Women Arrested For Refusing TSA Search of Children 1017
CelticWhisper writes "A Tennessee mother was arrested for refusing to allow TSA screening clerks to subject her child to a body scan or patdown. This comes in the wake of a promise by the TSA Administrator to make repeated attempts at non-physical screening of children, after which another video of a child patdown surfaced. This event may signify a tipping point in the public's willingness to tolerate invasive and inappropriate security procedures at airports."
Holy misinformation, Batman. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”
The TSA scanners aren't comparable in any useful sense to cell phones or sonograms. (Cellphones are non-ionizing radiation and sonograms are pressure waves.) Is it any wonder that these guys don't get the benefit of the doubt?
Get scanned and get cancer (Score:5, Informative)
Even the TSA workers aren't too happy about the possibility of getting cancer from the scanners.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/30/did-airport-scanners-give-boston-tsa-agents-cancer/ [time.com]
Re:Holy misinformation, Batman. (Score:4, Informative)
Copy Israel (Score:2, Informative)
They do it better, TSA needs to wake the eff up and go learn from someone that's been doing it for years. They train people, well, smart people, to use their brains to detect fear, someone being nervous, etc. But no, TSA is basically fast food secuirty, you can work at TSA one day and MacDonalds the next.
EM vs. pressure waves (Score:5, Informative)
“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”
(emphasis mine)
What. The. Fuck. I was told almost the opposite, but still wrong at BWI--that the mm-wave scanner was sound waves, not EM. How is this getting twisted? Is there some statement that the mm-wave is "as safe as a sonogram" and the agents are mixing and matching at will?
I don't expect the security screeners to be physicists, but they really need to know what the equipment they operate emits. At this point, I barely trust their magnetometer to not blast me with ionising radiation.
Re:Not fear - disgust (Score:5, Informative)
While I generally feel there needs to be more incidents like this to prove that the public shouldn't tolerate this any longer, I am also quite annoyed that women feel like their bodies are more sacred than men.
Former TSA screener here and I can say that I and many others do NOT enjoy screening people. (I'll never forget the time I had to do a pat-down of a one-legged man and found marijuana... in the area of the missing leg... I tried to let him and the marijuana pass through but another screener saw it... oh well) I can't help but feel as though I could have helped that woman and her child through screening. I feel kinda bad about the whole thing, but I also see it as a necessary step to rid the system of such measures.
And you know, the backscatter imagers should not need to save or even display images of people unless the machine's AI detects something deemed suspicious or inconsistent with normal densities and patterns found. I never got to see or use those things as I was long since out of the TSA before those things arrived on the scene, but as far as luggage screening goes, all items were screened and only opened if the machine says to check it. (There was one exception I witnessed -- the machine said to check some containers which we simply didn't check -- they were human torsos... no head, arms or legs.) I should think that in order to sanitize the backscatter imagine process, they should set the machines to not save any images unless the computer says to check further and after clearing, erase.
Still regardless of what they could do to make things better or easier, it would be better if this all just got reduced in scope and scale. Screening for obvious things would be more or less useless but I think that's just about as far as things need to go for now -- at least until an incident occurs. We have a reality here that people are simply failing to acknowledge. There are people in the world who are furious with the "people of the U.S." because of how the U.S. leadership behaves in the world. THAT is what needs to change. Anyone who claims it is "radical islam" and the differences in religion that causes all this are out of their heads. There are other world nations who haven't the slightest problems like these and those nations are "neutral" and still have healthy economies.
What we have are aggressive [read greedy] business interests in the U.S. who get the U.S. government to act on their behalf in ways that would be completely unacceptable if those things were to happen in the U.S. by other governments. In short, my U.S. government violates one of the most fundamental Christian ethics -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I'm not Christian, but my government leaders all claim to be and I would expect them to live up to those standards or stop calling themselves Christian.
Now we have a situation where the entire population of the U.S. has to be fearful because greedy business interests have interfered in the affairs of foreign sovereign nations. That may seem like a reasonable trade-off to those greedy business interests, but can the pedestrian population of the U.S. agree with this? I doubt it. This is the reality no one wants to talk about. "The Cause." Like most all maladies, it's often best to address the cause of the problem rather than merely addressing the symptoms.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not fear - disgust (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not fear - disgust (Score:4, Informative)
The 'enhanced' pat downs are not radically different from a regular pat down except that they will use the palms of their hands on non-genital areas. Your 'privates' are still checked with the back of the hand. There is no 'groping' involved.
http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/11/24/8401/7997/travel/What+It's+Like+Having+the+TSA's+Enhanced+Pat-down%3A+A+Firsthand+Account [jaunted.com]
The hysteria about this is amazing given the supposedly more logical leaning crowd that visits /. I don't care if these searches are not 100%, and every /.'er should know that NO security is perfect, but I feel better that it's done rather than no security at all. Exempting children from this would just make children the ideal transport for contraband.
Implantable bombs - already been done (Score:4, Informative)
Again the be all, end all of all this searching, will be terrorists with bombs either in their rectum, or surgically implanted.
This has already been done SUCCESSFULLY in Saudi Arabia in 2009 ., and they used a cell phone trigger. Suicide bomber died, but didn't kill the Saudi Prince. There happened to be audio going, and it catches the cell phone going off inside!! the bombers abdomen - wow....
NPR link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113509667 [npr.org]
Text of the Police Report (Score:5, Informative)
On 07/09/2011 at approximately 1340 hrs I was dispatched to the central screening point at the Nashville International Airport for report of a passenger that was refusing screening. Upon my arrival, I made contact with the subject, identified as Andrea Abbott, who was involved in a verbal altercation with TSA screening agents. Abbott was being verbally abusive toward the TSA agents stating her daughter would not be screened. I advised Abbott that she and her daughter would have to be screened or they would be escorted by me out of the secured area of the airport. Abbott then became verbally abusive toward me as well as the TSA agents. Abbott stated she did not want her daughter to be “touched inappropriately,” have her “crotch grabbed,” or be further screened. Eventually Abbott agreed to allow her daughter to be screened by TSA. Abbott retrieved her cell phone and was attempting to film her daughter being screened. I advised Abbott to put her cell phone away. Again, Abbott was verbally abusive [Emphasis Added] . After her daughter was screened TSA advised Abbott would have to be screened as well to continue down the concourse. Abbott stated this was “bullsh!t” and became verbally abusive toward TSA and myself again. I advised Abbott numerous times she was disrupting the screening process and flow of passengers through the area. Abbott refused to calm down. At this time I placed Abbott under arrest for Disorderly Conduct (TCA 39-17-305). Ms. Abbot was loud in her speech and very belligerant therefore she was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The citizen was engaged in perfectly legal behavior, which the cop ordered her to stop. When she declined, he arrested her. This is why "disorderly conduct" is frequently referred to as "contempt of cop" by district attorneys.
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
IANAL, what follows is NOT legal advice.
If you're ever stopped for suspicion of driving under the influence. Refuse all sobriety tests, especially if you've had even one drink.
Yes, you'll be arrested. Yes, you'll have your license revoked. Yes you'll have other unpleasant things happen, but you won't be charged with driving under the influence.
You do have a 5th amendment right to not be compelled to testify against yourself. Exercise it.
Re:Over here in the UK and Europe... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah unlike the UK where an innocent Brazilian electrician gets hunted down by plain clothes police and shot seven times in the head. And then the police get off scot-free, nobody involved is ever punished, while the police obstruct justice, lie about and cover up their errors and work hard to smear the murdered man's reputation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes [wikipedia.org]
No fucking thanks.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Fact: A terrorist could hide stuff up his butt. Drug dealers do it all the time, that's how cell phones get into prisons, etc.
Think about that the next time you're being groped. The guy behind you could have a huge sausage of C4 in his butt and the clown who's currently massaging your packet wouldn't have a hope of finding it.
Feel safer yet?