his own co-worker, can you imagine what they'll say or do with your scans? Or your wife's scans? Or your children's scans?

If they can't keep their own people from cracking jokes and heads, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Re:good idea there, buddy

[AnonymousClown]

and these are the kinds of people who will be looking at what are basically naked pictures of your kids? how is this a good idea again?

not just your kids, but you too. and it's not a good idea.

I think his point was that he was bringing in the "think of the children" mentality and maybe using public hysteria over child porn and whatnot as a means of destroying this intrusive and questionable method of security.

A terrorist, intent on striking against us infidels, will shove explosives up his ass or have something surgically implanted around his body. Now, how will these things prevent that? Are we going to move to full body x-rays just to fly next?

Re:good idea there, buddy

[LifesABeach]

I figure it's only a matter of time before Celeb's occasionally get their scanned images on the *net?

Re:good idea there, buddy

[tiptone]

Yeah right. Celebrities won't be forced to go through these things.

Re:good idea there, buddy

[dollarwizard]

If you just shrugged it off then only your coworkers would know you have a small dick. Now the whole world knows.

When a women is subjected to a hostile work environment, she might be told, "If you just shrugged it off then only your coworkers would know you are a slut. Now the whole world knows."

Clearly if this is said to a woman, then it is a blame-the-victim mentality and is wrong. It should also be wrong in this case, when it's a man who suffers from a hostile work environment.

Re:good idea there, buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

What most people here seem to be missing is that this incident didn't happen out of thin air (incidents like these almost never do). A SUPERVISOR was harassing him on the job, and instead of the supervisor being fired and arrested, the police, like is usual in cases of harassment, arrest the victim. According to the victim,

he had been made fun of by coworkers on a daily basis

Of course the victim of the harassment could have filed a formal complaint, but everybody knows how that always turns out. At the most he would be laughed at, but really, it's the harassers word against the harassed.

It's sad and pathetic that everybody here on Slashdot seems to be pointing the blame on the victim, like is always the case when it comes to school shootings and workplace shootings. When everybody is against you then violence almost always seems the logical solution. Of course I don't expect the supervisor or the Human Resource Manager who carefully selected these assholes to be fired or charged with harassment or human rights violations, because it's not the neoconservative thing to do. Violence is cool and if you can't take daily jokes then... you must be weak in the head. But that logic, in my experience, comes from hypocrisy.

Those co-workers should just be glad that he didn't show up the next day with an automatic rifle and a duffel bag full of ammunition. What goes around comes around. Work place mobbing should not be tolerated, and the supervisor and HR Manager should, at the VERY LEAST, be fired immediately.

Re:good idea there, buddy

[sznupi]

From what I can see, people who end up in long-term private security jobs (the ones we are likely to come in contact with, not some almost mercenaries / private special forces) are way too often:
a) rejected during the process of police recruitment
b) then rejected during the process of municipal police recruitment
c) then rejected during the process of jail duty recruitment
d) then rejected from "higher trust" private security, like internal one in the banks (you might really swap a/b/c/d, the order here might differ)
e) now they finally found somebody who won't care that much about their background and poor psychological evaluation

Yup, certainly contributes to making those private security firms responsible...

Re:good idea there, buddy

[JWSmythe]

    Well, if you still have contacts there, I have one complaint. When they put me through it, I asked for a copy of my images. They still have no been delivered. Any time I have acted as a model, I have been provided a copy of all photographs during that shoot. I also did not sign a model release, and they had a clear view of my unclothed body recorded. Pursuant to Title 18, Part I, Chapter 110, 2257, they are required to have full documentation on file regarding such images. If I recall correction, violation of that code is punishable by 5 years and/or $25,000 per offense.

    I hope they haven't put anyone under the age of 18 through, or they're in for a world of trouble. Possession of child pornography?

Re:good idea there, buddy

[MikeBabcock]

I keep seeing all these great press releases about how the definition on the images is too low to be indecent, and yet this incident happens.

If it possible to end up making fun of a man for the size of his genitals, the system is too intrusive. Period.

As he was beating the victim...

[2names]

The attacker said, "my rod feels pretty damn big now, doesn't it? [thump] Huh? [whack] You like this big rod? [thump whack]"

Note to self:

[wiredog]

Bring bratwurst when flying.

1 Month after the institute this system...

[sir lox elroy]

If the institute this system I give it a month before we start seeing real "naked" pictures of celebrities online taken with the TSA employee's camera phones.

Re:1 Month after the institute this system...

[osu-neko]

Yes, but when you devote more attention to one group, that means you devote less attention to another. If no one knows you're doing it, this increases your odds of catching the bad guys, but if the bad guys know you're doing it, it creates an exploitable weakness in your system. If you know a particular door to the castle is most likely to be attacked, you devote more guards to it, but if the enemy knows you'd taken guards from the other door to guard the first, which door do you think they're going to use? You ultimately weaken your defenses if you engage in that kind of allotment of resources when the enemy can see perfectly well what you're doing. It only works when they can't. That's why using a publicly available list of countries to subject travelers from to more screening actually weakens your security. You've just decreased the amount of time you spend on countries off the list (by devoting your limited resources more to the ones on it rather than distributing evenly), and provided the enemy with a list of countries that are subject to decreased security (by inverting the list). Any at all sophisticated enemy praises Allah for your gift of intentionally weakening your security.

To foil a sophisticated enemy, you need to treat all travelers exactly the same, or keep completely and totally secret what ways you're treating anyone differently, because the moment the enemy knows you're treating people differently is the moment they have a greatly enhanced chance of pulling off a successful attack.

tl;dr: Treating everyone equally is not about political correctness, it's about not being bad at security.

Missing the Point

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The whole purpose of the scanners to emasculate and demean the people who pass through them. This should be clear to everyone.

Re:Missing the Point

[Bobfrankly1]

The whole purpose of the scanners to emasculate and demean the people who pass through them. This should be clear to everyone.

That depends on what your packing. To be strip searched for fear of hiding a club in your pants, and then finding out the club shaped item is stock equipment wouldn't be emasculating or demeaning for the person passing through, just the person doing the search.

And we expect them to behave LATER?

[Ambiguous Coward]

So, they can't even this technology in regards to each other, and we're supposed to believe they won't behave the same (or worse) when confronted with the public at large being forced to expose themselves in these things?

Really?

Re:And we expect them to behave LATER?

[Locke2005]

No, we cannot expect TSA employees with a proven track record of acting like 10 year old boys to later respect the dignity and rights of passengers. I say fire the entire crew.

Re:And we expect them to behave LATER?

[Abcd1234]

It does not matter if you get laughed at. Grow up.

It does when it's the job of these people to deal with thousands upon thousands of passengers each day, and to do so in a respectful, professional manner. If these people are sniggering about penis size during training (and worse, abusing this person for a full year), that speaks directly to their ability to be respectful and professional.

Question

[Locke2005]

Can a TSA employee be arrested for child porn if the cops catch him just as a minor is walking through the scanner?

Nice punchline

[Ambiguous Coward]

But if this latest incident is any indication, the scanners sound like good news for anti-terrorism and bad news for less-than-average men.

So what you're saying, NBC, is that the only people who would complain about this invasive technology are terrorists and guys with small dicks?

Well done.

After a year of solid teasing, he lost it.

[gotpoetry]

As usual there is more to the story. TFA fails to mention that he was teased about it for a solid year before he decided to take action.

Rolando Negrin was exposed to fellow Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operatives' ridicule during training on the body scanners, when they copped an eyeful of his "private body parts".

Cue a year of ribbing, until Negrin attacked one of his tormentors with a baton in the airport's employee parking lot on Tuesday. In the arrest report. Negrin claims he "could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind".

Re:After a year of solid teasing, he lost it.

[Joe U]

A full year?

Ok, at that point, you get to break his legs.

On a slightly more serious note, Negrin should have sued for sexual harassment. The end result would have been much more entertaining for him.

Re:It's News, but...

[Locke2005]

The story IS about your right to not be laughed at for having an itty-bitty, tiny little pecker -- an issue that is of utmost importance to many slashdot readers (myself excluded, of course!)

Re:So much for the obfuscation promised

[jonpublic]

According to gizmodo they were teasing him for an entire year.

May 7th

[iamhassi]

Alright May 7th 2010, who had May 7th as the date a TSA worker would get arrested for something related to the new body scanners? .... Anyone? ..... come on people, I have 454 comments of people saying this is a Very Bad Idea, someone had to have May 7th....

Re:It's News, but...

[Gorkamecha]

It highlights the personality types of the people we've trusted with this technology. It additionally demonstrates that there is enough private information shared by the device to create a uncomfortable breach of privacy.

Re:What is idle for anyway?

[Monkeedude1212]

Welcome newcommer!

We enjoy having new recruits at our site, slashdot. I am one of our sites many moderators, so that means I'm super important. Don't upset us or we'll downmod you. You have been warned. Back to the welcome message!

I see that you are unfamiliar with how editors handle messages at Slashdot. It's a proprietary method, since we love Microsoft, its also open source, like Linux, and it also makes no sense, like Apple. There are various categories in which a story might be filed under. When a submitter submits a story, they put in what category they believe it to be under, and other tags that might help in its placement. Slashdot editors take a look at the category, and give it a 50% chance of being filed in there. Then the editors look at the stats of the submitter. This includes Kharma, previous story entries, upmodded comments, skill in grammar, and other various related fields. They use these stats to come up with a 1x, 2x, or 3x* modifier. The Editors then roll a D-20, and multiply the value to the modifier, and add it as a percentage to the total to the previously mentioned 50%. They then create a pie chart in excel with the proper category being proportional to the new percentage. All other categories divide the remaining space. Using a random number Generator, they generate a number between 1 and 100. Where the number lands determines which category the article is placed under, based on the ranges previously defined.

And thats it! Simple right? I know, I didn't know how it worked when I first got here either, but when once someone tells you, you kind of look back at how silly you were for not seeing it before.

Welcome to slashdot, and thank you for posting.

So full of win.

[Ransak]

As a frequent flyer, I love this story. If anything was going to lend credence to the inappropriateness of these scanners in a lawsuit, this is. A TSA supervisor making fun of genitals now a matter of public record? So... much... legal... win...

Re:So full of win.

[fermion]

As a flyer I have seen just how useless these are, having been selected for hand frisking for no apparent reason. The number of false positives are a big impediment to these devices.

I think the only reason we have these is that conservatives want to spend government money, but can't spend it on useful things like roads and schools and keeping people from starving. So they create things like Homeland security and buy lots of useless machines that make their friends rich. That is the only reason I think we have the TSA. Otherwise we would trained agents in the airport looking out for suspicious behavior, not poorly paid perverts peering at peckers.

Actually, good for everyone else

[Moraelin]

Actually, the more such stories make the point that those guys really _are_ looking at people naked, the better for the public at large.

The things have been handwaved to the public as just some magical things that see explosives and guns and not much else, and their operators are 100% profesional and would do no such thing as looking for anything else than guns anyway. (In fact, one politician in Australia even claimed that they'll produce just stick figures with just the areas to be checked marked, and nobody would see your body at all.) And obviously if you're refusing to let them look at you that way, you're probably a terrorist and don't deserve to fly. (E.g., Muslim woman barred from flight for refusing body scan)

Now it turns out that they aren't just for explosives, and they aren't that professional.

And I mean there's not just this, but also the guy at Heathrow Airport who pressed the button to take a ghostly snapshot of a female coworker's body. She seemed pretty traumatized by it too and won't go anywhere near the machine any more, so maybe now we can also have some sympathy for the others who are scared of them.

Or the actor who discovered some female employees there looking at a printout of his scans, so he autographed it for them.

The sooner Joe Average gets the idea that these kinds of things happen, and no matter what some politician says, those people aren't saints, the better.

Re:Actually, good for everyone else

[Moraelin]

I'd be happy to even wave my dick at that employee, if he wants a clearer look. Sure, it's only average, but I'm not ashamed of that. Plus, you don't get an oportunity to flash a rentacop every day ;)

But I can see why some people would have an objection to that. For certain muslim fundies, showing yourself naked to strangers as a woman can be your own death warrant, for example. I wouldn't want to be the Saudi Arabian woman whose scanner picture ends up plastered all over the internet. And even in the west, probably most people would burst a vein if you told them that Joe Rentacop from the TSA spanked the monkey in the bathroom on his break after looking at their 7 and 11 year old daughters naked. Even if no image was stored.

It seems to me like there is no way around the fact that it does produce a naked image, and those guys get to look at it because the magical technology to just show the guns without needing an eye-scan of the body doesn't exist. And if that wasn't enough, they have a button to take a printout.

But yeah, you're right, the fact that they repeatedly lie about it, is what gets my goat the most. I keep hearing how it'll blur stuff, or how verily nobody will even see more than a stick figure of you, but then it turns out that the picture someone had posted on the Internet had some pretty clear breasts and didn't look anything like an Order Of The Stick character either. Or the guy in this story clearly saw more than a stick figure with just the gun highlighted. It seems to me like they know that what those machines really do is unacceptable, or they wouldn't go to such lengths to lie about it.

Notice how the media implies it's okay.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Quoth the article: "The $170,000 machines, which were introduced last year, took some heat from fliers who weren't quite ready to show their bod to government employees... But if this latest incident is any indication, the scanners sound like good news for anti-terrorism and bad news for less-than-average men."

The implication here seems to be that it's okay to eliminate individual privacy rights because only poorly endowed men will complain. Granted, a news-hat was just trying to end on a light note, but treating it lightly undermines the legitimacy of the privacy concern.

Re:Notice how the media implies it's okay.

[iamhassi]

National Lampoon's Vacation 2010

(teenage daughter walks through scanner)
TSA man: (previously bored, now looks suddenly excited) Um, ma'am, I'm going to need you to go back through the scanner (reaching in pocket)
Daughter: (rolling eyes) Fine whatever (walks back in)
TSA man: (pulls cellphone out of pocket, taking pictures of screen) Yeah that's good, stop right there and slowly turn around.
(daughter turning)
(another TSA man walks over)
2nd TSA man: Wow! (reaches in pocket, pulls out cellphone, snaps photos)
(daughter still turning, crowd of TSA employees gather, all taking photos and mumbles of approval)
Father: is everything ok?
TSA man: Um, yeah, but I'm going to need your daughter's cell phone number in case we find something later after reviewing the scan in more detail.
(daughter exits scanner)
Father: is that necessary?
TSA man: (looking stern) Oh? Do we have a problem here? (motions towards two armed airport security guards)
Father: (looking suprised) NO No, no problem at all! Here's her number, call anytime
TSA man: (looking satisfied) Thank you for complying. Who's next?
(people in line look worryingly at each other as if no one wants to go, one person lowers head and begrudgingly steps forward toward the scanner)

Re:What is idle for anyway?

[natehoy]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Or, in this case, who screens the screeners? (my Latin sucks, English will have to do)

Stories like this simply make it clear that:

a) the level of detail coming out of these scanners is somewhat better than many have been led to believe.
b) the level of professionalism of some of the people charged with operating the scanners is somewhat worse than many have been led to believe.

If seeing people naked is what it really takes to introduce real security into the scanning process, just tell everyone they have to get naked to go through security. Don't hide the fact behind millions of dollars in technology and bullshittery and try to convince us that the people operating the gear are anything other than underpaid security guards, some (the vast minority, but still some) of whom will jump on the chance to sell any images they can capture, and that the images are of sufficient clarity that they are worth capturing.

I'm not against such scanners per se, though they seem like a very expensive way to gain a possibly marginal but mostly imaginary increase in security. But let's stop bullshitting ourselves that there will be any realistic expectation of privacy once they get implement, mmmm'kay?

No real surprise there

[thetoadwarrior]

TSA employees are assholes. I don't object to body scanning even if it's cold and it'll show. I've happily done it in the UK even when it was voluntary.

I don't really care to do it in the US though. Pretty much every TSA employee I have ever met was a cock. They feel the need to make comments because I'm an American who opted to live outside the US (I know, a real crime) and even asking a simple question like where a certain gate is apparently is enough to be quizzed and have your travel documents looked through and maybe even have your bags checked despite having already went through that when entering the country.

It's the sort of job wanna-be tough guys take. It's no surprise it turns out they have little dicks. It explains a lot about their attitudes.

Nope, the airport's claims were disproven

[jeko]

The airport claimed they didn't do it, citing they the machines did not have a printer. CNN proved they did have a print capability. The only one caught in a lie so far is the airport spokesman.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/scannergate-facts-contradict-heathrow-claim-that-naked-images-cant-be-printed.html
"However, leaked government documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and confirmed as authentic by CNN show that the devices must have the ability to store and send images when in "test mode."

"That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines -- which can see beneath people's clothing -- can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg," according to the report.

"If you look at the actual technical specifications and you read the vendor contracts, you come to understand that these machines are capable of doing far more than the TSA has let on," added Rotenberg.

Indeed, if there is no capability for the devices to save, distribute and print images, then how on earth have news organizations obtained print outs of such images like the one below?

*picture shown*"