The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been at the center of some mighty ethically murky news stories in the past few weeks, most centering on overly aggressive agents harassing citizens who have, frankly, had enough of all this handsy behavior. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that since November 2001, there have been 25,000 breaches of airport security.
In the past several weeks, here are some of the stories which follow the TSA-agents-are-out-of-control storyline:
WASHINGTON – A woman was “pulled out of the security line after having gone through the Advance Imaging system (that see-through techonology) and told she needed a pat-down.” Why? The TSA agent wanted to search through her curly hair, which she had put up in a bun. “They put the gloves on and now, they’re really just digging around in my hair,” the woman said. A TSA supervisor told the woman that, “It’s our policy that we examine anything that poofs from the body.” (King 5 News)
TENNESSEE -- “A 41-year-old Clarksville woman was arrested after Nashville airport authorities say she was belligerent and verbally abusive to security officers, refusing for her daughter to be patted down at a security checkpoint.” The mother didn’t want to go through the scanner, saying, according to police reports, “I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked” and did not want her young daughter to be “crotch grabbed.” (The Tennessean)
FLORIDA – A wheelchair riding 95-year-old woman “in the final stages of leukemia” was allegedly detained and told to remove her soiled adult diaper so the TSA agents could complete their physical pat-down of her. The woman “did not have another clean diaper with her.” The TSA denies these charges. (MSNBC)
NEW YORK– A Florida couple, both of whom use wheelchairs, complained about hand searches they were forced to undergo at the Greater Rochester International Airport which they said were invasive and insensitive. The husband said of his search, “They did the hair then did the neck. Then they had me do a pushup in my chair, then got down into my inner thigh around my back side. It’s the most thorough search [I’ve] had done in my life.” (Tampa Bay CBS affiliate)
NORTH CAROLINA– A 94-year-old wheelchair-bound Floridian was forced to be taken out of her wheelchair to stand in the security scanner, then was told she required a pat-down. The woman said of her pat-down, which was reportedly in full view of other passengers, “They took me to one side and they patted me down, and they made me stand . . . with my arms out, for over 10 minutes. I was beginning to feel that I wasn’t going to be able to continue to stand, I was going to fall down or something.” (Raleigh ABC affiliate)
WASHINGTON – A 6-year-old boy was pulled out of line by a TSA agent and subjected to two pat-downs after he’d gone through the scanner. His mother told the an NBC affiliate in Washington, “We all talk to our kids about improper touching, somebody shouldn’t touch you if you don’t want to be touched, and we had no time to talk with him about what they were really doing.” (Washington NBC affiliate)
ARIZONA – A 61-year-old Colorado woman apparently had had enough of what she said she has to “go through every week,” and reportedly turned to a female TSA agent and allegedly “squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands.” The woman was busted on “felony charges of sexual assault and held briefly in the Maricopa County Jail.” Authorities say, however, she won't be prosecuted for sexual assault. The TSA responded by saying, “the agency will not tolerate assaults against its workforce.” Apparently the TSA has never heard of the old chestnut, “The pot calling the kettle black.” (New York Post)
Now it seems as though the woman, Yukari Mihamae, is becoming the Steven Slater of the airline passenger set as Facebook pages have popped up in her defense, including one called “Acquit Yukari Mihamae" where a commenter compared her to “a 21st century Rosa Parks.” (MSNBC)
In the meantime, the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations took the TSA to task during a hearing, saying that there have been 25,000 “breaches of secured airport perimeters reported since November 2001,” according to The Hill. Further, “more than 14,000 people were able to access sensitive areas of the airport and some 6,000 passengers and carry-on luggage were able to make it past government checkpoints without proper security,” ABC News reported.
Hmm, something’s not working here, is it?
Showing posts with label TSA screening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TSA screening. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Taiwanese Animators Take on the TSA Screening/Pat-Down Issue
Per usual, the folks at NMA, the Taiwanese animation people who regularly lampoon news of the day, made me laugh with this video about the backlash against the absurdly violating naked image airport screeners and the "enhanced" body grope screenings:
Monday, November 15, 2010
Notes on Politics: Gov't Absurdity Edition: More Cheese/Less Cheese & Nude Photo or Body Grope at Airports
More Cheese/Less Cheese: This past weekend, the New York Times had a full page graphic which challenged its readers to try to cut the federal budget. I’ve got one suggestion: How about, for starters, the U.S. government stop paying one set of people to do something that is being actively fought by another branch of the U.S. government?
The Times reported last week that the federal government has been waging a pro-cheese effort where a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture works with companies – including Domino’s, Burger King and Taco Bell – to INCREASE the amount of cheese in their products. The group called Dairy Management – what the Times called “a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture” that has a $140 million budget -- “teamed up with Domino’s to develop a line of cheese pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign,” the paper said.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which the Times said has a $6.5 million budget, has admonished us to eat LESS cheese and saturated fat, and to be more responsible about what we eat because we've been told there's an epidemic of obesity in this country. Never mind that Michelle Obama has been running her own anti-obesity campaign. Just this past summer, the Times said, the federal nutrition committee recommended that people who eat pizza should “ask for whole wheat crust and half the cheese.” How about we split the difference and stop chucking good money after bad when the government is running two programs which are at cross-purposes?
If You’re Flying, It’s Nude Photos or a Body Grope: The “enhanced” Transportation Security Administration screenings – which give passengers a "choice" between going through the scanner which takes naked photos of you or submitting to an aggressive body search, including of the groin area – are enough to make you re-think flying, especially during the Thanksgiving week.
We all understand that security measures need to be taken to try to protect the public when they’re aboard commercial airplanes, but these new screenings have gone a step too far, requiring the submission to a humiliating grope or having intrusive images taken of one’s body without probable cause that you might pose a danger. As the mom of three young children, I have to decide which is worse: My kids being subjected to the naked scanner (while the safety of the level of radiation from those machines is being questioned for children, the elderly, cancer and HIV patients and the pregnant) or allowing strangers to touch my children in places where I’ve told them they shouldn’t allow people, outside of their doctor, to touch.
And people are, justifiably, flipping out over this. Everyone from pilots, flight attendants and frequent fliers who have to go through these scanners repeatedly, to general passengers themselves are objecting, including one man who recently refused to consent to a “groin check” when told he had to have one at the San Diego airport and who’s now being threatened with a lawsuit and a $10,000 fine. The man -- who warned the TSA agent that if he touched his “junk” the would-be passenger would have him arrested -- posted a video/audio of his experience on YouTube. In the audio, you a TSA official telling him that he gave up his rights when he bought a plane ticket.
I liked what Dan Gillmor wrote in Salon about what he called the airport “porno-scanners.” Among Gillmor’s salient points:
“The government has lied about how these [scanning] devices work – including an early claim, later refuted, that the images couldn’t be saved or shared – and reputable scientists have challenged the TSA’s assurances that the devices are safe after multiple, long-term exposures.”
“I suspect the uproar, which is absolutely legitimate, has more to do with people’s realization that this invasion of privacy is going to affect them and their children in more direct ways than they’ve contemplated before. Consider: The scanner images of children would qualify as child porn in other circumstances; and the new ‘enhanced pat-down’ procedures, outside of a prison, doctor’s office or your bedroom, would leave the groper liable for prosecution, especially when the gropee is a kid.”
A columnist in the Chicago Tribune, in a column entitled, “Airport security: Government in our pants,” wrote:
“Besides the indignity of having one's body exposed to an airport screener, there is a danger the images will find a wider audience. The U.S. Marshals Service recently admitted saving some 35,000 images from a machine at a federal courthouse in Florida. TSA says that will never happen. Human experience says, oh, yes, it will.
For the camera-shy, TSA will offer an alternative: ‘enhanced’ pat-downs. This is not the gentle frisking you may have experienced at the airport in the past. It requires agents to probe aggressively in intimate zones — breasts, buttocks, crotches.
If you enjoyed your last mammography or prostate exam, you'll love the enhanced pat-down. And you'll get a chance to have an interesting conversation with your children about being touched by strangers.”
Some folks who are particularly outraged about these new security measures have called for civil disobedience of sorts during the Thanksgiving travel period, urging fliers to request pat-downs instead of the scans in order to slow down the security screening process. "National Opt Out Day" is slated for Nov. 24 and its organizer says, "We hope the experience then propels people to write their Member of Congress and the airlines to demand change."
Image credit: Reuters via Salon.
The Times reported last week that the federal government has been waging a pro-cheese effort where a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture works with companies – including Domino’s, Burger King and Taco Bell – to INCREASE the amount of cheese in their products. The group called Dairy Management – what the Times called “a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture” that has a $140 million budget -- “teamed up with Domino’s to develop a line of cheese pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign,” the paper said.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which the Times said has a $6.5 million budget, has admonished us to eat LESS cheese and saturated fat, and to be more responsible about what we eat because we've been told there's an epidemic of obesity in this country. Never mind that Michelle Obama has been running her own anti-obesity campaign. Just this past summer, the Times said, the federal nutrition committee recommended that people who eat pizza should “ask for whole wheat crust and half the cheese.” How about we split the difference and stop chucking good money after bad when the government is running two programs which are at cross-purposes?
If You’re Flying, It’s Nude Photos or a Body Grope: The “enhanced” Transportation Security Administration screenings – which give passengers a "choice" between going through the scanner which takes naked photos of you or submitting to an aggressive body search, including of the groin area – are enough to make you re-think flying, especially during the Thanksgiving week.
We all understand that security measures need to be taken to try to protect the public when they’re aboard commercial airplanes, but these new screenings have gone a step too far, requiring the submission to a humiliating grope or having intrusive images taken of one’s body without probable cause that you might pose a danger. As the mom of three young children, I have to decide which is worse: My kids being subjected to the naked scanner (while the safety of the level of radiation from those machines is being questioned for children, the elderly, cancer and HIV patients and the pregnant) or allowing strangers to touch my children in places where I’ve told them they shouldn’t allow people, outside of their doctor, to touch.
And people are, justifiably, flipping out over this. Everyone from pilots, flight attendants and frequent fliers who have to go through these scanners repeatedly, to general passengers themselves are objecting, including one man who recently refused to consent to a “groin check” when told he had to have one at the San Diego airport and who’s now being threatened with a lawsuit and a $10,000 fine. The man -- who warned the TSA agent that if he touched his “junk” the would-be passenger would have him arrested -- posted a video/audio of his experience on YouTube. In the audio, you a TSA official telling him that he gave up his rights when he bought a plane ticket.
I liked what Dan Gillmor wrote in Salon about what he called the airport “porno-scanners.” Among Gillmor’s salient points:
“The government has lied about how these [scanning] devices work – including an early claim, later refuted, that the images couldn’t be saved or shared – and reputable scientists have challenged the TSA’s assurances that the devices are safe after multiple, long-term exposures.”
“I suspect the uproar, which is absolutely legitimate, has more to do with people’s realization that this invasion of privacy is going to affect them and their children in more direct ways than they’ve contemplated before. Consider: The scanner images of children would qualify as child porn in other circumstances; and the new ‘enhanced pat-down’ procedures, outside of a prison, doctor’s office or your bedroom, would leave the groper liable for prosecution, especially when the gropee is a kid.”
A columnist in the Chicago Tribune, in a column entitled, “Airport security: Government in our pants,” wrote:
“Besides the indignity of having one's body exposed to an airport screener, there is a danger the images will find a wider audience. The U.S. Marshals Service recently admitted saving some 35,000 images from a machine at a federal courthouse in Florida. TSA says that will never happen. Human experience says, oh, yes, it will.
For the camera-shy, TSA will offer an alternative: ‘enhanced’ pat-downs. This is not the gentle frisking you may have experienced at the airport in the past. It requires agents to probe aggressively in intimate zones — breasts, buttocks, crotches.
If you enjoyed your last mammography or prostate exam, you'll love the enhanced pat-down. And you'll get a chance to have an interesting conversation with your children about being touched by strangers.”
Some folks who are particularly outraged about these new security measures have called for civil disobedience of sorts during the Thanksgiving travel period, urging fliers to request pat-downs instead of the scans in order to slow down the security screening process. "National Opt Out Day" is slated for Nov. 24 and its organizer says, "We hope the experience then propels people to write their Member of Congress and the airlines to demand change."
Image credit: Reuters via Salon.
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