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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.'"
I'm sorry, there's no reason why a child shouldn't be subject to being checked just like everyone else. People (adults) have been known to use kids as mules for transferring all sorts of stuff that would be illegal. I'm all for protecting our civil liberties, but I'm perfectly fine with TSA pat downs and screening. I don't see how my civil liberties are being violated when boarding a plane; everyone should have the same equal protections and confidence that each and every passenger is not going try and hurt anyone on the plane.
Seriously. Just because the child is young and grandma makes an emotional plea we should let her go through security checks unimpeded? I know that TSA-bashing is en-vogue at the moment but if you just let everyone under a certain age go through without security checks then the terrorists will quite quickly cotton on to this fact and start using children as mules for the security checks.
I'm normally as anti-TSA as they come, but I actually think that this patdown was more reasonable than the title suggests. From what I can gather about the facts, first the little girl went through security. Then, while the grandmother was waiting to get a patdown, the little girl ran up to her grandmother and hugged her. That seems like it would be a pretty damn good way to pass off contraband. I mean, I understand that this WAS a four-year old girl getting a patdown, but you have to remember that this four-year old girl was traveling with an adult who had control over her. It's not hard to imagine scenarios in which terrorists use children as mules. I think that this case is an example where the TSA actually did their job properly - some TSA agent noticed something that to the untrained eye would have been an ordinary hug, but very plausibly could have been a pre-planned ploy to sneak contraband into the airport. Maybe the TSA could have approached the child more reasonably and given her more time to cool off, but overall I think that a patdown was justified.
Please don't bring your screaming little shitbags into an airport then. We'll all be better off
These people are doing what they are told to do. I did the job myself for a short while. It's just useful to remember that from time to time I think.
Should we be screening passengers? I think yes and no. I think we should be screening for things that might be bombs for sure. I think guns and knives are okay. As others have said, as long as the cockpit is secure, the rest of the damage is minimal... tragic, but minimal. After all, if someone wanted to decompress the passenger cabin, it can be done with or without the aid of weapons. It's the explosives that are capable of bringing a plane down.
So should little girls be screened for explosives? Mmmmm... maybe. The business of killing people is ugly business and they don't exempt little girls from being exploited as bomb carriers.
Some say the terrorist attacks never happened at all... not the way we saw it on TV anyway... I don't know about all of that, but among the deniers are a lot of experts in various fields who say "commercial liners can't fly at 500mph at that altitude because the air is too dense" and "buildings don't fall that way for the reasons given" and I want to believe experts in their fields... (and I have never heard experts in their fields supporting the official story either... if you have some links, I'd like to look at them.) I guess what I'm getting at is I question how necessary all of this really is.
I do know that various government people are tasked with their jobs and they have to do them zealously or else any little problem along the way will cost them their jobs and careers... even when it's not their fault and even and especially when they act on their conscience and common sense. We can't complain that factor out of the system as long as people can win a law suit against McDonald's for hot coffee or a burglar can sue a homeowner for leaving knives out where he can hurt himself. There's far too much insanity out there to resolve.
Personally, I say put air marshals on planes and that's just about the extent of it. It doesn't matter how hard the TSA tries, stuff can, will and has gotten through. I think the general public has to accept that scary things happen to us all. We have no trouble when it's a car or a bus or a giant truck. We're getting by just fine in our commuter rail and other means of transportation. When we have a big net of holes, it just doesn't make sense to concentrate all efforts on a single hole the way the TSA is doing now. It's needless.
Whilst the story in itself is deeply distressing, so are some of the comments from the Washington Post's article on it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grandma-tsa-agents-forced-crying-4-year-old-to-undergo-tsa-pat-down-at-kan-airport-after-hug/2012/04/25/gIQAojLohT_allComments.html?ctab=all_&#comments One prime one being: "In this case, however, the child had completed screening but had contact with another member of her family who had not completed the screening process. This absolves the TSA entirely. I do not want ANYONE (muslim or christian or young or old) passing through a checkpoint after making contact with an unscreened passenger."
We know that Muslims use children as bombs so it is a legitimate worry
Well, I guess that's what you get for trying to marry an Arab....
Man, you gotta love those peace loving muslims, don't ya?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........