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TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
3-year-old Mandy Simon started crying when her teddy bear had to go through the X-ray machine at airport security in Chattanooga, Tenn. She was so upset that she refused to go calmly through the metal detector, setting it off twice. Agents then informed her parents that she "must be hand-searched." The subsequent TSA employee pat down of the screaming child was captured by her father, who happens to be a reporter, on his cell phone. The video have left some questioning why better procedures for children aren't in place. I, for one, feel much safer knowing the TSA is protecting us from impressionable minds warped by too much Dora the Explorer.
The naked picture scanners that can't be saved (except when they can) and the molest^H^H^H^H^H^H pat-downs that would be criminal offenses if done outside the airport have spawned something of a populist backlash against TSA's goons.
You're seeing a lot of stories because there's both a lot of interest, and a lot of material. This is the classic example of a bureaucracy run amok and it's time for the politicians to do their jobs and regain control over it.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The "enhanced" pat-down was created with the goal of making it unpleasant enough to get people to go through the scanners.
And yeah, I'd say that being groped by government goons because I committed the crime of buying a plane ticket is definitely unpleasant.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Tribune had the original video taken down, but the news report is still viewable here, with most of the actual footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNY_PTULO4
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yshc_ez6tg Footage from it... Lol I wonder where that copyright claim came from... It's fucking news, there is nothing to claim!
The head of the TSA said today that they want to expand into ground transportation as well. They'll find a way to grope you one way or another.
The bit about being threatened with lawsuits was in reference to a recent case in San Diego where a passenger made the choice to leave the airport rather than consent to the search and was threatened with a lawsuit for doing so.
I am officially gone from
Unpleasant... yes, effective? No. I was recently made aware of someone taking a hunting knife (not a $20 swiss army, but an actual knife) through security with the help of steel-toed boots. They were stopped on their return trip and thought the jig was up only to be told they couldn't take aerosol deodorant through the checkpoint. Both checks failed to catch the knife.
In related news, another friend, working for the coast guard, routinely made it through security (as part of his job to infiltrate and notify the chief of security inside the line) with explosives, guns, etc.
As near as I can figure, the entire point of airport security is to catch idiots and pacify the masses through some sort of fear / control response.
For instance, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who just happens to have a significant financial interest in the company that made the naked-scan machines that the TSA are now using.
I am officially gone from
http://www.ustravel.org/about-us-travel/contact-us
http://www.tsa.gov/contact/index.shtm
Write politely and literately. Don't rant, and explain your position as briefly as you can. But let them know that you are no longer travelling by air as long as this security theatre is in place.
You can also write to your representatives with the same message, but I cannot give you that contact info.
(I know I'm an AC, but I hope someone mods this up, and people take the advice to heart)
Spoken like someone without the need to travel, nor children. Fail.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
It seems to have been bought in at the same time as the new scanners came online. I think the biggest objection to it seems to be the way it's done more than anything else - the TSA officials aren't warning people about what they're doing, taking a presumption of guilt if you question any part of the process, haven't made it clear at any point what's changed (or the apparent $10,000 fine for decided you neither want to be x-rayed or felt up) and generally acting like power-drunk dicks.
Another interesting POV here: http://www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/penniphile/roadpennfederalvip.html
NPR interviewed him recently about the pat-downs. His comment about the controversy started with a statement to the effect of, "Reasonable people can disagree." He then went on to talk about the balance of security and privacy and security and safety. It was very noticeable that he did not say they would listen to disagreements. His statement, in summary, was "Disagree all you want, but we will decide what the line is."
"I will not be a silent victim of sexual assault by a TSA agent. Total Sexual Assault."
"I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
For those of you without kids:
I've traveled domestically and abroad 14 times in the last 4 years, with a 1 through 4 year old, plus gear. At 1, they don't notice. At two and three, she would reliably freak out at security. My conclusions: The wait tests her patience. The packing/unpacking, undressing/dressing, unstrollering/strollering, takes away all of her comfort. Then, her mother walks away, through a big machine, towards a person with a wand.
We've learned it's best if mom goes first carrying nothing but a boarding pass, so that my daughter walks through the machine, to her mother. Then I follow, with absolutely all the gear. Often there is a meltdown, but then one parent is 100% focused on it, while the other worries about stuff, repeat scans, etc.
Now three of those twelve times, security has helped us a lot. In JFK, Hong Kong, and Beijing, they pulled us aside, and screened us in the priority/first-class lane. There's fewer people, a more enclosed space, and less overall distraction.
This post is just about kids and travel trouble; everyone else has the body-cavity-searches-sucks thread covered.
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Try more like 1 in TEN MILLION, the 1 in 500,000 statistic you quote comes from a misquoted infographic, which points out 1 in five hundred thousand is the odds of being struck by lightning in the continental united states. Somehow people are repeating 1 in 500k? Refer to: http://boingboing.net/2009/12/30/odds-of-being-a-terr.html It's a eye-opener.
...
Internationally it's even less likely, consider international airlines like Qantas who have never had a airborne single fatality let alone a terror attack.
I'm starting to wonder
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
You're aware that the Democrats are now in office, and extended the USA-PATRIOT Act, and in fact are the ones behind the new obnoxious security that this article is about, right?
Revive the Constitution.
And yet every single hijacker is a Muslim male. Go figure!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_hijackings lists 171 hijackings. I omitted 2 of them where I couldn't figure out whether the hijacker was likely Muslim or not (a Croatian incident and a Bosnian one); of the remaining 169 incidents, 126 of them were by probable non-Muslims.
To put that in a percentage, about 75% of hijackings are by non-Muslims. The vast majority are by males--I think that only one was by a lone female, though some of the group hijackings may have included women (I wasn't paying attention).
Cuba is by far the dominant source of hijackings; 105 of the hijackers were Cubans.
rage, rage against the dying of the light