You Do Have Choices
Your current options when flying are as follows:
1. Allow yourself to be sexually assaulted by a uniformed government worker -- one who will not only not be charged with a crime, but who is earning an hourly wage plus benefits for the privilege of getting jiggy with your private parts.
2. Allow strangers to take naked pictures of you in a machine the government swears is safe, while various scientists dispute that. For example, from the National Post/Agence France Press:
"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP."No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.
3. Stay home or drive (surely, buses and trains do or will have similarly invasive screening procedures soon).
From a former TSA screener, the scoop on "The Invasive Pat Down":
Ok that one is bullshit. It is a terror tactic by TSA to get you to walk through the more thorough body scanner. I can't defend TSA on this one. I have talked to the TSA officers and it is no more effective than the old pat down procedure. They tested it out with trainers and each other. It is purely a terror tactic by TSA. Shame on TSA and anyone who has to get one should write a complaint in afterward. You still have to get it though if you want to get on the plane. Throwing a fit will not get you out of it.
All together now...let's wave bye-bye to the airline industry. I didn't think it was possible to dread taking a plane somewhere more than I already dp, but the choice between irradiation and loss of privacy and sexual assault and loss of privacy...well, if I don't absolutely have to go (or the destination isn't Paris), I'm not going.
Don't forget: This doesn't mean we're safer; it just means we're increasingly easily controlled.
(CNN story on the backlash against the TSA peep show scans and gropings here. My earlier blogging of The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg's thoughts/experiences here.)
I was listening to the radio while driving yesterday and ran across an interview with somebody from the pilots union & a lawyer.
The lawyer had some interesting analysis. He pointed out that both are trivially defeated (put it inside the person) and this is widely known. He compared it with some earlier rulings, mainly ones having to do with computer security where judges have ruled that because of the programs know ineffectiveness they don't count as securing. He said he thinks (perhaps wishful thinking) that these measures in their current forms will not last long because the courts will strike them down. Especially for people who regularly have to fly like pilots and flight teams - but likely others too.
The Former Banker at November 13, 2010 1:04 AM
Google "Meg Mclain". She seems to have embellished her story a bit (as we all tend to do when upset), but basically she refused to go through the nude-o-scope and also objected to being felt up.
Her interviewer in the radio show suggests that attractive women tend to be the ones selected for nude scanning and/or feelups. If you look, in the TSA video most of the people going through the scanner are (coincidentally) young women.
In the end, she was not allowed to fly. The videos TSA released substantiate parts of her story (and it's not clear how much time passes between the videos - it could be seconds, or it could be much longer). Certainly she is in tears, and certainly the sheer number of TSA agents and cops standing around her at various times is amazing.
November 24th is national opt-out day. Actually, everyone should always:
- Arrive at the airport extra early
- If selected for the nude-o-scope, opt-out
- If you are then patted down in a way you consider inappropriate, stay calm, and insist on a complaint form.
- File the complaint
I can't include more than one link, but note that both the House and the Senate have nice online forms for contacting your Congresscritters. Write them, and tell them to get rid of TSA. Leave security to the airlines and airports.bradley13 at November 13, 2010 1:20 AM
First, read this.
Then, this is to the TSA:
You are a power-mad bunch of witless people who have no idea what you're doing. Unable to see that policy produces uniform methods which can then be analyzed and completely sidestepped, you focus on causing outright suffering and measure THAT as "success".
You confiscate airline dinnerware from pilots as if they need that to take over the plane. You strip-searched American icon and Medal of Honor winner Joe Foss, age 80, three times because you're abysmally ignorant. You pile up items stolen from the traveling public and trumpet that as the consummate evidence of your effectiveness - not once noticing that those items were routinely carried on aircraft with no problems. Can you be more stupid? Are you viewing that question as a challenge now?
If not for the American public tendency to act like sheep when frightened by the incessant blare of end-of-the-world propaganda from talking heads and your own presence, you'd be guarding a mall somewhere - and being outrun by squealing teens.
You shouldn't be paid to do what you're doing. You should be punished.
Radwaste at November 13, 2010 6:32 AM
Here in Az a couple stole thousands of pieces of luggage from the airport. The airport claimed the TSA was responsible for security, the TSA claimed the airport was responsible.
So just remeber while the TSA scans every peice of luggage being loaded onto an airplane - not one person is patroling the baggage claim. Seems to be the perfect place to set a bomb or two since noone cares enough to secure the area
lujlp at November 13, 2010 7:07 AM
Why screen the pilots at all? If I were to want to check them out for security, all I'd want to know is if they were sober or not. If they want to do bad things to the airplane while you are inside of it, they can point it at the ground and shove the throttles froward.
If I were a pilot and wanted to crash the plane, I'd do a few loops, spins, and rolls first.
Steve Daniels at November 13, 2010 9:11 AM
"If they want to do bad things to the airplane while you are inside of it, they can point it at the ground and shove the throttles froward."
Like this.
There's a sideshow of religious nuttery and corporate lying, too.
Radwaste at November 13, 2010 9:40 AM
In case anyone is curious about the image resolution you can get from these machines, here's a picture of a small dry leaf taken by the most widely used type of scanner, a THz or millimeter wave scanner:
http://fplreflib.findlay.co.uk/articles/17506/Dry%20leaf.jpg
It's a bit fuzzy, but you can still see every vein. Backscatter scanners, which use X-rays, produce crisper images.
So if you're wondering whether the creep in the TSA uniform can see exactly what your teenage daughter looks like under her clothes, the answer is yes.
Martin at November 13, 2010 11:14 AM
I would like to co-sign Radwaste's 6:32 am comment. And encourage people to read the Patrick Smith piece he linked to.
Post 9-11, our response to threats against airplanes has grown all out proportion to the actual danger they represent. As Smith illustrates, we have been facing these sorts of threats for years, and terrorists are certainly not as good at highjacking or blowing up planes now than they were in the 80's. But the level of fear is now so much higher today.
It is depressing and deeply discouraging, though not surprising, that the TSA's backward-looking bureaucracy keeps adding ineffective layers of more invasive security designed to stop the last threat – not the next one. It is more discouraging that most people are inclined to acquiesce in their humiliation for the mere appearance of security.
Christopher at November 13, 2010 1:15 PM
"Post 9-11, our response to threats against airplanes has grown all out proportion to the actual danger they represent. "
It's worse than just that, as Christopher mentioned in his last paragraph. TSA is always coming up with new measures to address last year's threat, while this year's is, if you'll excuse the expression, flying under their radar. I can't believe they are still obsessed with confiscating sharp objects; the box-cutter attack is one tactic that will never, ever work again. Explosives are the new thing, and the terrorists have had pretty good luck sneaking them aboard aircraft; it's just their bad luck (and our good luck) that they so far haven't come up with a detonation method that works and is portable and inconspicuous enough.
Cousin Dave at November 13, 2010 7:53 PM
I can get the ingredients to make Napalm through security, easily.
But the public has smartened up enough that 9/11 will never happen again. That is what the TSA is trying to prevent. I say that at this point -- I want every passenger is automatically licensed to carry concealed while in-flight unless you are a felon.
Jim P. at November 13, 2010 10:39 PM
"Statistically, someone will get a cancer" is not actually contradicting "is safe".
"Safe" never means "without risk", since risk is never zero when doing anything, ever.
(Statistically speaking, more than zero people have doubtless gotten mouth cancers from dental X-rays.
This does not mean that they are not "safe" in any normal and practical use of the term, just as driving across town is "safe", despite it being statistically much more likely to cause injury or death.)
It's important to keep the risks in scientific perspective; the claim that statistically, out of millions upon millions of exposures, someone is likely to get skin cancer eventually? That's nothing to lose sleep over.
You're in far more danger on the drive to and from the airport - not to mention the radiation exposure from flying itself.
The other problems with the system are far more important than the trivial radiation exposure, at least for normal travelers.
(Airport and airline employees who go through security every day, perhaps several times, have more valid concerns...
Much like the dental technician doing mouth X-rays leaves the room when the tube fires - because she'd get exposed to the fringe radiation to half a dozen shots a day rather than the direct radiation of one every year or two.)
Sigivald at November 15, 2010 2:46 PM
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