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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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Considering they use the back of their hands, it wouldn't call it 'groping'. The media likes to incite the locals with such terminology but the pat downs are pretty benign. In this case she simply didn't want to put her child through the scanner. As far as I can tell from TFA, she never even got to the point where they offered to do a pat down instead.
Next time you are out in public, touch a woman in a sensitive spot with the back of your hand and see if she cares whether it was the front or back of your hand.
(and don't blame me if you get arrested)
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
What a complete non-sequitur. It doesn't matter if there are other options for travel... the TSA is a GOVERNMENT agency. Their actions are subject to review, criticism and most importantly CHANGE when they do not represent the people they serve.
Who the fuck cares about the semantics? What we have here is a bureaucracy that has decided it is smarter than the people it serves, which is a situation that should always be challenged by those who desire freedom.
FanFictionRecs.net
Terrible analogy. You take positive steps that are considered consent to be searched possibly by pat down. Telling someone you will grope her isn't a positive action by the person to be groped. Buying a ticket with the knowledge that you will be searched. Arriving at the airport. Entering a restricted (sterile, secure whatever they call it) area. Getting in line for a search. All positive steps that signify a consent to be searched. Up until you enter the secure area you can not be searched without probable cause. Once you enter you have consented and cannot unilaterally revoke.
And as far as it being "groping" or "sexual molestation" those are criminal charges with specific elements to be met. TSA pat downs, if done right, don't meet those elements or it would be illegal. Go ahead, sue one of 'em. It will be thrown out of court on summary judgment. Not because it's a government search, but because a properly done pat down isn't molestation. Same goes for police pat downs.
Yes, IAAL.
I've been molested, and I find it to be damn near the same thing.
To a child under 10 intent matters little, and to a lot of people it matters not at all. Its the event that is problematic.
Most children would have difficulty even distinguishing intent.
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.
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.
One thing is that you shouldn't worry about the scanners. The airplane you are about to board is going to expose you to hundreds of times more radiation during the flight that the backscatter scanners. That's not to say whether or not they're healthy for a TSA agent to operate next to for 8 hours a day for five years, but for the traveler, they are simply not exposed to enough radiation to change their risk of harm in a statistically measurable fashion.
Of course, buying the scanners consumed $370 million dollars worth of OUR MONEY, over a dollar for every American, pissed away on a device that has prevented exactly ZERO terrorists from doing anything the metal detectors weren't already catching. That's ZERO value for our money. You would have gotten more utility and value from your money if you had wiped your ass with a dollar bill and flushed it.
That said, did you notice how the post you responded to used the word "contraband" instead of "weapons"? I don't give a greasy fart whether the guy next to me is carrying 10 pounds of cocaine. It's not my problem. I don't care about contraband. And you better not make me stand in a goddamn hour-long line to search for coke, because IT DOESN'T MATTER TO MY SAFETY. Contraband is a bullshit argument.
I also don't even care if someone boards the damn plane with a knife. I used to carry them on planes every time I flew, and strangely enough they didn't cause a terrorist incident. Knives are only dangerous on a plane if you're trying to shave in turbulence.
If someone wants to use a knife on a plane to threaten someone, he's going to have me and about a dozen other pissed off guys to contend with. I'll take my chances with a knife or even soak up the bullets in his gun before letting the plane my family is on go down in a crash for his fucking crazy cause. And that attitude is not mine alone. Another box cutter fueled 9/11 just isn't going to happen.
The TSA should be cut immediately by 50%, and the backscatter machines donated to some clever third world country engineering school to re-equip them as medical X-ray devices so at least someone can get some use from them.
As for the politicians who supported the USA PATRIOT act? They should never hold another term in any office in this country. They can go run for office in Saudi Arabia for all I care, but they're not American patriots, and don't deserve the flags they pompously wear on their lapels.
John
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.