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.

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.

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: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..

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.

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.

Why pat down the Baby...

[Stregano]

when it will fit through the x-ray machine?