Freedom to Travel Event, Part 4

[KBCraig]

Documents reveal toll of TSA patdowns on passengers

BY MICHAEL GRABELL
The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - (KRT) - In the nine months since the Transportation Security Administration scaled back its oft-criticized pat-down search, the number of complaints about the procedure has plummeted.

But recently released documents paint a troubling picture of the patdown's toll on passengers, especially rape victims and breast cancer patients.

In one incident, a Denver airport screener was patting around a passenger's breasts for explosives when the screener felt something strange. "What is this? What is this?" she demanded. The passenger's breasts felt different and couldn't be real.

Embarrassed and in pain, the passenger told her she had just had reconstructive surgery on one breast and still had stitches. She said the screener hurt her when she "yanked and pulled" her breast.

The incident was detailed in one of hundreds of formal complaints about patdowns, which required screeners to check passengers between and below the breasts. The Dallas Morning News recently obtained the complaints under the Freedom of Information Act.

The TSA started using the full-body search in September after the bombing of two Russian airliners by passengers suspected of strapping explosives to their bodies. Short of expensive technology, the TSA said it had no other way to check people for explosives.

But after complaints poured in, the TSA quickly scaled back the policy. Just before Christmas, it limited patdowns to situations in which a metal-detecting wand beeps or there is an "irregularity or anomaly in the person's clothing outline."

The number of complaints has fallen from 427 at its peak in November to 25 in July.

Despite its short lifespan, the patdown did a number on TSA's image.

It was spoofed on "Saturday Night Live" and mocked on the Internet. Soon after, a parody of the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" started circulating with the chorus, "So frisk me to check for clues/Tell me to take off my shoes/Touch me, ask me what you need to know."

The Dallas Morning News requested copies of the complaints in November and received them in late July. The TSA released 135 complaints filed between Oct. 12 and Nov. 20.

They came from 61 airports - from Boise to Boston; from Kona, Hawaii, to Pensacola, Fla. Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles had the most, with nine, eight and six, respectively. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport had four.

The same descriptions were repeated in the complaints: Humiliated. Violated. Degraded. Disgusted. Offended.

Passengers compared it to a mammogram, a criminal search or a sexual assault.

In a September incident, a passenger at Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama complained that she felt she was patted down as a punishment for not taking off her shoes.

"She placed her hands on my breasts (every surface)," she said of the screener. "For me, someone touching me this way is extremely humiliating. My grandfather was a pedophile and he left NONE of his granddaughters untouched."

The names of passengers were blotted out by the TSA to protect their privacy.

In an incident in October, a woman at Kansas City International Airport was asked to remove her prosthetic breast during screening. The TSA employee then swabbed the breast to test for explosives while another screener patted her down. Finally, they called for a supervisor to decide what to do next.

"Although the screeners were just doing their job, she was still embarrassed that she would be asked to have her prosthetic breast removed and patted down by strangers," a TSA customer service representative wrote.

Part of the problem was that the TSA required the patdown for all passengers who couldn't go through metal detectors. That included people in wheelchairs or with hip and knee replacements, leading some passengers to suggest the policy was targeting the disabled. Other passengers felt the policy targeted women and the overweight.

The TSA also required the search for anyone selected by a computerized system that flags passengers who fly one way and book flights at the last minute. While that was intended to catch potential hijackers, the pattern is also common for business travelers and people who must plan trips for sick relatives or funerals.

One passenger, an employee of the Texas attorney general's office, described being patted down before a flight from Austin to Phoenix to visit her 18-year-old son who was in the intensive care unit, awaiting "a possible 11th brain surgery."

"I was already feeling terrible, but the young woman designated to search me began tapping me rather hard with her wand and laughed at me when I complained," she wrote.

The people who complained to the TSA ranged from parents of teenagers to the elderly. They included college professors, attorneys and pharmacists - even flight attendants and pilots.

An America West Airlines captain, flying from Oakland International Airport, complained in November that a screener put his fingers under his shirt collar and made "grasping motions" at his underarms and legs. The screener then brushed the back of his hand against his genitals, he wrote.

"I was humiliated and repulsed," he said. "That a uniformed, working crew member was subjected to this public date-rape is outrageous enough, but I don't want my passengers, who pay my salary, subjected to such abuse either. I'm all for security, but this defies all intelligence."

Some said they wouldn't fly anymore.

"I am currently considering whether or not to cancel my Christmas plans because now I live in fear of being selected for the special search again," a Morehouse College psychology professor wrote.

The TSA acknowledges that the procedure made passengers uncomfortable but says it was deemed necessary to improve its ability to detect explosives. The agency also notes that the percentage of people complaining was low compared to the millions of patdowns.

"Without a doubt, we listened very intently to every complaint that we had," said Andrea McCauley, a TSA spokeswoman. "We had long discussions about how we could make the process more comfortable for everyone."

Since changing the policy, the TSA has installed about two-dozen machines that check passengers' bodies for explosives. The agency says the new technology will further reduce the number of patdowns. It plans to add 100 more machines - costing $160,000 apiece - in airports nationwide by January.

[Kat Kanning]

So are the machines they're putting up the strip search machines?

And some people thought Russell was being excessive in his protest.  That's an awful story, KBCraig!

[KBCraig]

So are the machines they're putting up the strip search machines?

It doesn't say, but it does say they're to detect explosives, so I imagine they're ionizing scanners that "sniff" for certain substances.

And some people thought Russell was being excessive in his protest.  That's an awful story, KBCraig!

That it is. 

[Kat Kanning]

 Passengers With Pull

by Becky Akers
http://www.lewrockwell.com/akers/akers13.html

You knew it would come to this.

A "staff memo" to the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new director recommends that politicians and others of Leviathan's acolytes be exempted from screening at airports. Meanwhile, UPI reports that we "ordinary passengers" will continue to be wanded, questioned, groped, ordered about and insulted.

Hard to believe, in a democracy as dedicated to fairness and equality as ours, that the TSA sees two classes of citizens out there. The first consists of those who work for government and who are therefore credible, honest, responsible, and safe. These folks would never launch a fiery raid, complete with CS gas and tanks, on 90 religious Americans. Thus, we can trust them not to blow up a plane. They wouldn't shoot a 14-year-old boy in the back while killing his dog and his mother, either; obviously, they pose no threat to their fellow passengers. They do not lie about weapons of mass destruction, nor do they authorize unconstitutional wars that slaughter thousands while enriching Leviathan's friends. American aviation should welcome these saints as valued customers.

Then there are the rest of us. We can't be trusted to do much of anything any more, whether it's something as complex as educating our children or as simple as boarding a jet without detonating a bomb. Even our babies are suspect. Those unfortunate enough to share a name with someone on the government's "No-Fly List" are prohibited from flights. Such a coincidence is easier than you might suppose because about 100,000 people have landed on that list. That's right: there are 100,000 "possible terrorists" wandering the country, Americans so dangerous they're barred from airliners.

Ingrid Sanden had hoped to fly home to Washington with one such desperado, her year-old daughter. Presumably, the child had refrained from terrorist activities on the flight from Washington, but her spotless record did not fool the TSA. It intercepted this dangerous duo before they boarded their return flight. The agency allowed neither common sense nor appearances to sway it, as Ingrid sniveled to a reporter for the AP: "It was bizarre. I was hugely pregnant, and I was like, 'We look really threatening.'"

With such terrorists as Ingrid?s infant on the loose, the TSA shouldn't waste time screening politicians. That's why, according to last Friday's Washington Post, the TSA has proposed allowing not only airline pilots but "members of Congress,...Cabinet members, state governors, federal judges, high-ranking military officers, and people with top-secret security clearances" to skip the long lines and humiliation of the checkpoints.

The TSA is an agency in crisis, and its directors come and go with the frequency of rats from the proverbial sinking ship. Edmund Hawley, recipient of the "staff memo," is the fourth American in as many years to head the TSA. In exchange for treating his fellow citizens as potential terrorists, he enjoys a lavish office ? the TSA decorated its headquarters with $500,000-worth of artwork and silk plants ? and parties at which the cheese alone costs $500. We terrorists pay for all this, of course.

It's important to keep the money flowing at an agency with such sumptuous tastes, and the TSA knows who's buttering its bread ? or, in this case, cutting its cheese. Congressmen are unlikely to continue voting the agency funds when its screeners harass them rather than pregnant women. Indeed, both Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) caterwauled when the TSA presumed them as great a threat to American aviation as us serfs. Kennedy was "questioned" and "kept waiting" at an airport five times in one month "because his name appeared on the government's secret 'no-fly' list," as the Washington Post reported on August 20, 2004. Meanwhile, CNN quoted Lewis' aide on his travails: "In one incident, security officials took 'every single item' out of his luggage.... Another time, after he was allowed to board, security officials questioned him at his seat."

Pretty mild compared to what "ordinary passengers" suffer at the TSA's hands. Yet Kennedy and Lewis objected to this abuse as much as we do. The difference is that while we helplessly endure and fume, they aired their complaints at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year. Then they cut the TSA's budget. That grabbed the agency's attention, resulting in the "staff memo" to Hawley with its proposed changes to the bureaucracy's procedures.

Naturally, the TSA is cloaking its motivation for these changes. It wants us to believe that our comfort and convenience, not politicians', inspired the memo and the brainstorming ? I use the term loosely ? behind it. Mark Hatfield, Jr, the TSA's spokesman, delivered this masterpiece of jargon and spin: "The process is designed to stimulate creative thinking and challenge conventional beliefs. In the end, it will allow us to work smarter and better as we secure America's transportation system." Clever use of the comparative, isn't it? As though the agency currently works either smart or well.

The TSA thinks we're dumb enough to swallow this baloney, that we'll believe it regrets its reputation as aviation's Gestapo. And the press is dutifully parroting that line. The changes, AP reports, are "designed to reduce checkpoint hassles for the nation's 2 million [daily] passengers." It's true that the agency is relaxing a few rules. It may allow us to pack scissors and razor blades in carry-on bags. It may even extend that largesse to knives less than 5 inches long. It's also muttering that we can retain rather than remove our shoes at checkpoints. And passengers wearing "tight clothing" may not "need" to be patted-down. But shoes will be shed and pat-downs commence if screeners deem us "suspicious." Because, lo and behold, these cretins still wield the power to pick on whomever they please. Their tyrannical discretion over us remains as strong as ever, though the TSA hopes we'll think otherwise.

Actually, the only significant change the "staff memo" advises is rescuing from the TSA's clutches the politicians who control its budget. And that should surprise no one.

August 19, 2005

Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

[Kat Kanning]

This Is America?
by James R. Otteson
Jotteson@tenhoor.as.ua.edu

Special to TLE
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle332-20050814-02.html

    First Published by the Foundation for Economic Education in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty?July 2002

I have long had an uneasy relationship with airport security. Before September 11, I resisted the demand that I produce a government-issued ID, believing that it smacked too much of the "Papers, please" of the former Soviet Union that Hollywood movies used to mock and we free Americans used to laugh at.

I also used to withhold permission to search my bags. On one occasion before September 11, in the Birmingham, Alabama, airport, the security guard was nonplussed when I answered no to her perfunctory request for permission to search my briefcase. I told her, and then her supervisor, and eventually a man who identified himself as the head of security at the airport, that I am protected by the Constitution from unreasonable searches and seizures. I showed him the Fourth Amendment in the copy of the Constitution I always take with me when I travel. It meant, I said, that unless they had either a warrant or probable cause to suspect me of some crime, they had no right to demand to search my bag. They admitted that they had neither, but, in what was then a shocking revelation and now seems only to have been ahead of its time, the chief of security said: "Well, you have your law; I have mine."

That was before September 11. Since then, all sanity?not to mention quaint notions like individual liberty, rights, and privacy?is fast going the way of the Edsel.

Several weeks ago in the airport in Traverse City, Michigan, my wife, my children of 8, 5, and 3, and I were all "randomly" selected for a complete search of all our belongings. I have never been subject to more humiliating treatment in my life. We all?including my three-year-old son?had to take off our shoes, and hand them over for "inspection." I had to take off my sport coat and belt as well; and I had to hand over my wallet for it to be?well, who knows?

I made my usual protest about protections from unreasonable searches and seizures, but they fell on deaf ears. "We're just following orders," I was told. That was the defense Nazi war criminals used, I said. Following orders does not relieve you of responsibility for your own actions. "Are you calling me a Nazi?" one demanded. "You call me a Nazi again and you're never getting on that plane!"

Whose orders are you following? "The FAA's." The FAA has instructed you to detain and search innocent American citizens and their families? "Where have you been lately, buddy? Haven't you heard of what happened in New York?" But wasn't that tragedy, like most terrorist activities against America, perpetrated by people who were not native-born American citizens, and who were not traveling with their wives and small children?

By this point I was surrounded by approximately half a dozen security guards and several armed National Guardsmen. I was informed that if I did not "shut up," I would be made to "go Greyhound the rest of [my] life." I asked whether I was suspected of a crime. I was informed that asking so many questions "about the Constitution and all" was making me suspicious. "This is America now, buddy. You better shut up and get used to it!"

I asked whether they now intended not only to violate my right to be free of arbitrary searches and seizures, but also my right to free speech. I was then told?through clenched teeth?that if I said "one more word," they were going to "lock me up" and make me "go Greyhound the rest of [my] life." "I have that power," one security guard growled at me ominously.

My children were frightened and on the verge of tears, and my wife, also growing uneasy, implored me to simply let them do what they wanted to do. So after a tense moment I stood aside, escorted by two armed National Guardsmen, while several security guards searched through our bags. I had to stand by silently while all of our things were taken out and examined, no doubt with extra thoroughness to punish me for my impudence. My shirts, pants, and socks were unfolded. A man with no gloves on rifled through my wife's intimates; he even fingered through her feminine products.

After some 20 minutes of searching, they finished, and allowed us to go up the one flight of stairs and walk the 50 feet to our gate, where one of the very same people who had searched us downstairs now searched us again before we were allowed to get on the plane.

Security Reduced

What has become of us? A once free and proud people lets itself be subject to this kind of totalitarian treatment? Searching my children, my wife, and me does not increase security one iota: as anyone with any common sense could see, we are obviously not a threat. Indeed, wasting time searching people like us squanders the opportunity to check people who actually are likely suspects. So it might in fact reduce our level of security.

I flew again just recently. During yet another "random" search of my briefcase, the security guard found a leather thong with weighted ends that I use to hold books open while I read them. (I am a college professor, so this comes in quite handy; my mother gave it to me as a gift many years ago.) The guard decided it could be used as a "blackjack"?apparently a device used to hit people on the head?and called his manager over.

I explained to the manager, as I had explained to the guard, what I use it for. I even got a book out of my briefcase and demonstrated. The manager said, "That's fine. Let him through." "But," the guard protested, "he could use it to knock somebody out!" And he provided his own rather dramatic demonstration of how one might use it. The manager replied, "It's no different from a fist?are you going to cut his arm off? Let him through." I thanked the manager for her common sense.

Thus there is still some of that in airports?but it is increasingly uncommon. And the new security measures being adopted, which do not increase security and instead serve only to inconvenience law-abiding Americans, are quickly stamping out the last vestiges of reasonableness?not to mention liberty?at our airports.

The terrorist threat is real. As September 11 showed, it is all too real. We should not let our political sensibilities trump our good sense when actual lives are at stake. And we should not let our precious liberties?the very liberties that make this country worth dying for?be usurped by petty tyrants who are "just following orders."

The invasive and unconstitutional tactics of such airport security are an alarmingly large step toward creating just the kind of totalitarian society our enemies hope to create. We must not let it continue.

[Michael Fisher]

Passengers With Pull

You knew it would come to this.

A "staff memo" to the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new director recommends that politicians and others of Leviathan's acolytes be exempted from screening at airports. Meanwhile, UPI reports that we "ordinary passengers" will continue to be wanded, questioned, groped, ordered about and insulted.

A ruling class of the "optimates" of ancient Rome or the "Outer Party" of 1984.

It's hard to hold on to hope these days.  But that's all I have left.

[Kat Kanning]

Coming soon:


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Russell Kanning]

Nun Terrorized by Terror Watch link from dvorak

[Kat Kanning]

 Brace Yourself for a Hoot

by Becky Akers
by Becky Akers
http://www.lewrockwell.com/akers/akers20.html

Honestly, does anyone other than politicians and bureaucrats take the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) seriously?

The agency, renowned for its Totally Senseless Actions by Tremendously Stupid Airheads, pulled another boner last Thursday. It seems a woman wearing a metal leg brace triggered the metal detectors at Oakland International Airport. The brace should have been a clue for anyone of even vegetative intelligence. Naturally, that exempts TSA screeners. Lots of terrorists these days are females wearing leg braces, so they pulled her aside for what the Airheads euphemize as a "secondary screening." The lady was late for her flight. She hobbled away before they could feel her up.

Let's pause to savor this Keystone Kops moment. The victim's wearing a brace, there are how many able-bodied screeners standing around paid to suspend their rationality and act as if she's a terrorist because said brace rang alarms, yet when she's had enough of their nonsense, off she stumps, bum leg and all.

It gets better. The TSA announced a manhunt. This shut down both terminals of Oakland's airport. Apparently, screeners were not only unable to stop a terrorist who had difficulty walking, they also failed to note the direction in which she was limping. Oakland's cops joined the search. Even so ? or perhaps because of that ? their quarry was still at large after almost an hour's hunt. We who fear the surveillance state can take heart: it's remarkably easy to elude it.

And it gets still better. During the interval between our heroine's disappearance and the time the search started, five flights left the airport. Eventually, given the "suspect's" complaint that she would miss her plane's imminent departure, it dawned on even the Airheads that perhaps she'd escaped completely: she and her brace were on the loose in the air, aboard one of those flights! And what action do you suppose the Airheads then took to secure American aviation? Yes! They re-screened the passengers from those five flights when they landed. I'd like to have been privy to the decision-making on this one: "Gee, I don't know. Maybe she'll detonate that brace while those planes are airborne. What'll we do?" (Pause for deep thought. Snap of fingers.) "Got it! We'll grope 'em all over again when they land. Every one of 'em, too, on all those flights. No reason I can see to search only women with leg braces. Think of the precedent!" Indeed. Apparently, the TSA can harass us now whether we are trying to enter or escape the gulags masquerading as airports.

As ludicrous as the incident itself is the gravity with which the Airheads are treating the aftermath. Fred Lau, the Federal Security Director for Oakland International, is beating himself up over it, though not for his sheer inanity and utter idiocy. No, he's upset that a paying customer made her flight and deprived screeners of a good grope. Fred intoned to the Bay City News, "The ultimate responsibility rests with me." Then Fred got tough. "At the very least there will be some retraining," he threatened. Psst, Fred: why not include the rudiments of courtesy this time around? Tell your thugs that upon encountering an injured person, one does not take advantage of her handicap to molest her. Rather, one calls for a wheelchair and a redcap to assist her to her gate.

But Fred's best line crackles with the smarts that have made him a Federal Security Director: "We wanted to make sure we did all we could after the incident to make sure people were safe."

Ah, the TSA. A laugh a day as they strip our freedom away.

September 27, 2005

Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

[Russell Kanning]

Hey Kira is going to hit that airport again soon .... maybe to speed up the screening process ..... she could put on a leg brace.

Dreepa .... you could go with the Kartmin "respect my authoritehhh" shorts there also

[JonM]

Perhaps for those who are not ashamed of their bodies, refuse to show ID, and when they pull you aside for a secondary screening, strip nekkid and see how they react to that.

[Dreepa]

I just found out that I may be flying back to SF in two weeks.  If I fly through Oakland I am going to ask to meet Fred.

[Russell Kanning]

Remember the guy in Manchester quit .... maybe this guy will be next

You just have to bring up the leg brace escape .... it just is too easy.

[Pat K]

to bad you couldn't get like a thousand pepole to show up at that airport with a leg brace on.

[KBCraig]

to bad you couldn't get like a thousand pepole to show up at that airport with a leg brace on.

Oooh! Charter flight!