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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.
From TFA:
“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.”
The TSA scanners aren't comparable in any useful sense to cell phones or sonograms. (Cellphones are non-ionizing radiation and sonograms are pressure waves.) Is it any wonder that these guys don't get the benefit of the doubt?
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
You're the problem, Mr. Authoritarian dumbass.
Even the TSA workers aren't too happy about the possibility of getting cancer from the scanners.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/30/did-airport-scanners-give-boston-tsa-agents-cancer/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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?
Or, could be that she's a self-entitled prat.
I think the old word for that was "citizen".
I also had to google "prat", you prat.
I am not a crackpot.
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.
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.
Proper sign of respect for a pat-down?
Uncontrolled urination, in all directions.
They'll wish they had more than blue gloves...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is not the system that "greed-head airlines" put in place, it was put in place by Federal Government, namely DHS. If it were individual airlines putting the system together, we would probably have a wider range of options, and you could choose to fly the airline which offers screening on the level that you personally consider acceptable.
When this screening was first introduced (was not it in PATRIOT Act? And I though that more than half of /. HATED it, up until it was re-signed by the mechanical pen of their favorite President), I think it allowed for either DHS doing screening, or allowing individual *airports* make contracts with private security firms -- since then DHS fought that option, and is winning.
Paul B.
Boycotting traveling by plane would do it.
Why is it that if you or I were to do this we would be charged criminally with either sexual assault or child molestation. Yet, it is perfectly OK for a TSA employee to sexually assault an adult or molest a child and be able to fall back on "I was just doing my job". That shit did not work for the nazi's when they used the "I was just following orders" so why do we let them do this shit now? As Ben Franklin said "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." We have given up liberties for security and look at where we are at now. We are NOT any safer than before 9/11 and IMHO we do not deserve to be.
I would be surprised if the definition of Child Pornography is centered around artistic purposes. Medical publications likely have unclothed minors, and medical textbooks for GPs and Pediatricians probably do as well.
If anything, since artwork is often provocative and designed to stir the observer, art involving unclothed minors or representations of them is closer to Child Porn than body scanning images, which aren't designed to stir the observer. There's a classic painting in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles of an adolescent girl pushing cupid away from her, named something about a girl trying to resist love. I would be very much surprised if the subject was intended to be over eighteen, or if the painter's model, if there was one, was.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
Okay so if i dressed my daughter in tights and a sleeveless leotard she still would have to be scanned and or searched??
Somebody with a handy lawyer needs to try an experiment and then
SUE THE TSA (and the airport and the airline and anybody else) if they try.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
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.
They do it better, TSA needs to wake the eff up and go learn from someone that's been doing it for years. They train people, well, smart people, to use their brains to detect fear, someone being nervous, etc. But no, TSA is basically fast food secuirty, you can work at TSA one day and MacDonalds the next.
TSA says it will instruct screeners how to make repeated attempts to screen young children without invasive pat-downs. The instructions should reduce the number of pat-downs on children, TSA says.
Introducing the new, and improved TSA...NOW WITH 10% LESS GROPE! Fly the friendly Skies!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
... 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.
“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.”
(emphasis mine)
What. The. Fuck. I was told almost the opposite, but still wrong at BWI--that the mm-wave scanner was sound waves, not EM. How is this getting twisted? Is there some statement that the mm-wave is "as safe as a sonogram" and the agents are mixing and matching at will?
I don't expect the security screeners to be physicists, but they really need to know what the equipment they operate emits. At this point, I barely trust their magnetometer to not blast me with ionising radiation.
Someone with enough time and energy could probably go through the court records and figure out how many people in a given jurisdiction were arrested for resisting arrest with no other charges. Shows up in the news every now and then, usually when the cops decided they had to tase someone.
It's harder to figure out if it's legit when they throw in an "assaulting the officer charge", especially when the perp is covered in bruises and the cop has a scuff mark on his shoe.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Yeah how dare a mother exhibit "quite a bit of attitude" in defending her daughter from unreasonable search and touching. The shame! The horror! It is the TSA agent's privilege and power that is shameful in this situation, and to a far greater degree, the TSA itself along with its needlessly invasive security theater.
Interestingly enough the woman attempted to take a video of the incident:
It looks like:
and you get stuck with disorderly conduct and sent directly to jail.
Again the be all, end all of all this searching, will be terrorists with bombs either in their rectum, or surgically implanted.
This has already been done SUCCESSFULLY in Saudi Arabia in 2009 ., and they used a cell phone trigger. Suicide bomber died, but didn't kill the Saudi Prince. There happened to be audio going, and it catches the cell phone going off inside!! the bombers abdomen - wow....
NPR link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113509667
..........FULL STOP.
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.
ID checks, fondling, etc provides little added security and any honest person knows this. Observation by trained professionals and random checks keeps us safe. These are the type of things that protects us against real threats, and not just movie plot threats. The problem is that though they are less expensive, they employ fewer people, and would tend to not funnel tax payer money to expensive insider government contractors, like halliburton.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
People get the government that they deserve. I am proud of this mother and I am glad I wasn't there. I would be doing hand-to-hand combat with them trying to arrest a mother for not wanting her kid groped. They would have a REAL threat on their hands. They have to be trying to provoke us. Are they trying to brew up some home grown "terrorists" with this kind of disrespect of our basic human rights? It's this kind of shit that brings things to a head real fast. I know if this pisses me off to read about, it will seriously piss off others. Keep playing those odds and you will end up with a "winner."
Take the Red Pill.
On 07/09/2011 at approximately 1340 hrs I was dispatched to the central screening point at the Nashville International Airport for report of a passenger that was refusing screening. Upon my arrival, I made contact with the subject, identified as Andrea Abbott, who was involved in a verbal altercation with TSA screening agents. Abbott was being verbally abusive toward the TSA agents stating her daughter would not be screened. I advised Abbott that she and her daughter would have to be screened or they would be escorted by me out of the secured area of the airport. Abbott then became verbally abusive toward me as well as the TSA agents. Abbott stated she did not want her daughter to be “touched inappropriately,” have her “crotch grabbed,” or be further screened. Eventually Abbott agreed to allow her daughter to be screened by TSA. Abbott retrieved her cell phone and was attempting to film her daughter being screened. I advised Abbott to put her cell phone away. Again, Abbott was verbally abusive [Emphasis Added] . After her daughter was screened TSA advised Abbott would have to be screened as well to continue down the concourse. Abbott stated this was “bullsh!t” and became verbally abusive toward TSA and myself again. I advised Abbott numerous times she was disrupting the screening process and flow of passengers through the area. Abbott refused to calm down. At this time I placed Abbott under arrest for Disorderly Conduct (TCA 39-17-305). Ms. Abbot was loud in her speech and very belligerant therefore she was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The citizen was engaged in perfectly legal behavior, which the cop ordered her to stop. When she declined, he arrested her. This is why "disorderly conduct" is frequently referred to as "contempt of cop" by district attorneys.
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".
Who gets to arrest them for illegal governing? I find the whole TSA a Constitutional violation. Disorderly conduct? I think it's the conduct of a citizen who SHOULD be disrupting such a violation of our freedoms. I think its high time for mass civil disobedience, in fact its a moral responsibility that we do.
Take the Red Pill.
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.
Indeed, but violating the Constitution seems to be what politicians do for sport these days.
Take the Red Pill.
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
If people aren't forced to fly, then why not tell those people who are so easily terrorized that they need unnecessary and invasive "security" screenings to feel safe that they're the ones who should go take the bus?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Consider this:
The TSA will allow more than X ounces of fluid untested if it is declared or presumed to be for a young child. So in truth, exceptions for children and even adults with medical conditions are already being made. Sure, that baby's bottle probably does contain milk or apple juice, but if you were a bad person, would you not see the opportunity to bring more than X ounces of dangerous material in the same type of vessel?
Another fun fact:
You can't bring butane or similar fuel containers on a plane whether on your person or in luggage. The exception is, of course, unless it is also in the company of equipment used for hygiene or other personal care such as clothing irons or hair irons. (The same fuel containers are still prohibited for tools and other professional gear.) So if a person who wanted to carry such things on a plane (in luggage only) for professional purposes was aware of this exception, he would only need to include personal care gear along with the tools which uses the same (or even similar) fuel containers.
I have probably said too much already, but you don't have to be a [former] TSA screener to discover these things. Many experienced travellers already know these things. (Hell, on one of these discussions, someone pointed out that [properly] packing a starter pistol would result in your luggage getting first-class consideration when you are travelling... a nice trick I never considered before.) It's all how we learn to "hack the system."
My point is that these exclusions already exist and are increasing as incidents occur and complaints and attorneys and rights activists continue to press the issue. Change IS being made. I don't want the TSA to go away. They would be replaced by the same people the TSA replaced, and believe me, they are worse. What I want is something better than we have now but also better than what we had before the TSA.
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.
A jump seat at the front and rear of every plane occupied by a uniformed marshal with a clearly visible assault rifle would stop pretty much all of this nonsense.
Wow. Really? Do these Marshalls have special magical unicorn tear bullets in their assault rifles that make it impossible for a bomb to off? They are looking for explosives on the kid.
A jump seat at the front and rear of every plane occupied by a uniformed marshal with a clearly visible assault rifle would stop pretty much all of this nonsense.
Doing that puts obviously visible assault rifles onto the plane, ready to be re-appropriated in any number of scenarios. After which, the lock on the cockpit door doesn't stand a chance.
Please tell me I missed your sarcasm.
it is probably too late now.
If people of USA would somehow manage to pressure government into disbanding TSA, you can be pretty sure that something would blow up.
And of course, it would be blamed on 'terrorists'.
You have no way out.
Where is the picketing with signs at airports? Where are the demonstrators exercising free speech? In a country where people are willing to picket over anything and everything, why never at airports? The silence is deafening - could it be they are prevented from doing so??
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Females are not. Children are. Dumb ass.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Either you screen everyone, or screening is pointless.
Did you mean: "screening is pointless"
How would you/the USA react if a terrorist walked into a scanner tomorrow and blew himself up?
Think about that.
I mean really think...
No sig today...
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
Seriously. When I take my other half to visit my parents, it costs only slightly more (as in about 15% more than flying commercial coach), takes less time (5 hours instead of 7), and is a heck of a lot more interesting, fun, and memorable. No TSA Stasi involved. All the toothpaste and shampoo ya wanna carry. And decent home-cooked food. And wayyyy more comfortable seats. Less stress.
People are nuts when they obsess on "terrorists" around every corner. If they existed in numbers that were worth even casually thinking about, we would see the results. We don't. Ergo...one could (should) argue that there are other things more worthy of worry. In any 7 1/2 month period in NYC alone, there are more drunk driving victims than victims of 9-11. Fear inc. has a hold on the minds of the lowest common denominator's huevos, and my low expectations of most political outcomes don't anticipate this to change any time soon.