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Mother Found Guilty After Protesting TSA Pat-down of Daughter
Penurious Penguin writes "In 2011, en route to Baltimore, Tennessee mother Andrea Abbott was arrested after squabbling with the TSA over their pat-down and "naked" body-scan process. Initially Abbott had protested a pat-down of her 14 year-old daughter, though eventually backed off. When her own turn came, she refused both a pat-down and body-scan. This week, despite having no criminal record, Abbott was found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to one year of probation. A surveillance video of the affair shows what appears an agitated Abbott surrounded by various TSA agents, but seemingly contradicts the premise by which she was convicted. In the case against Abbott it was claimed that her behavior impeded the flow security-lines and lawful activity. Beyond Abbott's confession of issuing some verbal abuse, the video does not appear to display a significant blockage of traffic nor anything noticeably criminal."
Scum like that should be executed!
She didn't want to be fondled by total strangers in public. There's your crime right there!
the video does not appear to display a significant blockage of traffic nor anything noticeably criminal.
She was defying the TSA.
If they let her get away with it then pretty soon other people would be defying them, too. All protesters must be stamped on, hard.
No sig today...
... Land of the Freedom to abuse
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
She wanted to deny the TSA staff their legal right to watch naked 14 yo girls!
Questioning the system will get you in trouble every time. It helps make sure that the cost of complaining or asserting your rights or asking for consideration or doing anything but keeping your head down and doing whatever you're told is too high compared to the (relatively) momentary discomfort and inconvenience. And it's pretty effective too. I know my rights- in encounters with the police, or when going through security at the airport - but when if a cop stopped me for no reason walking to the store (as frequently happens to my sister) and demanded to see my ID or search my bag....I can't say I wouldn't do exactly as she does and just go with it. I certainly do with the TSA's nonsense. The possibility of getting dragged off for some bullshit reason is a good threat. Even if it doesn't stick, it still sucked. You still endangered your job/vacation/whatever.
Yes, I do suppose this logic is "interesting."
I would personally prefer this "humiliation" to losing one of my family members because one woman would rather be free from the pat-downs/security scanning etc.
So you're saying you'd rather have everyone who wants to get on a plane have their privacy violated because you're afraid of the minuscule chance that a terrorist might attack? I guess privacy isn't important at all as long as you can have your security theater.
But how about we install surveillance cameras in everyone's homes? It's for your own safety and could stop a few crimes, so it's all worth it. Rights mean nothing at all.
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after we pumped up security?
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack since I received my anti-terrorist rock?
And more than likely, it's not because of the TSA's security theater, but because of secured cockpit doors and the willingness of citizens to fight back.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Except that there are two technologies that make pat down irrelevant. The first is the good old "metal wand" and the other is the newer "electronic nose". Two devices that can be implemented into hand held devices (probably even combined). I have not flown through Britain for a while but there there they never touch you. Metal detector went bleep, then they tell you to step over and wand you; oh it was the belt buckle. Have a nice flight Sir. As far as I remember they are also deploying back scatter and terraherz scanners, but I still doubt they pat you down if that fails / you refuse the scanner. Why is the US in the stone age when it comes to security?!
If billionaires are needed to get justice in the US, the problem isn't with the billionaires, its with the justice system.
I would personally prefer this "humiliation" to losing one of my family members because one woman would rather be free from the pat-downs/security scanning etc.
What about the kid who died in the wheel well of the jet airplane? If he could get in there then anyone could. Hell, just this week I saw a story about a guy who was stranded and hopped the fence into an airport, hoping to be confronted immediately by security (and thus saved). He walked around all the airplanes out on the tarmac, and right up to where the passenger terminals are. So, what good is getting groped or scanned other than to acclimate you to personal intrusions? None. It's the illusion of security. The scanners don't even work. Remember that story about the guy with a pocket on his sleeve? He put a metal cigarette pack in the pocket and since it was off his body, and appeared black as the background, they didn't see it at all on the scanner and he hopped on the plane with it.
Whatever happened to, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death?" Or that bit Ben Franklin said about trading your freedom for security and having neither? You've lost your way somewhere. You've become an irrational fear slut. You're thousands of times MORE likely to be killed in a car wreck and you don't run around spouting BS about how a TSA agent needs to ride with every car load to ensure safety. FUCK YOU. It's fools like you that are letting them turn the US into an oppressive regime, just like the ones we so hated in the 80's.
I think you might find that yes, yes they do. For the sake of the children.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
...where absolute conformity and submission to the machinery of bureaucracy and state surveillance is a precondition for being able to function for any and every citizen. The police state is strengthening its grip upon us. Upon you. Upon me.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Who says they have to "slip by"?
This is the thing I really don't get. Who created the belief that terrorists have to get past airport security to do anything and why do people believe it?
If I was a terrorist leader I'd blow up a few bags of ball bearings in the lines of people waiting to nudie-scanned. The country would implode overnight...
The only reason this isn't happening is that there are no terrorists.
(nb. If they want to "slip by" they can just put the C4 up their asses or whatever... Drug smugglers do it all the time, why not terrorists?)
No sig today...
Despite the "if you kill on you'll just anger more" bullshit the fighting overseas has actually worked and killed many of the enemies of civilization.
Years ago, they noticed the death toll of "terrorists" was above the sum of all "terrorists" on the planet. Either the war manufactured terrorists faster than we were killing them, or we were just killing innocent civilians and calling them terrorists to justify out mass murder. Either way, we are as bad as they say we are.
Learn to love Alaska
So a person wearing a bomb is going to be afraid of a gun? If they are willing to blow themselves up, then threatening to shoot them after the fact is not going to dissuade them.
I wish Obama would be in some office where he could wield some executive power so he could show us how Democrats value freedom more...
(If I lived in the USA, I would probably vote for Obama as smaller of two evils... but it's not as if the security theater would be a partisan issue.)
If you examine the legislation and executive decisions responsible for the civil liberties abuses of the past 12 years, you will find strong bi-partisan consensus for these measures. You mention Romney, but when it comes to the expansion and abuse of executive power, President Obama has been even worse than Bush. Ask Obama about his secret kill list and "disposition matrix".
I'm not voting for Romney or Obama.
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after we pumped up security? Uncomfortable, yes. Bothersome - heck yeah. But we live.
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after people realized they could be crashed into buildings?
Before September 11, no one had crashed a commercial airplane into a building as a terrorist attack. But, airplanes had been hijacked. Civilians were told not to interfere with a hijacking. If your plane were hijacked, you could expect to be flown to Cuba, sit around for a week or so, and then end up back in the US. That dynamic changed on September 11. AS SOON AS people realized that terrorists were flying planes into buildings, they started fighting back. That is why that plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Because the terrorists had hijacked the plane, but the passengers found out (from cell phones) what was probably going to happen and tried to take the airplane back. There is almost NO chance of a commercial flight being hijacked by terrorists now. Even if we didn't humiliate people with the TSA. Because the other 100 people on the plane would sacrifice their lives to stop them. No one would believe the hijacker WASN'T going to crash the plane into a building, so there would be no point in anyone NOT being a hero (you know you are going to die if you don't fight back, so you might as well fight back and try to live).
I fly quite often (at least a couple times per month). I would be perfectly fine with increasing my chance of dying on a plane by 0.00001% if that meant getting rid of the TSA. I would also be fine with the increased risk to my family because I believe their freedom and happiness are more important than their security.
You sir, are a coward. And it is people like you who allowed the Hitlers and Stalins commit their atrocities.
TSA screeners aren't law enforcement.
Any other fallacious bullshit you'd like to spout while you're here?
So suppose you ingest a small amount of bleach inadvertantly in the course of a task you must do. That's bad for you.
Now, you have two options. Which one is healthier for you?
A) Taking more bleach, in an even smaller quantity.
B} _NOT_ taking more bleach.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
On 9/12/2001, I purchased an anti-terrorist rock. It wards off terrorists hijacking planes in the country that it's located in. And sure enough, there have been no more hijackings inside the US. You're all welcome.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That's certainly what RapiScan and the TSA officials stated, but they never published what the numbers really were. They just assured us.
I'm not big on going all tin-foil on this. Many of us have been wondering why they insist on not publishing what the measured/actual radiation exposure is. The concerns have been raised as reports came out (some dubious) that TSA agents were already showing higher than normal incident rates for cancers. There was an incident where an inspection turned up unusually high readings. Granted, that also turned out to be a clerical issue where the inspector didn't understand part of the inspection... Which was a concern in itself. Through all this, we still don't know what the exposure is supposed to be, nor what it really is.
The problem here has been a lack of transparency... and other abuses involving the millimeter wave scanner horror stories (storing images, having ladies go through multiple times). Worse is that these "measures" are invasive, possibly a health risk, and they don't actually increase our security. There are plenty of videos out there on how to beat the scanners, the measures irritate us and end up (in my opinion) more complacent.
As for the passive scanners, that would be great. I need to see where they are in development because I haven't heard anything on that yet. If you have a link, I'd appreciate it. I'll get going on Google in the meantime.
If you examine the legislation and executive decisions responsible for the civil liberties abuses of the past 12 years, you will find strong bi-partisan consensus for these measures. You mention Romney, but when it comes to the expansion and abuse of executive power, President Obama has been even worse than Bush. Ask Obama about his secret kill list and "disposition matrix".
I'm not voting for Romney or Obama.
If he has a secret kill list and "disposition matrix" then how do you know about it? If you know about it, then it must not be secret. You make a lot of statements but no mention of any verifiable facts.
Even if the increased risk of cancer is miniscule, the risk of dying in a terrorist act is even more so. Almost certainly by at least one order of magnitude.
The choice between Democrat and Republican is not freedom, but a box to contain you.
Both support these measures.
Both support more spending on the War Department (I refuse to call it by its doublethink name.)
Both oppose ending marijuana prohibition.
Both endorsed and passed the NDAA.
Both support the TSA's existence.
So which one will you choose? It is no different than our ridiculous telecom oligopoly. Sure you can choose, between three equivalently shitty, abusive options.
Choosing between provided options is not freedom, it's multiple choice where no answer is freedom.
Question everything
What is the risk of being killed in a terrorist act?
Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should
Vs. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer
1 in 20 million vs even a .1% increase in the risk of cancer which at best is 1 in 5000
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I agree, not tinfoil, it's full lead foil territory.
If a doctor or dentist was operating such gear without a third party testing for emission levels they would go directly to jail.
Obama is standing on the shoulders of giants. Funny that you say "expansion" and not creation. See, he is expanding what is already there. I'm not saying it's right, but that's fact. Our entire legal system is built on this principle.
REAL abuse of executive power is invading a soverign nation and overthrowing its government with no just cause, and in the process fabricating evidence to try and gain support for your actions. To this DAY there has never been a reasonable explanation for our invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Obama hasn't fixed the mess he inherited in our country, and may have made some things worse, what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things, and more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world. That is where I see a massive difference between this and the former president.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"... assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.
Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists."
The chance to vote for the lesser of two evils is something many people around the world would kill for.
If you're in a swing state, a vote for a third party candidate is a vote in favor of Romney-appointed Supreme Court justices.