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TSA Groper Files Suit Against Blogger
An anonymous reader writes "TSA employee Theldala Magee has filed a lawsuit against a blogger demanding $500k in damages for alleging a particularly invasive search involving multiple incursions of a finger into the passenger's vagina. The passenger, who likened the feeling to being raped, is being sued for defamation for supposedly sullying the otherwise good name of a checkpoint smurf."
It's hard tho, when you can't decide if you want to work for the TSA or for McDonalds. On the one hand you get to alienate people by doing whatever you want to them in the name of security and in the other you get to spit on their burgers. What to do? What to do?
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
If they knew what woman wrote in her blog, she was not only raped. She was stalked too.
If Theldala Magee didn't want to be known as a rapist, she shouldn't have raped that woman.
I dunno... giving the TSA goons a name like "smurf" certainly doesn't give a hint as to their sinister side... Of course one is a little, invasive, annoyingly-voiced bastard that won't just go away, and the other is a smurf.
Perhaps we should call them "checkpoint trolls" or "checkpoint pervs"?
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Despite the Slashdot headline, from reading the article all I can tell is that nastygrams were sent by both parties and it hasn't entered the courts yet. I'd like to see a judge get involved, to be honest.
I'm going to be modded into hell for this, but oh well, my excellent karma can take it.
Wow, so this is it? This is the point where Slashdot isn't afraid to show its radical bias in blatant bold-faced type on the front page?
You pepper the TSA agent with derogatory remarks ("Checkpoint smurf", "Groper") based on allegations filed in a lawsuit? Do any of you ever look at a murder trial and immediately go "Oh, hey, look at that MURDERER on trial. They're on trial, so they must have killed someone." This crowd froths at the mouth when anyone in government is accused of doing something wrong, but they're the first to stand up and yell "innocent until proven guilty" when someone they can relate to is in the spotlight for something. You're all pathetic. Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt pathetic.
Now I understand why CmdrTaco left. I'd abandon my life's work, too, if this is what it turned in to.
So suing the TSA over this is a "non-starter" and even writing about it gets you sued by the molesting thugs... Why do the people in the USA put up with something like this? I thought you were scared witless by terrorists, not authorities, but I guess I was wrong.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I am driving to Canada and catching a flight from there. Within the country, I'm driving.
I have daughters, and I don't think I'll be able to sit by and watch while they're sexually assaulted. Daddy would be going to jail.
That's correct. Everyone gets a finger in an orifice (or two, if you're female) when you enter the country. What's worse is when you get here, we're all slovenly, obese, beer-soaked and lazy morons. Oh, and that's the well-educated and wealthy ones! Believe everything you hear... you're not missing anything and should stay home.
I hate the TSA, and body scanners, and taking my shoes off as much as the next guy. But if the blogger was lying, then that is some pretty serious defamation of character that took place.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
"I was just doing my job and following orders" has a very different meaning when one is being told to murder people than when someone is being told to do something to someone who knew what they were getting into and elected to go flying anyways.
Oh really? The woman who was groped knew a TSA agent would insert part of her hand into the woman's vagina multiple times? Somehow I doubt that.
Also, to totally Godwin this discussion: Should Jews have publicly renounced/defamed their faith because they "knew what they were getting into" by continuing to be Jewish in the face of the Nazi takeover of Germany?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The point is that TSA workers don't have "good names". They're unknowns, no one knows them by name. In other words, checkpoint smurfs.
That must be a bitch for the payroll department.
Sticking a finger inside a woman's vagina multiple times doesn't sound like simply an unpleasant search. It sounds like a sexual assault. If there was suspicion that she was carrying banned implements inside her vagina, then an appropriate cavity search should have been done.
Is it rape? No, I wouldn't say. But I would say it was a sexual assault and if the TSA officer did it, she should be fired. Nowhere have I heard that sticking fingers inside vaginas is permitted under security search rules, have you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Whoever modded the comment as a troll needs to relax and take the stick out of their arse The comment was meant to be funny and it was. In actuality, Theldala does not have a leg to stand on. She is a public employee and gives up certain protections against defamation. In any case, she would be hard pressed to demonstrate any actual damages. If the TSA were more than just blue suited security guards with two brain cells to rub together, they'd be screaming out against the x-ray body scanners. After all, they are the ones working at least 8 hours a day around radiation. Certainly that can't be healthy. Is protecting America worth dying a slow agonizing death from cancer for?
her private parts without explicit consent and complete freedom to decline without repraisal is sexual assault.
And that person will be physically injured by me unless he or she is lucky enough to have the cops get there first.
In fairness, one could stop reading after the first word of the headline, "TSA" to know what the article & comments will contain.
Red meat for the masses means more clicks, more pageviews, more ad impressions!
I went to Ms. Alkon's wikipedia page to find out more about her; I'm forced to roll my eyes and conclude "she's got a chip on her shoulder from moment one of any interaction."
From wikipedia:
I do not doubt that this particular TSA agent may have overstepped boundaries in this particular case. But I'm also pretty sure, reading about this self-professed behavior on Ms. Alkon's part, that she's also a drama queen just looking for some new controversy to embroil herself in, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if she was also deliberately provocative and confrontational, making the situation more tense than it needed to be, and blowing events out of proportion with histrionics.
I know the white knights here who already despise the TSA will crucify me for saying it, but millions of people fly every fucking day. Yet this shit mostly seems to happen to self-important bloggers who have a history of engaging in nasty, vicious, spiteful little "campaigns," who are so broken up by the experience that they rush home and pound out 2000 words on their blog to generate some pageviews, extra bonus when they just happen to have a videocamera handy to record all the harrassment and abuse they're subjected to.
Indeed, our country is a hive of villainy. Steven Colbert is a fine example of one of our brightest minds, fighting off the chains of oppression and knowledge. We all eat nearly 1.5 kg of red meat a day and drive at least 75 km no matter where we're going. We urinate in our public places because we're not intelligent enough to use the toilets. Our nuclear missiles are secured with the key "1-1-1-1" because then we only have to remember one number. By law we must spend 20% of our income of shit we don't need and will never use. At least 30% of our food must come from inhumane sources. I'm frankly astonished that the benevolent European I hired to type this for me understands my speech, since I'm so illiterate and uneducated.
You should probably never come. You might never get out.
FanFictionRecs.net
It's posts like this that should show you that Europeans are just as enlightened or ignorant as Americans.
Do you really think that is the average person's experience at the airport? Do you really think Americans are nuts?
Seriously, you think the US is some crazy place?
I was born in Africa, have a very Muslim name, live in Canada now, and have been to the US dozens of times. Sometimes for work. Sometimes for play.
You know what US border/airport security is like? It's pretty routine... apart from the whole taking off my shoes thing. But the personnel are pretty normal. No different than I've experienced in the UK or Holland.
During my last trip for work in Florida, I left my shaving cream and toothpaste in my carry-on bag by accident. Normally I throw it all out. It got flagged in the scanners. The guy called his supervisor. They had me step aside, emptied the bag... found out it was shaving cream, cracked a joke... threw out my shaving cream, and I was on my way. Pretty regular behavior.
I'm sure some people have had bad experiences. But people have had bad experiences in the UK, Canada, France... too. The US just isn't that nutty.
threw out my shaving cream, and I was on my way
See, that's just pure evil. If they really believed that was an explosive, would they let you board the plane after YOU TRIED TO SNEAK AN EXPLOSIVE ON BOARD? No, they'd ship your ass to Guantanamo bay or another "enhanced interrogation" facility in a place where your rights don't apply. Since they let you board the plane, they knew perfectly well you were harmless, and yet they decided to steal your stuff because they're evil, fascist thugs.
Mod parent up.
I'm sure she is hiding behind the "doing what they told me to do" defense, which is no defense at all.
Before the TSA, sexual predators could only dream of an occupation where they got to fondle people without repercussion. Thanks to our security theater, they get paid to do it!
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Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
....and ignorant. Ever heard of Papal bulls? The Pope's letters on doctrine have the first words as the title. The use of the first few words of something as the title has, in fact, a very long history; far longer than email. You are just demonstrating your lack of education and narrow cultural prejudices
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I rarely mod up ACs, but damnit, if I had the points, parent post would get one.
Unless you're a gynecologist, and/or the act is consensual, that kind of behavior should damned sure be considered to be rape.
If they were that damned worries about a woman stuffing something up in there, they have enough x-ray machinery to determine for certain.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Right before that paragraph was this
Basically, I felt it important to make a spectacle of what they are doing to us, to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights, so I let the tears come. In fact, I sobbed my guts out. Loudly. Very loudly. The entire time the woman was searching me.
Sounds like a sensationalist blogger to me. I'm not saying she wasn't violated. But I don't give her much credibility for her over-dramatic scene
"doing what they told me to do" defense ... is no defense at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Defense
Very subtle Godwin. And one that's actually on-topic ;)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.