Fly The Sexual Abuse Skies

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?

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Tags: TSA