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Women Arrested For Refusing TSA Search of Children
CelticWhisper writes "A Tennessee mother was arrested for refusing to allow TSA screening clerks to subject her child to a body scan or patdown. This comes in the wake of a promise by the TSA Administrator to make repeated attempts at non-physical screening of children, after which another video of a child patdown surfaced. This event may signify a tipping point in the public's willingness to tolerate invasive and inappropriate security procedures at airports."
"Think of the children" actually gets people to listen.
Not the groping, not the invasion of someone putting their hands on you (think about those that hate being touched, or fear of germs, etc), or 3d images of your body for all to see.
Nope, its fear of pediophilia and children being touched.
We have come far.
Is everyone enjoying their freedom? You know that choice you have which you really don't...
The "think of the children" argument has managed to get all sorts of ridiculous legislation passed, so it's clearly an effective argument. It's about time we started using it to protect some of our rights.
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
You're the problem, Mr. Authoritarian dumbass.
Another word for not being properly subservient to our masters.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
She was accused of this. By people who had just lied to her. I don't think their accusations hold any weight. Or should not.
This woman should be applauded, her sticking up for the health of her children (those backscatter machine REALLY safe?) and their dignity (because "pat downs" are degrading). She was willing to get herself arrested to stand up for her children. We need more people like her.
Short version, she got her knickers in a twist and threw a hissy-fit without even a modest attempt at politely refusing.
How do you 'politely refuse' someone who's demanding to grope your children?
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
And in an unrelated Slashdot story, it's the 40th Anniversary of the Stanford Experiment.
I am not a crackpot.
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
1. TSA officer tries to fondle/irradiate children
2. Parent refuses
3. TSA officer insists on fondling/irradiating children
4. Parent gets upset
5. Parent charged for being "belligerent"
Offences like "resisting arrest", being "belligerent", "abusing officer" and so on are generally total b.s. - one in a thousand arrests for these things would be legit, the other 999 being tools for wannabe fascist bully boys to prevent people from asserting their otherwise legitimate rights.
I think a good law would be that unless the person arrested had actually committed a real crime (one that doesn't involve any of these 'police' crimes) then there should be no power to charge them with offending the sensibilities of the authorities. Dealing with hostile people is your job if you're a member of the police, TSA etc.
Read Pynchon.
Being right is an absolute defense for being belligerent.
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
And?
That still does not make the TSA policy any less clear or enforced. Once you hand your drivers license over and boarding pass, and you pass through the little gate inside the checkpoint, you have passed the point of no return.
According to the law, and TSA policy you cannot refuse to complete the screening process. Note, I said complete the process. You do have the right to say that you will not subject yourself to A, B, or C, but there is no going backwards. You have to make a choice.
Failure to comply and attempts to leave the screening area, even to leave the airport, are offences that can allow you to be arrested. I know this personally. I did choose the pat down and crotch grab vs the 3D porno image machine.
Note, that I wholly disagree with the practice, but the fact they charged her with disorderly conduct is because they did not want to charge her with the other offence.
That is strategic on the part of the TSA. If she had been arrested for failure to comply with the screening or leaving quietly, there could be a court case. The TSA could be forced to hand over data under subpoena. They could lose and precedence would be established. When this case goes to trial she will be surprised that the screening measures will have practically nothing to do with her case, and the judge will more than likely not allow it to be presented as evidence, nor will the judge allow the TSA to be forced to hand over data and anything, and the whole thing might have everything to do with disorderly conduct. Basically, her court case will be about her behavior, and the airport and TSA will be irrelevant.
Same reason the IRS will usually choose to settle instead of going full on in court if they think they even have the smallest chance of losing. It is to deny the citizenry precedence in law to allow us to fight them effectively through the courts.
Don't be fooled because of the way she was charged. What caused the whole situation is that she did not want pornographic (that which can be considered obscene) images of her children and did not want her children touched and groped by another person. She had no choices her according to TSA policy and was backed into a corner. Golly jee willickers....... I can't possibly understand why she blew her top and got arrested for "disorderly conduct". You back anybody into a corner with zero options and that is what you get. Especially, when they feel their children are being harmed.
Nope, its fear of pediophilia and children being touched.
We have come far.
We have come far.
But the thing is, people groping children is utterly senseless and, to many people, disgusting. There is no way to defend or condone it.
That is why people are against it, not of some odd pedophile fear but because it's stupid and gross.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Totally true. First, look at her picture.
You're right. Only good looking, smart people with tech skills deserve to have their rights respected.
PS - is your sig from the blurb to a low budget gay porno or what?
Read Pynchon.
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
You know, if someone (uniformed or not) insisted on touching my daughter I'd be belligerent too, at the minimum. An arrest would probably be necessary as well. You can keep your false sense of security and freedom America, I'm staying the fuck out.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
So, if she had been less uppity, and just known her place, none of this would have had to happen?
If enough Americans had the balls this woman's got, we might have a functional fourth amendment.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
...Thing is, in the case of children, they need to have actual medical staff like RNs and MDs on hand to handle children and teenagers. One RN per security checkpoint, one Doctor to every four or five checkpoints or per terminal or airport, depending on the size of the terminal or airport.
Er, considering that quite a few parents would agree that any sort of patdown down by a stranger is more of a psychological impact than a physical one, how exactly is your solution going to help at all when the child is still standing in the middle of a damn airport with thousands of people around them, all impatiently waiting for the good "doctor" to get done with their screening?
Sorry, but in the big picture, even a lollipop ain't gonna help. This bullshit needs to stop. When attacking the obscenities against our Rights, it's best to go for the throat, or root cause in this case, which is questioning why in the hell we even need the continued "support" of the TSA.
Trying to figure out a more polite way to fondle my child in order to board an airplane is not the answer.
The whole enterprise of gaterape as a security measure is flawed; but it isn't more flawed in children than it is in adults.
No, but that doesn't matter. It's just that people "know" a child isn't going to have anything on them. It might be irrational but it's a stronger feeling that makes the whole thing more obviously stupid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If a stranger wanted to touch my daughter's genitals after claiming that a sonogram uses radio waves, I'd get as belligerent as I would with any other pedophile. She'll walk, eventually, and probably get enough of a settlement to pay for the kid's college. If there were any justice in the world, the TSA goon would be in prison for attempted child rape (along with every single person involved in coming up with this plan.
I mean, c'mon. You create thousands of jobs that involve sexually groping children, and you're surprised when you end up with pedophiles filling those jobs because nobody else wants them? If it were a deliberate conspiracy to sanction, with government violence, the sexual assault of children, they couldn't come up with a better plan.
... we can't believe you let yourselves be driven to a point where you have to be strip-searched, molested and interrogated before they let you on a plane - and all that while maintaining an attitude of utter submission to your TSA masters.
Seriously, guys, you're the only ones doing this shit. You need to stop it, you're beginning to look silly.
It's not the children. It's not the elderly. It's not the pregnant women.
It's the people.
Nobody deserves the kind of privacy invasion that the TSA imposes in the US.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When the terrorists from Hamas learned that the Israelis were willing to give Palestinian women less of a search than men, they tried two tactics: dressing men in burkhas, and recruiting women suicide bombers.
When they learned it was little kids that wouldn't be so thoroughly searched, they started sending bombs in strollers.
Either you screen everyone, or screening is pointless.
I personally don't fly unless my employer forces me to. My 2 year old daughter will certainly not fly since the porno scanners have been installed. She has flown twice before the porno scanners were installed. My family has chosen to drive to our destinations the last couple of years. The TSA is a joke. Right after 9-11 when President Bush announced the TSA and Patriot Act, I knew we were in for a knee jerk reaction which won't solve anything. President Obama is just accelerating the stupidity.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Being belligerent isn't a crime. If it was, then all the people that told me to eat shit, die, fuck off, piss off, etc would have been arrested after they finished hurling those remarks at me, during my stent in law enforcement. Refusing to allow a bunch of government agents to either submit my child to potentially harmful, or touch him or her in an illegal manner, is not illegal; it is the duty of all parents.
Hell, even from TFA:
“(She) told me in a very stern voice with quite a bit of attitude that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer, told police.
“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”
“I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked,” Abbott said, according to the police report.
Are you serious? "10,000 times safer than your cell phone?" Just who the fuck made that number up, and how did ionizing radiation become at all safer than non-ionizing radiation?
Oh, yeah, she was arrested for "being belligerent".
The irony is that any terrorist with half a brain is never going to attempt to get a bomb or weapon onto a plane again. The next big terrorist attack in the US will not be on an airplane. It may be at an airport though but it would be in the lobby or curbside maybe. Bombings in Mumbai today, all in outdoor public areas where the bomber never once had to pass any security screening or metal detector or road block, etc.
Security theater is the correct term for this. Because the TSA is in no way trying to make things safer for US citizens, and nothing they are doing is providing extra safety. Instead they provide merely the appearance of security and they allow lawmakers to go home during the elections and say "look, we're doing something!" If we really wanted to stop terrorism we'd do something to eliminate the causes of terrorism.
Either you screen everyone, or screening is pointless.
The screening is pointless anyway, if the goal is to prevent a terrorist attack. The airport screeners were found to routinely miss knives and even firearms during the screenings in the last test.
Palm trees and 8
The problem is that there are only two times when it's acceptable for somebody to touch my junk, if I get sick and need medical assistance or with my consent. Telling children that there are times when somebody can flash a badge and touch their genitals is not something that is acceptable to any reasonable person.
I personally won't fly because I care about my body and my rights apparently more than you do. These machines are known to be ineffective and all the TSA is doing is moving the vulnerability from a plane with a fixed payload to a security checkpoint with a lot more people.
naked scans of your child or groping of your child. Bin laden could not have dreamed of how successful he would have become.
So why do you think El Al have such a good record of not being attacked by nutjobs?
Hint: it's not because of the lighthearteed casualness of their security staff.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it