Sexual assault?

[Gob]

He coukd be hiding a very small bomb...

[loCAtek]

They made him take off his shirt!? Can they do that? Or touch a child that way!???

[oldr_n_wsr]

Next time I travel via jet, I am going to have my wife play with me and get a really good boner going and then insist on a "pat down".

[loCAtek]

...oops, that may not stop'em! An ABC reporter claims a TSA screener reached into her underwear, and felt around. They might your boner as an invitation.

[kristina]

Now it's being referred to as "Gate Rape"...

(from a comment to an article on SFGate)

[Jarlaxle]

My wife's friend is flying this Sunday (11/28)...she will wear a long dress (if it's the one I've seen her wear before, it's ankle-length & bright green), a coat, and boots. She will not go through the scanners under any circumstances (like me, she isn't convinced they're safe)...and if pulled aside for the security-theatre groping, she is considering simply handing her husband the coat and simply dropping her dress to the floor. (If she does, terrorists could come in accompanied by a marching band and nobody would notice.)

[Gob]

My kind of girl!

[Andrew D]

My wife's friend is flying this Sunday (11/28)...she will wear a long dress (if it's the one I've seen her wear before, it's ankle-length & bright green), a coat, and boots. She will not go through the scanners under any circumstances (like me, she isn't convinced they're safe)...and if pulled aside for the security-theatre groping, she is considering simply handing her husband the coat and simply dropping her dress to the floor. (If she does, terrorists could come in accompanied by a marching band and nobody would notice.)

I share much of that attitude. (I don't think much about whether the scanners are safe; if they're going to kill me, they're going to have to stand in line.) If I have to choose, I will take being seen over being touched in a heartbeat. (Of course, I do not share the apparently prevalent cultural weirdness over nudity; were it not illegal, I would (subject to various other considerations which I have mentioned before) go naked whenever I felt like it.) I am not a person whose looks stop traffic, but so what? Anyone who gets a thrill from seeing a scrawny, pot-bellied, middle-aged stranger naked has issues.

I fly only rarely. I hate it. Not the flying itself, which is sometimes kind of fun, but all the rigamarole. It has become absurd. It has reached the point where if I need to be in, say, Century City (a non-city which is part of the city of Los Angeles), it is actually faster for me to drive the four- or five-hundred miles from my home in North California than it is for me to fly.

But from time to time, flying is the only practicable option. I have not yet flown since the new fondle-everyone's-genitals-because-you-can rules have been in force. But if they are still in force the next time I have to fly, I will demand to be strip-searched rather than fondled. And if I can somehow manage to piss on one of the "security" personnel, so much the better.

This is not and never has been security. It is feel-good security theatre, full of sound and fury, accomplishing NOTHING.

True that it is not about security. But not true that it accomplishes nothing.

What it accomplishes is exactly what those who are pushing it want to accomplish: getting us accustomed to being searched in the most invasive ways for no reason that has anything to do with any of us as individuals.

All of the blathering aside, 9-11 was never the reason for these "security" measures; it was the excuse. Those who have always wanted the government to be allowed to search anyone anywhere at any time for no articulable reason at all finally found the hook on which they can hang their police-state policy.

How many Americans realize that they are routinely photographed/videorecorded when using toilets on airplanes?

There has been a great deal of complaining, here and elsewhere, about the fact that new scanning techniques produce images of people's naked bodies as scanned through their clothing. But the photographing/videorecording of people in airplane toilets is not about images scanned through those people's clothing. It yields images of people with their "private parts" actually exposed. God only knows what porn sites those images are ending up on. So where is the uproar about that?

Some transit authorities have begun requiring people to submit to searches of their purses, etc., before boarding buses and subway trains and the like. And people have been acquiescing in it.

The point of that is not to protect people who are riding public transit: If I really want to blow up a subway train -- which I emphatically do not -- I can hide the explosive in my shoe (which the transit authority does not (yet) search). Or I can shove it up my ass. Or whatever.

The point of it is to get us accustomed to being searched at any time in any place for no articulated or articulable reason. There's nothing like the threat of terrorism to get the authoritarian juices flowing.

[Gob]

Two sides of the coin..

But after being contacted by a travel blog, 17 security staff came forward to express their disgust at the policy put in place last month.

They said that they hated having to carry out body searches, with one claiming that it was worse for him than the passenger.

'It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh,' one told the Boarding Area blog.

'Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!'

Another said he had a huge problem dealing with a 'large number of passengers... daily that have a problem understanding what personal hygiene is.'

All the staff said that they had experienced a high level of personal abuse while carrying out the pat-downs.

'Being a TSO means often being verbally abused, you let the comments roll off and check the next person,' one said.

'However, when a woman refuses the scanner then comes to me and tells me that she feels like I am molesting her, that is beyond verbal abuse.

'I asked the woman if she thought I like touching other women all day and she told me that I probably did or I wouldn’t be with the TSA.

'I just want to tell these people that I feel disgusted feeling other peoples private parts, but I cannot because I am a professional.'

Angry passengers have subjected TSA officers to verbal abuse and even physical threats.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z169MkmevC

Meanwhile, one patient traveller has proved it is possible to bypass the high-level security measures in place at all airports, but only if you have time on your hands.

Blogger Matt Kernan recorded his epic experience as he returned to North Kentucky International Airport in Cincinnati from Paris on Sunday.

Exasperated at being told to prepare for a body scan and with time on his hands, the determined businessman decided to make a stand - with remarkable results.

Writing on his website noblasters.com, he said: 'I certainly don’t enjoy being treated like a terrorist in my own country, but I’m also not a die-hard constitutional rights advocate.

'However, for some reason, I was irked.'

'Maybe it was the video of the three-year old getting molested, maybe it was the sexual assault victim having to cry her way through getting groped, maybe it was the father watching teenage TSA officers joke about his attractive daughter.

'Whatever it was, this issue didn’t sit right with me. We shouldn’t be required to do this simply to get into our own country.'

As a result, Mr Kernan informed staff he did not want to go through the infamous Backscatter imaging machine.

He was told he would have to undergo an invasive pat-down search, but again politely told staff that he would consider any contact with his genital areas as assault.

After being told that the two options were TSA policy, he replied: ' I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional.

'As a US citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.'

As the situation escalated further airport police were called and more senior TSA officials but Mr Kernan refused to back down, remaining calm throughout.

Eventually causing a stand-off between police and TSA officers over who should resolve the situation, Mr Kernan was told by a superviser: 'Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to escort you out of the terminal to the public area.

'You are to stay with me at all times. Do you understand?'

He was then escorted by the police and no less than 13 TSA officer through security without a hand laid on him.

He said: 'And then came the most ridiculous scene of which I’ve ever been a part.

'I gather my things – jacket, scarf, hat, briefcase, chocolates.

'We walk over to the staff entrance and he scans his badge to let me through. We walk down the long hallway that led back to the baggage claim area. We skip the escalators and moving walkways.'

He was then waved away by annoyed officers and said: 'In order to enter the US, I was never touched, I was never “Backscatted,” and I was never metal detected.

'In the end, it took 2.5 hours, but I proved that it is possible. I’m looking forward to my next flight on Wednesday.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z169NCGOqC

[Jarlaxle]

My kind of girl!

You mean you like tall redheads wearing spike-heeled boots & nothing else?

Considering she put herself through school working as a stripper, she obviously has no problem being seen nude. (Quite the opposite: she's more than a bit of an exhibitionist.)

[dgs49]

No bias.

Can any of you even IMAGINE how this story would be playing out if Bush43 were still in the White House? He personally would be excoriated in every "objective" news forum in the land. His face would be the lead in every story. It would be proof of Republican Fascism. Dick Cheney would be hung in effigy.

But Barry's President, isn't he?

Who is at fault? Some nameless bureaucrat at the TSA. Barry comes out and endorses these outrageous invasions of our person. Still no blaming him or even his administration. No nothing. It's just "the TSA."

No media bias.

Not at all.

[Andrew D]

I see no reason to think that. When Bush started the backscatter scanning program (the whole thing had to be tested for months before it was put in operation), the media generally treated it the way they are treating this: They take not of the objectors, and they report the objectors' concerns, but the bias was overwhelmingly on the "it';s for national security, so it's okay" side. Just as it is now.

[loCAtek]

TSA Myth Busted!;