Airport screeners must avoid breast area on women!

My biggest complaint about airport security is inconsistancy. I had the misforunte of flying through Philadelphia once. There seemed to be two different security proceedures at two different checkpoints. One checkpoint was checking certain shoes. The other had a policy of checking everyones shoes. This may have changed. It has been a year or so since this experience.

My complaint about airport security is that it's worth nothing at all!! Journalists have tried several times to bait the security, and they did it. The worst one was when two guys managed to get in the cockpit in a ready-to-fly jetliner, using fake pilot's suit, and having knives in their bags.

This is incredible. They'd better try harder, keeping privacy.

Originally posted by shots

Let me guess you are a member of the ACLU right?

No, I despise the ACLU in most circumstances, but maybe one time in ten I side with them.

Originally posted by shots
There was no groping.

Sure, that's what the TSA tells media, but it's not what some women have said. Just in this thread alone I find the woman's comments more credible then the TSA agent(s) who commented. The women have no reason to lie, the TSA's only interested in protecting itself.

The TSA has clearly abused it's authority in the past - thus I don't trust them. I personally know a woman who was traveling with two children under 10 and those children were taken away from her supervision and searched without her presence. Had I been there at the time I would not have allowed that to occur - even if I had to take down a few TSA agents and spend time in jail for it I would have choosen to protect the children from the dirty perverts over my eventual personal loss of freedom.

If you think there too much invasion of privacy might I suggest you drive.

On shorter trips I have chosen to drive more often (and airline revenues show I'm not the only one), but that's not a practical option for longer distances thus, I will continue to fight for freedom from government hacks invading our privacy when we choose to travel. If you believe they won't start putting up auto checkpoints to start searching for terrorist in your car & belongings just like the airport - you got another thing coming. Again - if your too much of a puss to live in a free country in which many things we do come with risks - stay home, live somewhere else or put yourself behind bars.


[edit on 24-12-2004 by outsider]

Originally posted by outsider


Sure, that's what the TSA tells media, but it's not what some women have said. Just in this thread alone I find the woman's comments more credible then the TSA agent(s) who commented. The women have no reason to lie, the TSA's only interested in protecting itself.

Just because One person in this thread stated it is so does not make it so. If what she claimed actually had taken place as often as she implied surely reporters in all the airports would have noticed the very same thing and had a media frenzy over it. That has not been the case has it?



[edit on 12/24/2004 by shots]

Originally posted by shots
all the airports would have noticed the very same thing and had a media frenzy over it. That has not been the case has it?

Ah, but a media frenzy it has been - that's why the policy has changed my friend.

First off the last thing I am going to do is cover for TSA. The organization is a charade that is designed to look good on paper. I can get into a whole rant on how the system is just a crock that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with image at the expense of safety and workers rights. I will not however stand by while my reputation as a worker is tarnished over nonsense such as this. Mind you that I am not saying that abuses have not been committed from what I hear there are definetly valid cases that must be followed up but it seems to me that the most vocal complaints are from people that feel that the rules dont apply to them. I mean come on what sense does this make because some lady doesnt like it when she gets patted down the rules have to change to protect her delicate sensibilities security be darned.

Secondly I have been working for TSA since it started and I have never ever seen a man search a woman or vice versa. A man is allowed to search a woman only in the case of the most extreme emergency (every female screener in the airport is dead basically) and even then its going to be a supervisor doing te actual search. I am not saying that this has never happened anywhere in America just that I have never seen or even heard about it happening at my airport, in fact I cant even imagine the circumstances that would require transgender screening. If it has happened like it was described previously in the thread then heads need to roll someplace because some one really screwed up.

Thirdly we are not perverts and lesbians who joined up to just grope you and make you miss your flight. Alot of us are retired police former military and security heck my supervisor is former CIA. You always here about inappropriate screener behavior but no one cares how many times a day a we are subjected to inapropriate sexual comments and lewd suggestions by passengers who think there being clever by saying what I can do "while I'm down there".

Yeah it really makes our day to make you miss your flight and listen to you complain insult us and possibly set us up for reprimand for doing our job. We love standing there while you hurl abuse at us knowing that we cant say anything back to you with out risking reprimand or worse. I would be lying if I were to say we arent callous at times but believe me when I say that most of us didnt start out that way and we are what our job has made us. Nothing inspires worker confidence quite like seeing a coworker get reprimanded for yelling at a passenger for calling her a "stupid spic" while the passenger gets to get on her flight with the vindictive satisfaction of knowing she got her revenge for having to suffer the indignity of taking her shoes off. It really inspires confidence when the administrators care more about whether your wearing a tie then whether or not your terminal has enough people to run properly.

So outsider when your mother/father/sis/bro/daughter/son/wife or any loved ones die in a plane crash becasue some women didn't want her breast's patted down and she was concealing a bomb, what are you going to say then, OH she had the right to privacy bla bla bla. I don't think so, I think youd be angre with the screeners not doing thier job properly, oh wait you didn't want them to be able to do thier job properly in the first place...

Thor

Richard Reid, the mad mad shoe bomber, was probably a false flag patsy. His CIA handlers just made sure not to give him a butane lighter, which would've worked to blow a good size chunk out of that aircraft. He was insane, a dupe, a shmuck who got tricked by some arabic speaking folks of questionable nationality.

Chances are, next time a plane goes down, look to a rocket or a rail gun before you look at the cargo hold or the passengers shoes. Look to the 'no human needed' nav system and its capabilities on the plane in question. Look to the pilots, look to the crew. Look to me and you. But for Heaven's sake, don't look in my shoes.

Originally posted by Th0r
So outsider when your mother/father/sis/bro/daughter/son/wife or any loved ones die in a plane crash becasue some women didn't want her breast's patted down and she was concealing a bomb, what are you going to say then, OH she had the right to privacy bla bla bla. I don't think so, I think youd be angre with the screeners not doing thier job properly, oh wait you didn't want them to be able to do thier job properly in the first place...

No, you have me all wrong - They can profile, but they can't read minds nor are they yet provided with all the proper equipment to do their job. I don't expect TSA to perfect - they do the job as best they can with the tools provided. The argument that we should allow them to invade personal privacy instead of providing them with proper machines to do the job doesn't wash. While some of them may have crappy attitudes nobody makes them stay in that profession. Nobody likes meter maids or traffic cops either when they make you pay fines - having the character to ignore negative criticism should be a prerequisite to being hired for that type of job.

Two members of my immediate family are in the airline industry and one was flying out of Newark that day and was diverted to Canada during 911. Had one been on one of the planes that crashed I would have put the blame on those who did the crime & those groups supporting them. In fact I'd probably quit my job sell my house, blend in as best I could in those places where they come from and take out as many of their kind as I could. At least that would be my immediate knee jerk reaction.

My father was a Navy Pilot who did several tours in Viet Nam went on to be a DC-10 captain that you wish was flying your plane as he experienced such incidents as a two engine failure during take-off with a long range full load dumped thousands of pounds of fuel to maintain altitude and avoided stalling and made it back to the runway without one of the 260+ passengers even knowing how close they came to death - in a calm cool collected voice he was the one who told you over the intercom "ladies and gentleman we have a mechanical problem that we have to return terminal to take care of sorry for the inconvenience - please prepare for landing". All while giving orders & trying to put out an engine fire, restarting another engine, keeping the aircraft aloft, turning it around and obtaining priority 1 landing rights. No, my dad & his kind are the professional ones who protect you everyday and he never made the news because he always did his job. He rarely says anything bad about anyone, but he is the source of most of the negative stories I've heard about airport security personal and he could never figure out why the security people always treated him like crap in so many different places even when he was always friendly and cooperative with them. Maybe they were just jealous - that their job is so boring and fruitless.


[edit on 25-12-2004 by outsider]

I am sitting on the fence on this one, because on the one hand I don't want to see a woman manhandled, but on the other hand I don't want to overlook the obvious and make it easier for terrorists.

But I wonder what the TSA is doing to neutralize "womb bombs", where explosives are hidden in a woman's vagina. This method, I believe, was recently used by "Black Widows" in Russia to hide explosives. It doesn't take much explosive to blow a hole in the side of an airliner.

Can conventional screening methods detect these womb bombs?

Originally posted by outsider

Originally posted by shots
all the airports would have noticed the very same thing and had a media frenzy over it. That has not been the case has it?

Ah, but a media frenzy it has been - that's why the policy has changed my friend.

The frenzy was not started until the lawyer complained about the new policy as I understand it. What I was talking about was the statement that one poster made regarding seeing a female asked to strip down in public to her bra. Have you heard of any such incident in the papers? No of course not That is what I was talking about.

Carry on

Womb bombs? Bombs strapped between a woman's breasts?

These are jokes, right?

Maybe they should start doing full body cavity searches just in case you can squeeze a few grams of C-4 in your sphincter?


Wow, talk about rampant paranoia.


j

Originally posted by Jakomo

Womb bombs? Bombs strapped between a woman's breasts?

These are jokes, right?
Wow, talk about rampant paranoia.

No joke. First discovered being used by widows of chechen rebels in Russia, know as Black Widows.