TSAers don't like new pat-downs either. My heart bleeds.

Looks like many TSA workers don't like doing the new invasive pat-downs any more than Americans like being subjected to them. Those interviewed say that it's hurting their morale and it makes them uncomfortable to have to touch other people.

Hallelujah. This makes me all the more determined to opt out this week, if they're planning on making me go through the naked picture scanner.

Now, I don't approve of verbally abusing TSA staff or accusing some bored, disgusted worker of sexual molestation (unless their touching of private areas is intended to cause humiliation or intimidation, which I don't see as unlikely: the new procedures were designed to get more people to acquiesce to naked imaging), since irrational behavior will only weaken your position and garner sympathy for them. In fact, I'm surprised that people who say disrespectful things to them don't get immediately dogpiled by a bunch of blue pseudopolice uniforms and escorted away. Or maybe they are arrested discreetly and we haven't heard anything from the travellers because they're still in airport Gitmos. That'd be less surprising.


I generally like to deal with individuals as individuals rather than as stereotypes or representative of their entire group. One person doesn't deserve disrespect just because someone in a similar costume is behaving inappropriately. But what a TSA staff member is doing is a very personal violation of an individual's body, and it seems the best way of combating their worthless intrusion is on the individual level: to express some modicum of control over your person and choose the non-default search option, and to look the person who is to violate you in the eye so it's harder for them to ignore your humanity. Make it obvious that their intrusion is worthless.

Security theater is not intended to find actually dangerous people. It is to put on a show to convince gullible people that they are doing 'something' about all these terrorists, starting with the agents themselves who are easily brainwashed into thinking that their policies are worthwhile and honorable. But they're not, and Americans are realizing this, and that's why we're rebelling.

So, if you're travelling by commercial plane this holiday season, remember: no matter what the TSA does to you, it can't be as humiliating as being a TSA agent.

If I had to fly, I'd simply tell the TSA goon he hasn't found it yet, hotter, colder, make him rub my sack with the back of his hand for like 10 minutes just to be an asshole about it.

He can go home and cry after he gets me off.

Do the Meg Ryan scene from "When Harry Met Sally"

If something is to be done about the TSA it better be soon, because things could get even worse....

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fe...yees_can_vote_on_unio.html?hpid=news-col-blog

Get ready for the aggravation, condescension and prices to go shooting up at the airport.

My God, these people need a lesson in reaganomics so bad.

If we had a President with balls that would fire the lot of them when they went on strike you mean. I'm certain the Mocha Messiah would be picketing right along side of them.

A cop isn't allowed to do these so called patdowns without probable cause. Why is TSA allowed to?

Because you're choosing to waive your rights so you can get on that airplane.

9-11 changed everything. Now it's all the more obvious that the goal of government employees is not to protect your rights, but to strip you of them.

At this point travelers should tell TSOs that "it takes monsters to carry out monstrous policies. If you're not one, quit." And fucking bullshit she's a professional. Professionals adhere to a code of ethics. What possible code of ethics could condone this?

Yep. Be civil to them until they're not civil to you. And not civil definitely includes these patdowns.
...

Travelers should actually tell them this, to their faces.

One should reply "not to your victims there isn't."

"So don't come to work. If you're actually a decent human being, quit. The fact that you don't makes it obvious you are a homosexual rapist at heart."

Another good one to tell them to their faces.

Oh yeah? Go fuck yourself, Poindexter.

I bet the president would be suing the TSA if someone told him illegal aliens were getting the pat-downs...

The sad thing is TSA and the government seem to making this stuff up as they go. They are being too reactive instead of proactive.

^This article may explain their reasoning for constantly changing the procedures at the security checkpoint...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101121/ap_on_re_us/us_airport_security_backlash

They also play games. They say one thing on the TSA web site and its totally different at the airport. The TSA site said they would not ask me to remove my knee brace. I get to the airport and they say,"I can tell you right now, if you take that knee brace off things are going to go a whole lot easier on you". Technically they did not ask me to remove my brace but WTF?
Another place I was told to go through the metal detector with my knee brace on (I was wearing shorts) and when the alarm went off, here came two of them running over there like fucking tweedle dee and tweedle dumb

No it is not the last line against terror. The last line is made of good Americans with a "let's roll" attitude. Not bureaucrats thinking up even more useless ways to pretend to fight terrorists by harassing innocent people.

Robotech Master, the problem is these so called security checks are not doing anything to make us safer. The scanning machines we are using cannot identify someone who has explosive devices say in a body cavity. Do you think would be terrorists don't already know that?

All TSA does is react and that is not only not making us safer but creating ridiculous inconvienances as well as downright inappropriate actions towards all flying passengers.

These things are designed to make it look like the government is doing something.

If our country and government was seriously about making air travel safer they would bring in advisors from Israel who have had to deal terrorism for decades now.

There are no TSA agents in my driveway that search me before I get in my truck.

I sent up some from Atlanta. They are all hot females - hope that's okay!

I'd love to see that number broken down. All you see when you look at it is "4.8 million firearms!!!!11 " In reality, I bet it's a FEW firearms, a bunch of street-legal pocket knives, and 4.79 million nail clippers.

They confiscate most cigarette lighters.

That could account for the lion's share of your "prohibited items".

Before I get negrepped to hell, I'm not saying I support it, just showing you why the TSA is allowed to.

US v. Davis, 9th Circuit Court, 1973

“An airport screening search is reasonable if: (1) it is no more extensive or
intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives; (2) it is confined in good faith to that purpose; and (3) passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly.”

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2005/06/07/0430243.pdf

It's a bullshit ruling. It boils down to "you have to sign away your 4th Amendment rights to do a perfectly normal and legal activity".

Want to enter a government building? No 4th Amendment for you.
Want to ride on a privately owned aircraft? No 4th Amendment for you.
Want to drive? No 4th Amendment for you.

What's next? We expand that list? Want to get a book from the library? Go to the doctor? Go outside your house? Well, you can, but then the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to you. That's a real slippery slope based on "security" and government will abuse it.

If they want to search based on specific threats and intelligence, that's one thing, but this blanket infringement of the 4th Amendment "just in case" is out of control.

Well the biggest problem is that the $10,000 fine that can be levied for failure to go through the checkpoint is in direct violation of that ruling.

Now we know you are lying. TSA doesn't hire hot females.

More links:

Guy strips down to bicycle shorts, is told to put clothes back on so that he can be "properly patted down"

Pat-down of man with urostomy bag leaves traveller covered in urine

That decision needs to be challenged. It comes from the 9th Circus. The majority of their decisions are overturned.

I also see no reasonable reason touch and grope most anyone's genitalia. There is absolutely no justifiable reason to have amputees remove their prosthetics. There is also no reason to breast cancer survivors remove their fake breasts.

If passengers are being subjected to this crap, then people like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein should as well.

These TSA agents are assaulting passengers. Passengers have seen their rights disappear. I know that when I'm a passenger if I am forced into one of the gripes that TSA agents can plan on having 911 called on them.

Simply put, there is no justification for what the TSA is doing. There is no justification for exposing travelers to high doses of radiation by a machine that is unable to identify explosive devices in the body cavity. There are machines that can identify explosives that do not expose travelers to the levels of radiation they are being subjected to now.

Again we could learn a lot from Israel who has had to deal with terrorists for decades.

I'm surprised the slightly higher than minimum wage TSA agents didn't confiscate the passengers colostomy bags as forbidden liquid on a flight.

TSA, and the US government are wrong for pulling this shit. It does nothing to make our air travel safer. The government knows this too. All of us need to be communicating our anger over this with our members of Congress until this ridiculous bullshit is stopped.

Is that an implied waiver, or something that I am signing?

Implied and procedural, plus I think it's in the fine print on your ticket.

It's the same way your county courthouse makes you go through the process to go into the building. You aren't signing it away, but you can't go into the building otherwise.

I wonder though if someone could sue. Citizens are required to go to the courthouse to do certain things (pay property taxes, show up for court, serve on juries, register to vote) and can't opt out of those things. I can choose not to fly, but I can't choose not to show up for jury duty. And since I'm required to show up to court, it isn't exactly voluntary for me to be subjected to the screening, so my 4th Amendment rights are violated.