Pointless "Security" With A Sex Offender Flair: TSA Gropedowns Are Now More "Intimate" -- On Your 12-Year-Old
The TSA part of this video is only 3 minutes -- the first three minutes. (I saw the whole sickeningly comprehensive search of this child yesterday.)
Let's be clear: As I've noted many times before, the TSA is not about security. Beyond the lobbyist and all the others cleaning up from the equipment sales to the TSA, the TSA is about showing the public who's got the power -- and yes, it's the man touching your 12-year-old's genitals.
This is the job you get if you're a child molester who has yet to be caught and charged.
Do we really think there's any reason to believe this 12-year-old is hiding an incendiary device in his armpits -- checked twice by this Grandpa Grope-o? (And what kind of person gets a job where they touch strangers' balls all day? Even if you aren't a molester, it seems you don't have enough going for you -- aren't smart enough or good enough at anything -- that you can do something else of value to make money.)
By the way, this kid has Sensory Processing Disorder (an autism spectrum disorder that can make a simple touch -- or sounds that most of us find no big deal -- excruciating). It's what leads kids with autism to, for example, hear (and go a little crazy from) the buzzing of fluorescent lights or to react to a label in clothing like a pony reacts to a burr under its saddle. A kid who has this is not a kid who should be frivolously groped by a strange man at the airport in order to take an airplane trip with his mom.
What we're doing is crumpling up our rights at the airport door -- and for what? So every single person traveling can be treated as if they're entering prison -- spread 'em! -- to do their term for armed robbery, and might be carrying a weapon?
Meaningful security is probable cause-based security. I wrote about this here.
Oh, and if you don't quite buy into the notion that the TSA is really about security theater and showing you who has the power, check out something Jonathan Corbett (who showed how easy it is to defeat the scanners) notes about the new more invasive gropedowns:
First, if you're getting a pat-down because you alarmed the body scanner, it's going to be a full-body pat-down despite the fact that the scanners were specifically designed to point out the specific area of the body upon which an item was detected.
Yes, that's right: "despite the fact that the scanners were specifically designed to point out the specific area of the body upon which an item was detected."
The reality is, anyone smart enough to make it in this blog comments section -- without crawling under their desk and sobbing -- is smart enough to make get some device onto a plane. Of course, you probably wouldn't go through the TSA (despite their 95% failure rate) but through the vast security holes in food delivery and the service end of the airport.
via @rckiser
It's all about the cognitive burden.
Crid at March 29, 2017 5:15 AM
I couldn't find "cognitive burden" on Google, but I did find "cognitive load." Wiki describes it as, "the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory."
So, the goal of the TSA is to reduce the amount of mental effort that it's "officers" have to put in to do their jobs? They want them to be unthinking automatons? As taxpayers, we're paying for them to have a training program at FLETC. And this training program won't include teaching them to think? So, we've gone from Sherlock Holmes as the model detective to Barney Fife?
Conan the Grammarian at March 29, 2017 6:30 AM
"First, if you're getting a pat-down because you alarmed the body scanner, it's going to be a full-body pat-down despite the fact that the scanners were specifically designed to point out the specific area of the body upon which an item was detected."
It's actually worse than that. The body scanner didn't alert on the kid at all. What happened was that he forgot to take his laptop out of his carry-on bag. An easily rectifiable error -- take the laptop out, run it through again. Problem solved. There was no reason to do a pat-down on him in the first place.
Cousin Dave at March 29, 2017 7:42 AM
What Cousin Dave said. As I've remarked here before, much of what the TSA inflicts on citizens consists of using their process as punishment for failing to comply with their insane and ineffective security theater. It has little or nothing to do with actual security.
As far as what CtG commented, yes, they actually do want their 'officers' (they are not 'officers' according to any normal definition, but let that pass) to do as little thinking as possible. Just look at the parts of their protocols that have been leaked - their aim appears to be to formulate the work in such a way that it could be done by automatons. And - given the general quality of their staff - I'm not surprised. I've come across some exceptions, but I wouldn't rely on most TSA employees I have met to walk and chew gum at the same time. They may be sending them to FLETC and similar places, but apparently they also send them to some special school where every spark of intelligence, initiative, logical thinking, courtesy and common sense is drilled out of them. There must also be a special school they take that teaches them how to neglect personal grooming and dress, since so many of them look like uniformed street people.
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 29, 2017 8:40 AM
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2017/03/28/canadian-airport-employees-idd-as-isis-supporters-report
But let's worry about the 12 year olds.
Steamer at March 29, 2017 8:41 AM
I read some more news coverage, and it's now perfectly plain to me what happened.
Kid made this trivial and easily-rectified error (left laptop in bag). TSA goons gave the kid a hard time and upset him. His mother steps in to stand up for her kid. TSA goons retaliate with their favorite response - 'additional checks', which just happened to take 40 minutes to complete. Result - the family missed their flight. That was the goal. Retaliation. Nothing to do with security at all.
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 29, 2017 10:40 AM
I agree entirely that this all idiot security theater and a way to train the public to submit to government.
In Grandpa Grope-o's defense though, the economy is still sour for many people, it is legal, TSA *supposedly* does something good by securing plaines, it pays well, is low skill, can be done by retirees, carries benefits, hey it's actually a pretty awesome job.
I have far more ethical complaints for young, healthy, single, highly educated, can get jobs anywhere engineers who go to work for Uber, a very ethically challenged company that breaks city and state laws, refuses to pay taxes, or institute fingerprinting or background checks, used misleading ads and policies to exploit labor, under insures drivers, employs criminals background checks would have caught, and floods the streets with cars causing traffic jams and air pollution. What the fuck is up with those engineers, and what is being taught these days in engineering school about ethics? Get a real job kids.
At least to Grandpa way of thinking, his search of the kid is probably more accurate than the scanner and so is far more likely to catch terrorists than the scanner.
Not that what Grandpa is doing is good, but the focus of course, should not be on his search, but on TSA itself and our legislators.
jerry at March 29, 2017 10:41 AM
> In Grandpa Grope-o's defense though,
> the economy is still sour for many
> people, it is legal, TSA *supposedly*
> does something good by securing
> plaines, it pays well, is low skill,
> can be done by retirees, carries
> benefits, hey it's actually a
> pretty awesome job.
Forgive the spelling error... I had one of those in January, m'self.
This paragraph still has more problems than I can count.
Crid at March 29, 2017 12:16 PM
Not sure where you get that Über "floods the streets with cars", jerry, but that's another topic.
On topic.
Radwaste at March 29, 2017 12:49 PM
When I was a teenager my mother got a bunch of family photos from her grandmothers estate. I was stunned to find a bunch of pictures of family members in uniform, Brown-shirted NAZI SA Uniforms. Bit of a shock for a red-blooded patriotic American boy. I spent a great deal of time soul-searching and studying and talking to another relative who had lived in Germany up till 1938 (she was the Bund Deutsche Mädel or BMD, the female version of the Hitler Youth).
I came to realize that these family members were not necessarily evil (never met them, they might have been but probably not) but they had simply been sold an evil idea. The idea that if they did those evil things they could buy paradise for their children and grand-children. The idea that in the new world trey were building there would be no poverty, no hunger, no want.
From the Deathcamps to the Gulags to the NSA/CIA/TSA etc. etc. there is the idea that they can become the Sin-Eaters. The idea that a small number of people can do vile, evil things and thereby keep the rest of the people pure. They can do the evil that needs to be done and the reward for that sacrifice will be the perfect world their leaders have said they can have.
Think the TSA or the CIA are not in the same league wit the SS or the Gestapo or the NKVD? Remember that the Nazi's didn't start out with the deathcamps. They started out beating up protesters and communists, moved onto sterilizing mental defectives and the handicapped, it was only years later that the exterminations began.
Today in America we throw out the Constitution for DUI checkpoints, Anti-Terrorist Theater, we allow a major American city, Boston no less, to be locked down and searched block by block, house by house to find a couple of knuckleheads who built a crude bomb. We as a people are being divided by groups like BLM, La Raza, Antifa and others who advocate violence and terrorism to achieve their goals and those who would fight them with extra-Constitutional actions which will inevitably result in everyone's rights being diminished or outright eliminated. How long before 'Reeducation camps' for the 'The Deplorables' or 'Climate Deniers' or 'Privileged White Cis-Gendered Males' are being advocated? How long before Americans who have grown weary of violence and bloodshed call for the preemptive elimination of those so-called 'Progressive' groups who engage in it? Or has anyone been on Facebook and Youtube and seen such calls already.
I fear America is already dead and we are fighting over her corpse and that fight is going to get worse and worse. Rome did not collapse in a day either and her people did not enjoy the death-throes.
Warhawke223 at March 29, 2017 12:56 PM
"I fear America is already dead"
If you mean America, the nation, no.
If you mean **"AMERICA!"** the red-white-and-blue Chauncy Allcock of countries dominating Earth's lesser sissified nations, especially the French and the red/yellow/brown commie/socialist menace, then yes, because it never existed except in propaganda and John Birch Society pamphlets.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 29, 2017 1:09 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailing-new-york-transportation.html?_r=0
also
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/is-uber-good-or-bad-for-the-environment
But it's their basic modus operandi: barrier to entry for new drivers is so low (5, 10 year old car or newer; no set hours; pay the same day; no insurance required; up to $500 bonus for driving) that naturally it brings in huge amounts of drivers, who are then told immediately by uber and lyft where the best places to drive are, downtown, the shopping and entertainment districts, etc.) So those areas are certainly heavily impacted with addition new uber and lyft cars.
But you're right, that's for another thread. I mentioned uber here, only as a response to Amy's "shaming" of Grandpa for taking a perfectly legal job that does something Amy considers (me too) ugly and unsocial.
But given that it's legal, I am curious, what is the libertarian view on taking that job.
(Hey Crid, keep being Crid. When's your next flounce?)
jerry at March 29, 2017 1:10 PM
Hi. What's a flounce?
Crid at March 29, 2017 3:15 PM
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Flounce
Flounce
When a member of an online community announces they are leaving, usually after a protracted disagreement with other members of the community.
"I'm gone. You all enjoy your little discussions."
jerry at March 29, 2017 3:23 PM
When did I ever flounce? Look, if you're lonely---
> In Grandpa Grope-o's defense though,
> the economy is still sour for many
> people
This sounds like someone is winding up to offer excuses...
> it is legal
... Like that. There are a lot of things that are legal that I don't want people to do, and which resent having to judge against abject criminality as a baseline appraisal.
> TSA *supposedly* does something
> good by securing plaines
But I know their efforts are a sham. And I'm not interested in honoring or sustaining such intrusive, humiliating fictions just so high school dropouts can by the salty snacks necessary to speed the cardio-vascular collapse for which taxpayers will be required to provide medical response.
> it pays well
That's MY MONEY. And YOURS. Do you yourself?
> is low skill
How does that make it admirable?
> can be done by retirees
What's the advantage of that? Are you bringing people out of retirement to do it?
> carries benefits
Which, again, you and I pay for. I really don't understand the tone of buddy-buddy camaraderie in your paragraph.
> hey it's actually a
> pretty awesome job.
Unless, "hey," you think there's something awesome to paying retirees to grope-O your own wife and daughters. With "benefits."
So, eight problems.
Crid at March 29, 2017 4:10 PM
I resent, BUY snacks, HEAR yourself
Etc. Computers, right?
Crid at March 29, 2017 4:18 PM
When have you flounced? I was under the impression that as head drama queen here, you've flounced at least half a dozen times in the past few years. My apologies for my mistaken impression.
> There are a lot of things that are legal that I don't want people to do,
Well, aren't you the SJW.
jerry at March 29, 2017 4:28 PM
"> There are a lot of things that are legal that I don't want people to do,
Well, aren't you the SJW."
Or Christian, Muslim, anti-abortionist, Klan member, BLM member, etc etc ad nauseum.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 29, 2017 4:47 PM
Thank god the TSA doesn't have guns.
Somebody remind me of the policy - if you're not sure who is in the car you're chasing, just go ahead and start shooting, because badge, right?
Whoopsie doodle.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 29, 2017 5:31 PM
> Or Christian, Muslim, anti-
> abortionist, Klan member, BLM
> member, etc etc ad nauseum.
Well, over the years I've strongly supported each of those in some context or another... Except the Klan (I'm from Indiana, and we know the horrors they can wreak).
And yes, I am nauseated.
Crid at March 29, 2017 5:58 PM
And I'm supposed to remedy that with my tax money giving Grandpa a no-thinking job groping people at the airport? The economy's still sour for me too.
In something like 90% of the tests run against the TSA, Grandpa Grope-o and his colleeagues have failed to detect pistols, bombs, knives, and other weapons - they very job for which they were hired. They have one job!
That ain't securing a damned thing. At a 90% fail rate, you're statistically equally in danger flying on a secured "plaine" versus an unsecured one.
It pays well because the government is spending your money on it. And getting nothing for you in the process. You get no safety on your "plaine," you have less money in your paycheck, a longer line at the airport, and a potential sex predator groping you before you squeeze yourself onto the sardine can modern air travel calls a plane.
It can be done by retirees? Only if those retirees are semi-literate morons who did a no-skill job when employed. Any semi-intellegent retiree is going to go stir crazy doing that job.
It's a "pretty awesome job" if you have the intelligence of a chimpanzee and your other options are squeegee guy or sign guy.
Uber provides a secure (and safe) ride for people tired of filthy taxis, dangerous Third-World drivers, and high fares. In addition, Uber provides instant feedback opportunities for both drivers and passengers to ensure a pleasant experience.
And the internal combustion engine, invented by "those engineers" brought the world a level of mobility and economic freedom unimaginable in the days of horse-drawn buggies.
In addition, the automobile industry provided low skill workers with real jobs paid for by selling a product, not robbing taxpayers; and good retirement benefits that didn't require Grandpa to fondle teenagers at the airport in order to eat.
Just because Grandpa doesn't trust technology doesn't mean it's not accurate. That scanner is going to catch far more terrorists than an old man rubbing his mitts over some kid's balls.
Conan the Grammarian at March 29, 2017 6:09 PM
"We as a people are being divided by groups like BLM, La Raza, Antifa and others who advocate violence and terrorism to achieve their goals and those who would fight them with extra-Constitutional actions which will inevitably result in everyone's rights being diminished or outright eliminated."
"Those who would fight them" do so because they know there is a vested interest in establishing and maintaining a civil "cold war" between the entitled and workers.
Note the outcry over the Executive Order banning travel from some countries - when it cited existing law chapter and verse.
Radwaste at March 29, 2017 8:27 PM
Conan,
I dislike Grandpa's job too.
The point was made in response to Amy saying
> And what kind of person gets a job where they touch strangers' balls all day? Even if you aren't a molester, it seems you don't have enough going for you -- aren't smart enough or good enough at anything -- that you can do something else of value to make money
My point is that to Grandpa, it seems like a useful, non-theater, and very ethical job.
If we dislike that, it's not Grandpa we should be shaming, it's the TSA.
> Just because Grandpa doesn't trust technology doesn't mean it's not accurate. That scanner is going to catch far more terrorists than an old man rubbing his mitts over some kid's balls.
That's only half true. As Amy shows, it's easy to get past the scanners. So it's likely a good pat down will catch more terrorists than scanners. The questions have always been do we need to subject Timmy and Grandma to the scanners and pat downs or can we use profiling. And are the scanners, safe and effective, and reasonably respectful of privacy?
So far it's mostly clear that we should use profiling, except we can't because of political correctness. And that the scanners started off woeful on all three counts.
Grandpa took a job that is legal, that according to what he has been told provides a more secure airplane, which is a social good, that involves him doing a dirty job in the most ethical manner he can, and the video seems to show he does that.
I don't see the point of shaming Grandpa.
I don't understand how shaming Grandpa for taking that job can align with so called libertarianism to the extent I understand it, which is why I said that above:
> given that it's legal, I am curious, what is the libertarian view on taking that job.
jerry at March 29, 2017 9:01 PM
If it's okay to shame this guy for taking this job, then certainly it's okay to shame Uber engineers for taking their jobs.
Both jobs are legal and to the holder seem ethical and providing a societal good.
To many external viewers, both jobs have many ethical problems and provide societal bads.
jerry at March 29, 2017 10:24 PM
There are ethical problems and societal bads which compel my participation whether I choose them or not and which are paid for with my tax dollars (collected, essentially, at gunpoint) and there are other ethical problems and societal bads involving only those who choose to be engage with them.
Guess which kind I think are worse? —
You're looping the arguments, but everyone's been very clear. What's up?
Postscript: Before proofreading, I misspelled there as there their two times, but that was Cousin Dave's fault.
Crid at March 29, 2017 11:01 PM
Extended Postscript: …Unless you *don't* think all the morality in a culture is spread evenly amongst its member, in which case I have some questions about your comments.
Crid at March 29, 2017 11:02 PM
Missed this:
> shaming Grandpa for taking
> that job can align with so
> called libertarianism to
> the extent I understand it
What's libertarian about a government job compelling citizens to get felt up, pointlessly, at the their own expense?
I have this theory that from the most humble of blog commenters as well as the most successful natinoal columnists, "libertarianism" is so unfamiliar the they think they can ascribe any characteristics they want to it, and they assume their readers won't know the difference either.
This is not the case.
Crid at March 29, 2017 11:09 PM
"I came to realize that these family members were not necessarily evil (never met them, they might have been but probably not) but they had simply been sold an evil idea. The idea that if they did those evil things they could buy paradise for their children and grand-children. The idea that in the new world trey were building there would be no poverty, no hunger, no want."
How is it that someone can look at a few pictures of people in uniform, and then immediately see into their souls, read their minds, their entire life history, and their inner most thoughts and desires?
I got news for you bub. Only about five percent of Germans were even members of the Nazi party and a heck of a lot more than that ended up wearing a uniform and figting and dying for a cause they didnt necessarily support.
One of the horrible side effects of being raised a clueless American. You assume that because everything in your life is competely voluntary, that this is the way the world has always worked and everyone else has your perspective, and your freedom of choice.
Unfortunately the Nazi's, on the grand scale of human history, were and are, pretty much the norm. Hitler was a Piker compared to Stalin, who wiped out all of my grandmothers older siblings, and about 20 million more of his own people.
Read up a little on Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Then maybe you will understand why Conan, Crid, and a few others aren't too excited about a few Muslim terrorists.
The historical aberration my friend, is 21st century America.
.
Isab at March 29, 2017 11:15 PM
Jerry said:
> In Grossvater Grope-o's defense though,
> the economy is still sour for many
> people, it is legal, the SS *supposedly*
> does something good by securing
> racial purity, it pays well, is low skill,
> can be done by retirees, carries
> benefits, hey it's actually a
> pretty awesome job.
Oh, sorry. He didn't say that, exactly. But pretty damned close.
Grey Ghost at March 30, 2017 6:11 AM
Here you go.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/tsa-screener-fired-after-woman-gets-loaded-gun-through-security/507192439
llater,
llamas
llamas at March 30, 2017 8:50 AM
So, you'd have everyone patted down?
If the pat down is better than the scanner, why use the scanner at all?
The scanner is more likely to catch a terrorist - with a professional operator at the controls and not the repurposed mall food court workers we have operating them today.
Another advocate of the Israeli model?
We can use profiling, but not with repurposed mall food court workers. We'd need professional security personnel, expertly trained and equipped. We'd need a lot of them since one large American airport handles more traffic each year than all of Israel's airports combined do in that same period.
Profiling is not scalable. It works with smaller crowds, but not with the large crowds bustling through US airports on a daily basis. Can you imagine how long it would take to get through a screening procedure if everyone traveling was patted down or asked three security questions at the gate?
Our education bureaucracy does not teach its students to think or use judgement. It shields them from unpleasantness, instead of teaching them how to confront it. The snowflakes our schools are currently turning out are equipped for rote tasks and repetitive work, and not for making spit second judgements in a real life situations. They need a safe space for an unpleasant speaker on campus or when they encounter public art or graffiti. What do you think they'll do when confronted with a real live terrorist?
Conan the Grammarian at March 31, 2017 12:40 PM
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