Baby's First TSA Patdown

theodp writes "Is there anything cuter than baby milestones? Baby's first steps. Baby's first word. And now, baby's first TSA patdown. 'Well,' writes Anna North, 'it finally happened. Airport security officers gave a pat-down to a baby.' A post on the TSA blog defended the move: 'The child's stroller alarmed during explosives screening. Our officers followed proper current screening procedures by screening the family after the alarm...The [8-month-old] child in the photo was simply receiving a modified pat-down.' Hey, at least they didn't make a federal case of the 4 oz. of liquid found in the little tyke's Pampers."

Comments

Osama Bin Laden

[Anonymous Coward]

Osama Bin Laden is laughing in his grave. He obviously won, even in death.

Re:Osama Bin Laden

[snarkh]

The economic damage he caused to the US economy is several trillion dollars. While he may not have won the war, but he did cause overwhelming damage.

2 questions for the TSA

[sootman]

1) Nationwide, how many times has the alarm gone off during explosives screening?

2) How many times have explosives been found?

Re:2 questions for the TSA

[countertrolling]

...has yet to have a single success.

HA! Tell that to the people who sell all those nice machines.. They're laughing all the way to the bank..

Re:2 questions for the TSA

[MozeeToby]

Exactly, that's the same way that I know that this rock that I have bought keeps away tigers!

More seriously, lets say that your screening procedures are 99% effective with a 0.0001% false positive rate, both of which are horribly, massively unrealistic. And then let's pretend that there are 10 terrorists that try to get on an airplane each year in the US, which is almost definitely an unrealistically high number. There are an estimated 737.4 million passenger flights each year in the US. That means that for each terrorist detected you're going to hit 8200 false positives. Screening everyone in the country just doesn't work at a mathematical level.

Re:2 questions for the TSA

[MoonBuggy]

If there were terrorists with the will and capability to bomb a plane, but who were put off purely by the probability of being caught by the TSA, don't you think the would've attacked one of the many, many other totally unguarded areas of our infrastructure? Airliners are big, flashy, somewhat fragile targets, but I don't understand how so many people seem to have decided that they're the only targets.

If someone was willing to blow themselves to pieces for a cause, but couldn't because of the TSA (something I find unlikely to begin with), it's mind-boggling to claim that they'll just sit back, accept it, and become a productive member of society. If anything, it would create a lot more panic to show that we're at risk everywhere, from the subway to the supermarket to the airline security queue. If terrorism were actually an appreciable threat within the US, we'd see some evidence of it. The TSA are fighting an enemy that is vastly few and far between, and even so they're doing a terrible job of it while encroaching horribly on our civil liberties; terrorism just isn't the threat that people make it out to be.

Re:2 questions for the TSA

[MoonBuggy]

I'm inclined to agree with the poster who said that the Israeli system probably wouldn't scale to the entire US. That's fine, though, because the situations are very different - Israel actually has a genuine and significant threat from terrorists [or freedom fighters, depending on your point of view. I'm staying out of that debate.], whereas the US quite simply does not. As I've said in a couple of other posts: airlines may be a tempting target, but they're hardly the only one. If there were really any appreciable number of terrorists with the will and capability to strike within the US, we'd be seeing attacks against any number of other totally unguarded parts of the infrastructure.

The fact that the TSA haven't actually found any bombs means, pretty much by definition, that they aren't catching any terrorists. The fact that nobody's attacking any other areas where people congregate implies that the TSA isn't acting as a deterrent - if that were the case, at least some of those deterred from attacking airlines would attack other targets instead.

Airport security...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is an embarrassment to America.

We really could be better than this.

Re:Airport security...

[Dunbal]

Hah, my wife was just applying for a non-immigrant visa today because her old one expired. Now you have to submit an online application. There are about a million questions, all the buttons are counter-intuitive (usually continue goes on the right and back goes on the left), and the website says it will log you out after 20 minutes of inactivity, which is false. It logs you out after 15 minutes - activity or no. Considering that these forms take far more than 20 minutes to fill out (list the exact dates of your last 5 visits to the US please, never mind that US immigration likes to stamp wherever the hell they feel like it in your passport), it's a major hassle. We were logged out no less than three times during this process.

And don't forget, you need to give travel dates (even if we're not sure when we plan on going to the US in the next 10 years) and name/address of a contact person in the US (I'm sure I have the name and address of the guy who works at the hotel I'll be staying at...). Oh and of course the "trick" questions where they try to "catch you out". My favorite was "have you ever participated in torture/extrajudicial killing". I wonder how many American government employees actually would not be allowed a visa... but I digress.

Put it this way - I'm glad I'm Canadian and don't have to do this crap every few years but America - if you don't want tourists why don't you just say so? I mean, the Mexicans will still keep jumping the border fence anyway no matter how many questions you put on that form, but we law abiding people can take a hint.

privacy

[PktLoss]

The thing that bothers me most about the TSA responding to issues is the privacy of the people going through screening. I feel like the entire process should be treated as confidential, the number of people in the party, wether or not they had a stroller, what set off what alarm, how old the child was, etc. I don't feel like the TSA should be sharing that information publicly.

*sigh*

[Haedrian]

Yes a terrorist can hide a bomb in a baby. A terrorist can also surgically insert a bomb into a baby if they wanted to.

They could also just detonate the bomb at the airport itself (remember russia?) and skip all of this.

All this stupid theatre does absolutely nothing, except give the 'terrorists' (and the general population) a little grope before they get blown up. Wouldn't want them to die unhappy would we?

Re:Papiere bitte.

[sauge]

Or checkpoints against drunk driving
Police cameras on the roads
"Zero Tolerance" in schools
Drug testing
ID requirements for just about anything, including purchasing cough syrup

When was the last time one heard "Go ahead, it's a free country!"

-----
Would George Washington taken his boots off?

Re:Meanwhile in line...

[elrous0]

You think that patting down a random person who doesn't even come close to fitting the profile of a modern terrorists, while completely ignoring the guy behind her who does is a smart way to approach screening, do you? Because us morons think that taking a more focused approach might be in order. Profiling works to catch serial killers, so why not use it to screen for terrorists too?

Terrorists are not the biggest threat

[devent]

"Terrorists could hide a bomb in a diaper, and we don't seem to have anything much better than pat-downs to detect it. "

Terrorists could just go to the next mall in kill 1000 people with a bomb. Or they could go to a train station and kill 500 people. They could just go to the next restaurant and kill 50 people.

What we really should be doing is just accept terrorists as a threat but not overreacting. We should spend our tax money for real things that are proven to save lives, like improving highways, get more police officers, improving hospitals and health care, invest in more public transportation.

We could even just give capital to the third-world countries, or invest in their education and infrastructure. Even that would reduce the risk of a terrorist attack way more then the stupid TSA. But instead we giving Millions of money to people to search babies, kids and some random people so we have a one in a million chance to find anything.

Why pat down the Baby...

[Stregano]

when it will fit through the x-ray machine?