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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."
Or, could be that she's a self-entitled prat.
She wasn't arrested for refusing to allow the screening, she was [...]"belligerent and verbally abusive to security officers"[...]"After the woman refused to calm down, airport police said, she was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to jail"
Short version, she got her knickers in a twist and threw a hissy-fit without even a modest attempt at politely refusing. I'd be right behind someone with calm and rational objections, but immediately going on the offensive hardly qualifies.
Okay, I get it- they screen children, the infirm, and the elderly not because they expect these people to be terrorists, but because it would be possible to use them as mules to carry the payload for someone who themselves would definitely be screened. Many of us understand this. 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. But, that would probably be expensive in an era when we're short on doctors and nurses. I suppose that they don't have to be especially good doctors, but since they're inspecting the body, having someone trained in the body probably would be a good idea.
The trouble is, they really, really need to find a better way to screen, and they need to understand that paying low wage workers to do the screening isn't helping. They need employees who actually care and are fairly intelligent people, and they need enough of them to offset the grueling nature of the job. That probably means a four-fold increase in the payroll, with 1/3 going to wage increases and the rest going to doubling the number of workers. They also need to institute their own Internal Affairs, complete with undercover placing (which could easily be safely hidden by the sheer size of the organization through the use of random gate reassignments for employees as well as transfers between airports and cities) to help stamp out the current problems.
When I went through security in London Heathrow, about a week after the Christmas Underwear Bomber attempt, and I accidently set off the metal detector because of a foil-lined wet wipe in my pocket, their security was quick and intelligent. They didn't feel the need to extend their patdown into a bag search, and once they found the wet wipe manually in my shirt pocket they wanded me quickly again, passed me, and gave me back the wet wipe. It took something like a minute for the whole process. Granted, they were smart enough to leave enough space in the airport for security, which is probably triple what we have in the US, but their employees seemed to actually care about what they were doing, didn't joke around in a way that made me uncomfortable, and treated it all as important but routine. I didn't get the "guilty until proven innocent" feeling that I get in our own airports.
I've heard lots of good things about El Al, as everyone on here talks about. I really wish that our policy makers would stop thinking that the technological approach is the way to go and start thinking about the human interaction approach. I'd bet that we could go back to simple metal detectors again if security actually made conversation with passengers instead of treating them like cattle to be mechanically put through the processes.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Seriously?
The problem is you think that is a plausible outcome.
Why havent the scary scary terrorists placed a bomb somewhere else, you know someplace heavily populated and w/o the scanners?
Because there arent as many of them as you think there is.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Why is the pilot's union telling them to avoid the machines? (Honest question)
Oh yes. There are those personalities who enjoy humiliating others and having a sense of control over the destinies of others through their official capacity as security screeners. But we know those personalities already -- we have seen them in IT and usually take the form of IT guys who lock down PCs so hard that people can't even change their desktop background or use a screensaver other than "blank screen." These same people who despite knowledge and evidence to the contrary, believe people who have their computers infected do so because they are addicted to pornography or some such thing. They imagine the worst of every person they meet and attempt to control and punish people accordingly.
There are sociopaths at every social level and in every occupation. Greed and lust for power isn't a condition that happens when people get rich or powerful, it is quite the opposite as these are most often greedy people with a lust for power and also ability, talent and circumstances which enable them to achieve their desires.
In the first days of the TSA (I was among the first batch) there were people who thought they were "federal agents" and wanted to carry night sticks. More than one of these jackasses liked to holster the handheld metal detectors as if they were weapons of some kind... sword or firearm. And it goes without saying that they couldn't go more than 10 minutes without commenting that passengers are incredibly stupid and obnoxious people and shouldn't be allowed to fly.
Oh yes, there were some of those... and there were plenty of other colorful types as well. I rather wish I had sketched my observations to write a book at the time. But there were many distinctive personality types and motivations. But for the most part, they don't like what they have to do, but they do so to the best of their ability while at the same time try their best not to offend the people they are screening. There were lots of us with at least that much in common.
That's not enough of a loophole - try doing industrial radiography in the USA with unregulated/untested equipment and see what legal trouble that gets you into. Those guys that do radiography of welds and operate their equipment via very long cables still have to wear dosimeters even though they'll theoretically get less exposure than the TSA guys.
The loophole here is the old fashioned "might makes right" loophole which has been popular in China for a while but in other places is usually blocked in favour of the rule of law.
TSA pat downs, if done right, don't meet those elements or it would be illegal.
"Illegal" is whatever the government says is illegal. Is this woman the only one left in the US with balls? Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you people? Are there no more real Americans left? Do you not care about freedom and liberty?
Shit, I'm getting old. When I was young we'd have rioted over this insane nonsense. Remember Kent State? No, of course you don't. You would have rooted for the National Guard murderers.
Meh. Pussies. Goddamn it, stand up to these assholes!
Free Martian Whores!
3,000 miles? On a 14-day vacation you've spent 6 days travelling.
Traveling by a car is a part of vacation. You see places, people, dine in towns that you never saw. Basically you see the world.
But traveling by an airplane is a boring chore. Not only you have to worry about getting to the airport and from it. You have to go through the indignity of an illegal search by TSA; then you are herded into the airplane and lifted so high that you can't see anything down below - even if you sit by the window. But you can see (and hear) perfectly well the noisy children all around you, mountains of luggage everywhere, your legs that you have to fold in most unnatural way, etc. etc. As a free bonus you get a bit of ionizing radiation, and you get to share your sneezes with everybody else on the airplane. There is no restaurant you can spot and drive the airplane to; there is no food even.
I travel by car from time to time, and 400-500 miles per day is not a concern at all, easily doable between 9am and 5pm with a good lunch somewhere, in a spacious restaurant (even McD is spacious, compared to airplanes) and on terra firma. If I feel tired by the end of the day I can stop at any hotel I like. I can have as much luggage as I want but I don't need to carry any of it, and nobody is going to rummage through my bags. Traveling in your own castle is very comfortable.