TSA's Gitmo Grope Of Passengers
One of the particularly disgusting things about the violation of our civil liberties every day at airports by the unskilled thugs known as the TSA is how they give us the sort of frisk we'd get if we were going into jail or prison.
I sometimes make a remark about that -- like, "Shall I assume the position, like you're frisking me for prison?"
James Bovard writes in USA Today about his experience with the TSA's groin-groping civil liberties violators:
Flying home from Portland, Ore., on Thanksgiving morning, I had a too-close encounter with TSA agents that spurred me to file a Freedom of Information Act request. On March 5, I finally received a bevy of TSA documents and video footage with a grope-by-grope timeline.As a silent assertion of my rights, I opted out that morning from passing through the "nudie" full-body scanners. A TSA agent instead did a vigorous pat-down and then, after running his glove through an explosive trace detector (ETD), announced that I showed a positive alert for explosives. He did not know what type of explosive was detected and refused to disclose how often that machine spewed false alarms. Regardless, I was told I would have to undergo a an additional special pat-down to resolve the explosive alert. I was marched off by three TSA agents to a closed room. TSA states that "a companion of his or her choosing may accompany the passenger" but I was never notified of that right.
TSA disclosed exhaustive video coverage of my every movement in the Portland airport, even detailing which chair I chose after getting a Starbucks coffee. But there is a tell-tale gap. The video timeline notes "7:50:29 group arrives at Private Security room. 7:50:55. Door Closes. 7:57:28 Door Opens." The seven-minute gap in the recording is where travelers' rights vanish.
TSA's power is effectively unlimited behind closed doors. The lead Transportation Security officer (LTSO) proceeded to carry out a far more aggressive patdown, tugging on my shirt as if he thought it was a tear-away football jersey. The procedure was only mildly aggravating until he jammed his palm into my groin three times. Perhaps that pointless procedure was retribution for opting-out or my scoffing at their security theater.
And how great that he did that -- as opposed to going through like a compliant sheep the way most passengers do.
He had used hand sanitizer that morning -- which is apparently "notorious for spawning TSA explosive alerts." Genius.
Two comments from the site at the link:
Andrea Frymire
This happened to me in March of 2012. I was escorted between two agents like a criminal. Unable to put my shoes back on or touch my purse. I was taken to a back room that I never knew existed and BOLTED in with two TSA women. If what happened in there happened in public by a man it would be sexual assault. I was wearing skinny jeans had has to unbutton them. After being left alone for 10 min while the retested outside, they came back and set me free and said I tested negative the second time. They told me lotions from bath and body works give false positives (I don't use that brand).Lois Halbert
After being stopped by TSA for long periods several times over the years, I think I have finally figured out what is causing my triggering alarms for explosives. Before I go through security I often go into the restroom. The glycerin in the handsoaps at the airports trigger it. I have tested it twice now and nothing causes a problem if I don't wash my hands, use hand sanitizers, or hand lotions before going through security. I'm about to test it again in the future.
Gives you kind of a sense of how moronic our "security" is.
Bovard continues:
Millions of airline passengers use hand sanitizer every week. Yet, TSA entitles itself to treat anyone who triggers false alerts more intrusively than the Pentagon was allowed in 2013 to treat accused enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay. A Justice Department lawyer, Edward Himmelfarb, told a federal judge that intrusive searches at Gitmo were no big deal: "It's basically like a TSA ... supplemental search ... The genital area is touched through the clothing with a flat hand, the way the TSA does." Federal judge Royce Lamberth ordered "the military to stop touching the groins of detainees," the New York Times reported.
Lamberth's decision got overturned, but for a while -- yes, that's right -- American citizens for whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing were being treated worse than enemy combatants held at Guantanamo.
Bovard:
TSA's Federal Register self-vindication omitted any mention of treating American travelers like Gitmo detainees. But even 44,000 words of bureaucratic wind cannot blow away the fact that TSA continues to be far more effective at hassling travelers than at assuring airline safety.
Sommer Gentry gets it right:
Sommer Gentry
Associate professor at United States Naval Academy
The point is that the secondary search is punitive, violent, traumatizing, and conducted without the slightest acknowledgment or care for the humanity of the search victim. I experienced worse treatment at the hands of the TSA; the TSA inserted a foreign object into my body and then claimed in a euphemism-filled letter after I complained about this rape to my congressman that it's difficult to search the lower torso without sexually abusing passengers. Considering the TSA has never, ever located an explosive on a passenger, including when the passenger had C4 in his luggage, the least they can do is stop traumatizing and violating people whose only crime was to buy an airline ticket.
My TSA fun, courtesy of my government gropenfrau, Thedala Magee -- with First Amendment ninja Marc Randazza's biting and comprehensive defense of my civil liberties (and, in turn, all of ours).
And my failed piece asking Americans to stand up for our civil liberties.
And finally, Bovard and I shared a few tweets:
@amyalkon
@JimBovard Thank you ... Appreciate so much that you aren't one of the glassy-eyed sheep, simply complying and taking it.@JimBovard
@amyalkon Thanks! I appreciate the shots you've taken at TSA. No sheep - more of a surly SOB who kept telling them how idiotic they were@amyalkon
@JimBovard Thank you -- and I'm all for surly civil-liberties-defending SOBs!
Apparently, when I fly my name changes to "Randomly Selected".
I'm guessing this is because it's low-effort and low-risk for the TSA deltas. I'm white, male, look like what I am (a professional), and therefore not likely to pitch a fit.
Lastango at March 22, 2016 12:34 AM
The problem is not that searches are unpleasant or intimate or degrading. I'm sorry, but it's a sad fact of life that searches for weapons have to be that way if they are to be effective. Ask any prison guard.
The problem is that such searches are being performed based on faulty, inaccurate and sometimes plain laughable reasons - and, as some commenters note, far too often, it would seem, not for the purpose of security, but to punish or inconvenience travelers who present the TSA staff with opposition, question or demean their theatrical performances or generally offend their idea of themselves. And sometimes - let's be plain, there is plenty of evidence - for nothing more than base sexual or criminal motivations - to grope and ogle at people or steal their stuff.
Part of this is what I have referred to here before as the 'normalization of deviation' - the response to anomalies in the system has now become normalized, systematized and routine. This detector alarms - perform this procedure. Find object X - perform procedure Y. All observation, curiosity and independent thought is purposely suppressed, and the workers become nothing more than automatonic drones. This is a good way to make sure that a lost bolt does not end up in a box of Puffy Sugar Bombs. But it is a very bad way to detect and negate a flexible, mobile and malevolent threat system, like a terrorist organization.
This process inevitably leads to what amounts to fetishization of the process itself, and a complete loss of appreciation of the purposes for which it was instituted. So we end up with the outcome I described below, of the 'security' complex at DIA where hundreds and hundreds of people are trapped in what amounts to a custom-designed killing zone in order that the TSA may more-efficiently-perform its theatrical performance.
The TSA now resembles nothing so much as a South Seas cargo cult - ritualistic movements and actions performed in the unsupported belief that certain outcomes will follow. The organization becomes so obsessed with its cultic observances that actual threats are not observed.
Such environments are perfect magnets for what Professor Stanley Milgram christened the 'agentic' personality - the kind of people who are either predisposed to follow instructions without deviation, or who are easily trained to do so. These are the people who deny their own agency in what they do - it's my job. I'm just following the rules. The process is working, I just perform it, and the more-perfectly I perform the process, the more-perfectly it will work.
They are also the most-easily-defeated, by two types of people. People who want to defeat the purpose of the process can easily do so - constant testing shows that actual security threats like guns and bombs make it past the TSA almost all of the time. And people who want to defeat the process for their own personal reasons - to steal, to assault, to ogle, or just to play out their own authoritarian or agentic personality traits - can likewise easily do so. Abundant evidence of these sorts of criminal and pathological behaviors by TSA staff also exists.
Professor Milgram's classic 'obedience' experiments clearly showed just how quickly and easily many people will become aggressive and punitive towards others - even total strangers - when they appear to fail, resist or question a stated process which has been presented as positive, necessary or 'good' - to the point where punishment, vengeance and adherence to the 'procedure' become the primary goal and the original purpose has been long-forgotten. We should hardly be surprised that the TSA appears to have headed down this road. If it were not so completely real, and if Professor Milgram were not deceased, you would almost think that it was another of his experiments.
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 22, 2016 3:29 AM
And now we see the inevitable result: Today's bombs in Brussels were placed amidst the passengers waiting to check in. So now what: do they move TSA into the parking lot?
The solution never was security checks before boarding planes, or at least, that is a very last measure. The real solution is separation. Immigration from barbaric countries does not need to exist. Let them first become civilized.
Until a country can prove that they meet minimum civilized standards (human rights, justice, etc.), there should simply be no interaction: no trade, no immigration, no aid, nothing.
a_random_guy at March 22, 2016 3:53 AM
a_random_guy - exactly. I'm sure that the Belgian equivalent of the TSA was performing their process flawlessly right up to the very instant that the bombs went off right outside.
Even this obvious and self-evident disconnect is completely lost on governments - already I see the promises from various European governments that airport security will be 'tightened up'. In other words, it failed completely, but we'll do more of it!
At this point, we could be strip- and cavity-searching every passenger and requiring them to fly wearing only hospital gowns, and it would not change a thing. The terrorists have shown that they have moved on from the current security response. But I suspect that governments never will. I have to fly again next week, I will bet that the exact-same process will still be in place, and the TSA drones will be dutifully performing it. I'm just glad that it's not DIA this time.
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 22, 2016 4:35 AM
Reminder: they are charlatans.
Radwaste at March 22, 2016 5:23 AM
The problem is not that searches are unpleasant or intimate or degrading. I'm sorry, but it's a sad fact of life that searches for weapons have to be that way if they are to be effective. Ask any prison guard.
Remind me again, what crime have I committed and when was I found guilty? flying is not a crime.
And like prison guards, I can probably subvert a TSA employee with minimal effort and then I can get pretty much anything I like past the "security" check point.
In fact, it is alleged that the Brussels' airport bombing occurred in the departure terminal. Great job, there, Poindexter.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 22, 2016 7:55 AM
Thanks, Amy! Your choice of pull quotes is superb - even I am damn near persuaded on this issue.
Jim Bovard at March 22, 2016 9:10 AM
@ IDA - my bad, I was not clear.
What I should have said was that weapons searches - when justified by real and meaningful suspicions - have to be that way, else they are worse than useless.
The point being that many TSA weapons 'searches' - like the on performed on me that I described below - are triggered by no real or meaningful suspicions. The vast majority are triggered by 'false positives', which are inherent in the equipment and training of the TSA system, or simply done at random. Or - as has been made quite clear - to satisfy the criminal or perverted desires of TSA staff.
In their crazed obsession with appearing to be unprejudiced and non-judgmental - the obsession which causes them to treat an 87-year-old nun in a wheelchair and a 19-year-old male Syrian as though there is Absolutely No Difference Between Them, We Treat Everybody Exactly The Same, No Prejudice Here - they have come to the point where they are abusing and assaulting untold myriads of innocent citizens. They truly believe - or act as though - terrorists are distributed entirely-randomly throughout the population and that no judgment can possibly be made about somebody's likelihood of being a terrorist based on appearance, ethnicity, origin, religion or behavior. Only a dumb-ass machine can reliably spot a terrorist, according to the TSA - to try and use intelligence and human skills to do so invites Prejudice, and Racism, and Islamophobia, and Othering, and might Offend People. The TSA and their political masters are so afraid of being accused of any of those things that they would sooner allow the vast majority of the travelling public to be subjected to this continual and repeated abuse to avoid it. This invites and encourages the kind of blind stupidity that leads inevitably to the tragedy we see today, and to many more just like it.
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 22, 2016 9:36 AM
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