I personally haven’t flown anywhere in five years, because I thought airport security was getting unreasonable back then. Apparently, I hadn’t seen anything yet; but if I flew today, airport security would get to see it all. It remains an open question of how many other people will also get to see (H/T GoV) your p0rnoscanner pictures – in England, after a celebrity went through a body scanner, security personnel printed out his nude scan and asked him to autograph it. Tens of thousands of images are known to have been saved from a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse, despite ongoing claims by the TSA that such things are impossible.
However, even though I haven’t personally been subjected to the machines (or the alternate opt-out body search which follows new prison-shower-room parameters), airport security and protests against it have been much in the news lately. A pilot has refused the scan for privacy issues, although airline unions have raised concerns about the health issue of frequent X-rays for their personnel who have to go through them every time they go on a flight. (The same health concerns apply to any frequent travelers, or other people who are particularly vulnerable to X-rays like pregnant women and children. My wife pointed out that women also get X-rays more frequently as they get older because of mammograms, although I believe ObamaCare is trying to remove that concern – they already advocate reducing mammograms as a money-saving measure.) Another man, John Tyner, was ejected from an airport and threatened with a fine when he refused to go through either the scanner or allow himself to be groped.
Sign On San Diego — …He may not be the first traveler tossed from an airport for security reasons but he could well be the first to have the whole experience captured on his cell phone. During the next half-hour, his cell phone recorded Tyner refusing to submit to a full body scan, opting for the traditional metal scanner and a basic “pat down” – and then refusing to submit to a “groin check” by a TSA security guard. He even told the guard, “You touch my junk and I’m going to have you arrested.” …
“OK, I don’t understand how a sexual assault can be made a condition of my flying.”
“This is not considered a sexual assault,” replied the supervisor, calmly.
“It would be if you were not the government,” said Tyner.
“By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights,” countered the TSA supervisor.
“I think the government took them away after 9/11,” said Tyner.
The TSA thugs are even performing full-body searches on small children, which is yet another reason why I’m not taking my family into an airport any time soon.
Kevin at HillBuzz asked, “Would you be willing to strip down and walk through TSA in just your underwear as a protest?” Apparently, the Pirate Party in Germany have already done just that:
I question whether any large-scale protests of that sort will happen in America, since the lefties who usually like to strip-down in protest aren’t going to bother protesting anything the Obama administration does (although they marched in great, smelly numbers when the Bush administration did far less). Still, the anger is rising and protests of some sort are inevitable – although, given the Obama economy, it’s not like many of us will be able to afford to fly anymore anyway; so how will the airlines even know how many ticket sales they’re losing due to TSA policies?
Tags: TSA
15 November 2010 at 9:17 AM
Update: humorist Dave Barry has a blog entry called “Groin Update” about his recent experience with going through the scanner and then being given a
gropepat-down by the TSA personnel because he had a “blurred groin”.15 November 2010 at 1:29 PM
Update II: The TSA is apparently giving in on molesting pilots – after all, they control the planes and don’t need to smuggle anything aboard to crash them – but they’re insisting that everyone else must be screened. Failure to welcome our new groin-grabbing overlords could be “subject to civil penalties.” (People respond!)
Meanwhile, CAIR is insisting that muslim women be exempt from the airport searches. The very idea that anyone might even consider taking that request reasonably boggles the mind – yet one cannot discount the very real possibility that PC multiculturalists (the real Islamophobes) are considering just that. Imagine the irony of any muslims being exempt from airport security while the rest of us are scanned, groped, and otherwise bent over.
(Some links H/T Flopping Aces.)
15 November 2010 at 1:57 PM
15 November 2010 at 7:47 PM
This from lovespoundcake on HillBuzz:
15 November 2010 at 8:12 PM
Update III: Rape Survivor Devastated by TSA Enhanced Pat Down
Jerry Goldberg of The Atlantic agrees with the common belief that those who opt out of the scanner are deliberately humiliated to intimidate others.
15 November 2010 at 10:36 PM
I agree with Goldberg. They really don’t want to have to manually examine all travelers. They want to railroad us into the scan.
16 November 2010 at 4:19 AM
That’s the impression I got, too. I wonder how vicious they’ll get if they are faced with a huge crowd of refuseniks on “Opt Out Day.”