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Female Passengers Say They Were Targeted For TSA Body Scanners
wiedzmin writes "TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies. Allegedly, women with 'cute bodies' were directed through the body scanners up to three times over by female agents, who appeared to be acting on a request from male agents viewing the scans in a separate room. Apparently this was done because the scans were 'blurry,' possibly due to autofocus problems with agents' smartphone cameras."
After hearing the claims, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of "passenger advocates" at airports to deal with complaints like these.
it is humans who can be dishonest which hold positions in Politics, Military, Religion and of course the Tits Sex & Ass authority.
People are surprised that when you take marginally skilled, semi-officious private sector workers and give them civil service protection behavior that was an instant firable offense becomes something you have to endure with a smile...
Because what we need is not less invasive and less humiliating scanners, but additional people on the payroll so that all this useless technology can continue to have nearly zero impact on actual flight safety.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
when you hire the unemployable and give them a badge. Tough nuts people. Bend over and take it.
After hearing the claims, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of "passenger advocates" at airports to deal with complaints like these.
Passenger advocates, eh? How about plain removing the scanners. That'd be some Passenger advocacy right there.
Pictures don't need to be so shapely to determine if they're carrying something deadly.
Folks, you can ask not to go through the scanners. Just say "OPT OUT". You get the pat down, of course, but from my experience, it seems to bother them more than it bothers me. And it sends a message.
I've never trusted TSA to verify the safety of those machines. I'll take the grope rather than trust an unregulated scanner that bombards my body with who knows what power and type of radio or ionizing radiation.
... by throwing more money and resources at it, right?
Who is going to keep an eye on the passenger advocates?
"So nat'ralists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller fleas that bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum."
Nice try, unless you are flying out of Australia to the United States. More to follow, I'm sure.
There were reports in europe about airport screeners doing the same thing not only to women, but to religious minorities. In turn people are corrupt, and when you take people who get 4 hours of training(give or take a little bit), and give them any type of authority. Bad things happen, like abuse of power.
Om, nomnomnom...
Since you'd have a better chance of seeing some foreign object on a chick with a slim body. Fat chicks might have layers that hide the contraband, so they may as well scan the hot ones and increase their chances of catching something.
Plus you have to figure it's more likely that a slim, hot chick is a drug mule than a fat chick, because if the fat chick was a cokehead she wouldn't be fat.
Damn, I have been underestimating the TSA guys all along, they got it all figured out!
After hearing the claims, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of "passenger advocates" at airports to deal with complaints like these.
No, no, no!
Just stop with the scans!
The correct solution to this problem isn't to add more and more layers of complexity on top. It's to simply accept that this whole thing was a bad idea and drop it.
It's like some bizarro world where the obvious answer is starting everybody in the face but nobody wants to reach for it, so they try to find ways around it.
You nasty cynic...
I, for one, am bursting with patriotic confidence! These 'passenger advocates'(likely toiling tirelessly out of a dank basement office hidden behind a filing cabinet and marked 'beware of the leopard') will almost certainly reform the TSA's abusive practices just as 'Internal affairs' units have revolutionized the professionalism of our police forces! Victory! Progress!
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
How is the TSA screening [i]not[/i] in violation of this. Being forced to go through machines that essentially strip you naked is well outside the bounds of 'reasonable' by the definition of anyone but a politician it seems.
I love going to the USA, but your government really isn't making this a pleasant experience.
What we need is to make sure the pat down remains an option. I get that every time they want to send me through the scanner. I just go through the opt out line that lets me get patted down. A guy with blue gloves on lightly touches me to see if I have a suicide vest on or whatever and then lets me go through. I assure you he enjoys the process no more then me. Which is how it should be.
I'd rather not get bombarded by radiation in their scanner or have nude photos or whatever in their storage system.
What are the women afraid of here? They get patted down by a women. Think she's going to enjoy touching you any more then the guy that pats me down? Think again. The pat down is the solution to this...
And if enough people opt out of the stupid scanner then they'll stop doing it. And I don't think the pat downs are sustainable if everyone opts out which means they should start only doing it for some but not everyone. They can say they do it "randomly" if that makes the PC people happy but they're fools if they don't make a point of patting people down on watch lists.
We don't need advocates. We just need to make as annoying for the government to be annoying as it is for everyone else. If a TSA guy has to stand there and pat down every person that gets on the plane personally... then they'll be forced to adopt irritating practices.
In the meantime, it doesn't bother me. Any one man or women that has a problem with someone of the same sex doing a pat down has issues. And frankly, as a man, I really wouldn't care if a women did it. I grasp it's different for women and maybe they need someone special... I'm just over it. So long as it's isn't a chimp that rips my sack off I'll be fine.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Way to take the typical govt stance that the answer to any complaint about too much govt is... more government! He just took a complaint about the TSA's overwhelming presense and turned it into an arguement to hire more TSA workers.
Pics or it didn't happen.
[ducks under table]
Which could be a more serious and useful statement than just a crude one-off remark. We are talking about TSA agents abusing their image-taking capabilities. I've been told that the machines have been modified to not store images, but is that verified? On the other hand, annecdotes and allegations are, well, just that, at least until more solid information is available.
A few Middle Eastern men show up at a Florida flight school with one blurting out that he didn't need to know how to land. All sorts of information about them makes it to the FBI, but the FBI does nothing. Later they fly a plane into a building.
Instead of removing the incompetent people and practices at the FBI you go against the goals of your party for small, cheap government by creating the white elephant of the Department Of Homeland security......and.....you screw over the freedoms of your fellow Americans by forcing them to be groped or nuked to get on a plan.
As a former screener, I have always been candid about what is wrong with the TSA, its policies, practices and personnel. I know the people at the TSA and most of them are pretty much exactly as most people assume/presume. However, there is one thing that female screeners don't do and that's "act at the request of male screeners." That pure paranoia here. There is simply NO WAY it is happening at the request of male screeners. That said, I also know there is a large portion of homosexuals (both male and female) working for the TSA. They are largely the same demographic that occupy the pedestrian ranks of other "security professional organizations." So if the rate of "targeting cute bodied females" is unusually higher than other groups, then it is likely done for their own reasons, not at the request of others.
They've already done it, by locking the cabin door. The cheapest and most effective fix to the problem possible.
At my home city airport, we still have the normal meta detectors and non-mandatory pat-downs. Why? Couldn't a terrorist just drive to my city and fly from there? This whole premise makes the entire current system worthless.
To the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall"
We don't need no radiation
We don't need no forced control
No blatant fascists in the airport
Agent leave those tits alone
Hey Agent! Leave those tits alone
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
If you don't show us your tits, you can't get on the airplane!
How can you get on the airplane if you don't show us your tits?!
My thoughts on reading this were "Duh"!! I mean, who wants to look at a fat guy's junk, that is 98% hidden anyway by his beer guy...when you can look at some hot chick under her clothes?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out....next obvious case study please!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
For those who view low resolution body profile scanning as an invasion of personal space (I know I do and it's nothing to do with paranoia, it's just me wanting to maintain my personal space. If someone wants to take a blurry image of me home to masturbate over, that's their issue not mine): stop flying. There are other ways to get around.
For those who have a problem with staff members of the opposite gender viewing their scan images: demand that someone of the same gender processes you through (or simply refuse to be scanned, as is your right; however you may not be able to fly if nobody is available to pat you down because they're too busy drooling over the size 0 who just went through...)
Lastly, I would suggest that gate guards be prohibited from carrying their mobile phones on the floor. Period. There are company phone switchboards they can be reached through should the need arise; leave your mobiles at home and you'll find that you closed an avenue for getting sued, right there!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
...but I'll give it a pass, like I did since 2009, the last time I visited the USA. Please do not get me wrong: I enjoyed my time in Washington DC a lot! It was great, but getting there and getting back home involved truly unpleasant encounters with TSA officers. And I am not too easily frightened of security checks, because I had no issues with the security procedures at Ben Gurion Airport. But there I had the impression I was talking with (not just interrogated by) intelligent humans, and not morons with too much power.
BTW, the same conference was held in Seoul last year, and it was a blast.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
After hearing the claims, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of "passenger advocates" at airports to deal with complaints like these.
Typical Chuck U. response: the cure for problems in a power-drunk federal bureaucracy is... MORE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY!
Sometimes I'm really ashamed to be a New Yorker.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
If you were doing profiling, you'd never pick me. I'm a white guy who doesn't get enough sun, and I sound like I'm from central Ohio. Yet absolutely every time I depart through the Columbus airport, I'm asked to be scanned. I don't get it. No other airport has done this to me. Only Columbus. Also, my wife gets asked every time too. Same place. Do they have some kind of quota for locals so they can balance out the profiling?
Anyhow, I always politely ask to opt out, "I'm sorry; I would like to opt out, please," and when I'm being patted down, I chit-chat with the TSA agent. Since I'm not especially body-conscious, the pat-down doesn't bother me. I'm also pretty good at behaving in a compliant manner when I want to. There's a trick to acting slightly confused but quick to follow explicit orders that makes authority figures feel they have control, and that mollifies them. The pat-down always goes smoothly and efficiently. I suspect when they get belligerent patrons, they drag their feet.
How about letting the airlines themselves be the passenger advocates? They're the ones with the financial incentive to get security under control, not some new federal agency, or worse yet, some new division of TSA with the same bosses. Plant some airline employees next to the radiation machines all day long for a while, and maybe some of them will talk to their superiors in the airlines and get the industry to start lobbying to end the TSA.
My security theater strategy is to just chat up the initial intake guy who looks at my ID. I'm friendly, polite, and they just wave me through with no extra security check needed. If they ever do pick me for the scanner, I plan to take the pat down, and talk about cancer clusters already detected, and radiation levels being higher than advertised from the scanners.
I think the pat down is just as atrocious as the scanner, and I fly a lot less now than I did before these new procedures got implemented, but the reality is you really can't drive everywhere. I'm not going to refuse both the scanner and the pat down, but I'm definitely not going to willingly take on more radiation exposure than I absolutely have to.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
I have seen other similar abuses of the TSA system. If you get ticket taker at the check-in hassles you and you don't merely bend over and take it, they will put on your ticket to single you out for "enhanced security". If the airline screws up and you end up stuck overnight at your connecting city, then when they actually get you on a flight the next day, you are automatically singled out for "Enhanced Security" because you "made changes to your travel plans within 24 hours of the travel time". Granted you are more likely to want to bring a bomb on an airplane after such an event.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
we still have the normal meta detectors
Detectors that detect detectors?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
As a guy, I've never had a problem with a pat down, but I've only had your garden variety.
I've only taken one flight from the US since the TSA appeared on the scene.
I went through the metal detector (the body scanner had a sign: "out of order"), collected my stuff, and had almost left the security area when someone called me back. He said he was worried I was hiding things in my baggy trousers (they were essentially flares), so his colleague gave me a pat-down search as well.
I get a "pat down" search about once a month. They're a relatively common requirement for entry to some concerts and nightclubs in London. They're checking for weapons, so the bouncer typically pats my pockets, checks around my waist, then checks my boots. If I'm wearing flares they sometimes think to check the legs -- just brushing down with their hands. The impression I've always had is that they're checking my clothes rather than my body.
The TSA person's search was in no way a "pat down". It was a thorough body search -- I'd never had anything like it before. He rubbed his hands down my legs with significant pressure, kept me standing in an uncomfortable position (arms raised throughout -- even though it was supposedly only my baggy trousers that were a concern). He made a very thorough check around my groin, including sweeping his fingers in the spaces around (including underneath) my genitals. Every time anyone's touched my like that before, it was for sex. Does that make it sexual assault? It was awful.
If I was given a search like that in the EU I'd walk away and make a fuss -- but in the EU I'm confident of my rights, and my citizenship. But what could I have done on my way home after a business trip to the USA?
Something I can do is not return in a hurry.
Female Passengers Say ...
As much as I love bashing the TSA, could we please get some statistics to back this up first, and then deal with it properly rather than just whining? I want to get the problem solved, but "I feel like some crime has been committed against me" is even weaker than the standard RIAA logic...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I wish I had some mod points, because this should be +5 Insightful! Locking the cabin doors would have prevented 9/11 and will prevent further 9/11s from happening should someone try again.
I disagree. In fact the locking cabin doors worked against the passengers of united 93. The problem wasn't locking cabin doors it was the 'response to hijacking' protocol. Pre-9/11 we gave the plane to the terrorist once they held a box cutter to the flight attendants throat, let them carry out their demands, which was usually to fly to cuba or something. Post and even during 9/11 we don't give up the plane at all costs, because if we do we're all dead via flying into a stationary object.
The problem and solution of 9/11 was taken care of on 9/11. (source:http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=passengers+tackle+man&pbx=1&oq=passengers+tackle+man&aq=f&aqi=g-v1&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=9064l12364l0l12571l21l13l0l8l8l1l205l1763l0.12.1l21l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=a40723af4d2b94e4&biw=1680&bih=926) All this TSA security is wasted money and loss to freedoms.
Or Great Britain. Which is why for my trip to Europe next year, I will not be flying through LHR.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Or Great Britain. Which is why for my trip to Europe next year, I will not be flying through LHR.
They've been removed from Heathrow now (at least T5, the BA one). I believe Manchester is the only ones left.
I've also had MMW scans at DME in Moscow, and Erez on the Gaza/Israel border.
Obviously always opt out in the U.S.