TSA Defends Pat Down of 4-Year-Old Girl

cosm writes "With public outcry against the TSA continuing to spread, the TSA is defending a recent episode in which a four-year-old was patted down while kicking and screaming at Wichita Airport in Kansas. From the AP article: 'The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her, with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an uncooperative suspect.'"

Comments

Of course.

[NeverSuchBefore]

Otherwise, despite increased cockpit security and civilian awareness, we'd all die from terrorist attacks! That's why you must surrender your privacy in exchange for the all-important security theater like a good citizen would do. Otherwise, you're just a terrorist!

Re:Of course.

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Remember, you're no good to her dead or in prison.

No, but you're good to everyone if you get sent there for protecting your daughter from TSA molestation. Seriously, we'd see the true colors of this nation and the control the politicians and corporate overlords really hold if someone went berserk at a checkpoint trying to protect their child. It'd be easier for the nation to swallow if it were a mother, but a father might be close enough.

Re:Of course.

[1s44c]

No shit. I can promise you right now if anyone ever did that to my daughter they wouldn't be breathing for long after. TSA, cop, a judge, The Pope, The Queen, I don't really care who it is they would be dead before they hit the ground. Duress is applicable when it's your child being attacked and molested.

It's going to happen one day. Some TSA goon is going to molest the wrong little girl. It seems few Americans will stand up for their own rights but they might just stand behind someone who stood up for his.

I'm in Europe and can't believe what you people put up with.

Re:Of course.

[MaskedSlacker]

It's not freaky at all. America is, and has always been, a fundamentally fascist country. The Constitution is an aberration, not the cultural norm. Don't believe me? Look at the history of every internal, domestic conflict in this country. Every last one of them are tinged with the constant abuse of state authority by merging it with corporate (in the sense of social collectives that Mussolini meant in his often misinterpreted statement that fascism is the merger of the state and the corporation) interests.

Respect for the Constitution and a legacy of social independence born from the frontier experience of the 19th century that carried with it a tradition of weak corporatism (again, in Mussolini's sense of the word) has prevented American fascism from devolving into Totalitarianism (like Mussolini's Italy, or Nazi Germany), but that doesn't make the country and the culture any less fascist. Now that the frontier experience (and it's associated attitude of independence from social organization) is a long dead memory, expect that inherent fascism to inexorably head towards totalitarianism.

Re:Of course.

[Karl Cocknozzle]

But the obvious solution in this case is to have the child go through the scanners again. Why the pat down? Either the scanners are good enough to detect anything that could have been passed from an unscreened passenger to a screened passenger, or they're not. Unless they are implicitly acknowledging that latter...

Except the security isn't the real deal... it's the Pavlovian response of "Yes, I will comply" they're looking for. They must escalate any situation where it appears a traveller--any traveller, even a frightened child--isn't in total subservience and compliance to the rules. Seperating the child is about inducing terror, and specifically conditioning that child to ALWAYS conform to authority. It isn't a coincidence that there are so many incidents with young kids that the TSA is involved in--the youngest generation is being conditioned to expect invasions of their private bodies rather than resist them, as our generation does. They want to turn these invasive "screenings" into part of the background noise of American life so they can ease similar invasive "screenings" into other parts of our lives. Why?

TSA finds far more cash and drugs than they do guns and bombs--and that's what they're really looking for. Cash they can seize (the booty funds "overhead," leaving more money from taxpayers to spend on boondoggle body scanner devices) is the name of the game. Some police agencies get vast swath of their funding from such seizure activities.

Re:Of course.

[betterunixthanunix]

No one's saying small children should be excluded from screening

Technically, you're right, because people like me are saying that nobody should be subjected to the TSA, that the TSA should be disbanded, and that the screening process is a ridiculous joke that fails to detect knives and guns. So yeah, I am not saying that four year olds should be excluded; I am saying that everyone should be excluded.

Re:Of course.

[lightknight]

Hmm. Heavy duffle-bag filled with pellets and explosives...at least 40 people in a line...yeah, that could do it.
Perhaps one of those bags with wheels? I've heard explosives are a tad heavy.

Re:Of course.

[lgw]

The kdi still goes through the metal detector. I'm completely comfprtable with no additional security. No molesting, no pedo-scope, none of that really helps security any. There's just not much of a threat from hijacking using an improvised weapon these days - the better cabin door and the passengers will see to that.

Can we please go back to pre-TSA security in aiports? A metal detector and an X-ray for carry-ons is enough. I don't care if there's an occasional problem as a result, that's enough to keep flying safer than driving, and it's not worth sacrificing my dignity for tiny incremental improvements beyond that.

TSA is a 100% failure

[Coolhand2120]

The only agency with a well known 100% failure rate. 100% of the terrorist that we know of that tried to get through TSA security were able to get through and detonate their devices. The TSA's response is to add proven useless and potentially deadly scanners, and create new checkpoints at highway and post offices. These people are worse than useless. They take from the tax payers on so many levels that the monetary loss is the least of our concern. Give us our freedom back you assholes.

Re:They called her an :uncooperative subject"

[ZeroSumHappiness]

This isn't "poor training." This is "criminal negligence" on the part of those who provided such "poor training" and sexual assault on the part of those that perpetrated it.

Someone should be fired for okaying this. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

You say that now ....

[King_TJ]

But I hear the same thing a lot on message forums, where it's easy to hide behind a screen and a broadband connection....

The reality is, people aren't really doing anything about this stuff when it happens. When you're out in public, being ordered around by a bunch of people in govt. issued badges and granted the authority to have you strip searched, arrested, and blacklisted from ever traveling on a commercial airplane again -- it's funny how people tend to lose much of their willingness to fight back.

Every once in a rare while, someone makes a public protest (like the guy in Oregon who recently tried to go through the scanners in the nude). But it's quickly blown off and we're back to govt. control as usual.... (Right after he did that, I saw comments on the news stories to the effect of, "He was a computer programmer and I knew him... He was a nice guy and never did anything wrong. I can't understand what possessed him to do this!")

Nope ... it's all a grand experiment to slowly "boil the frogs". Keep adding regulations and restrictions slowly, and it's amazing how much the American public will tolerate. Most of us wouldn't "jump out of the pot" if we had a chance, right now... Too comfortable in here!