TSA:Full Body Scanners; Taking Away More American's Rights

[dunk50]

Or do not fly and tell the airlines why...

BINGO we have a winner!!

[Happy Mom]

Oregon judge rules it’s OK to strip naked in protest of TSA
By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – Thu, Jul 19, 2012


An Oregon judge ruled on Wednesday that stripping naked at the airport to protest the Transportation Security Administration is a protected form of free speech. In other words, if you're protesting the TSA it's OK to show a little T&A.

The Oregonian reports that 50-year-old John E. Brennan was acquitted of an indecent exposure charge stemming from an April 17 incident during which he took off his clothes while standing at a security checkpoint line at Portland International Airport.

"It is the speech itself that the state is seeking to punish, and that it cannot do," Circuit Judge David Rees said.

Prosecutors in the case argued that Brennan did not say to airport officials that it was a protest until after he had stripped and was told police were on their way to the scene.

Brennan says he stripped after airport screeners asked him to submit to a pat-down inspection.

"I also was aware of the irony of taking off my clothes to protect my privacy," he told the court.

However, Brennan's case doesn't affect nudity laws in other jurisdictions. But it's certainly possible that anyone conducting a similar nude airport protest in the future could cite his case as precedent.

For his part, Brennan said his nude protest was done to show the TSA "that I know my rights," and to illustrate his belief that airport screening devices are already exposing passengers—whether they know it or not.

"They're getting as close to seeing us naked as they can. And we are upping the ante," he told the court. "I wanted to show them it's a two-way street. I don't like a naked picture of me being available."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/ju ... 46590.html

[Happy Mom]

Female senator tweets about 'very uncomfortable' screening by TSA
By Keith Laing - 03/11/13 02:36 PM ET

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) complained Monday she was subject to a very uncomfortable screening by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

McCaskill tweeted about the experience before boarding a flight on Monday.

The senator, who has complained about the TSA's security techniques in the past, tweeted that she was selected for a pat-down and that the experience was not a pleasant one.

"‪Today in my airport screening, test on my hands was positive," McCaskill wrote to her 89,100 followers. "Got private, more aggressive pat down. OMG. #veryuncomfortable‬."

In 2011, McCaskill referred to TSA pat-downs as "love pats" that she said made her not look forward to flying.

"I try to avoid a pat-down at all costs," McCaskill told TSA Administrator John Pistole during a Senate hearing that year. "There are many times women put their hands on me in a way that if it was your daughter or your sister or your wife, you would be upset."

TSA has come under fire for its security procedures from other lawmakers in the past. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he was "detained" by TSA for refusing a pat-down last year.

Additionally, former Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco (R-Texas) accused the agency of targeting him for additional pat-downs after a run-in at the San Antonio airport.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation ... z2NHy0rkea
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http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation ... -screening

[Xenokilla]

I went to NYC about 2 weeks ago for the birth of my nephew so i went through the TSA at both ohare and Newark. At ohare they have the scanners, but they have the old school metal detectors if you want to opt out. i went for the scanner just for fun. Whats nice is that you can see what the TSA see's, there is a screen on the TSA side of the scanner, all thats there is is a button for male/female, when someone steps in they hit the button. all the pops up on the screen is a cartoon like outline of a body, and little yellow blocks where the scanner finds something. its pretty accurate, it found a dudes cufflinks and a ladies zipper on her dress.

In Newark all they had were the metal detectors.

If course a few years ago i got the TSA "Enhanced" pat down, i've been to strip clubs and made less intimate contact with the dancers. I called Donnelly and complained about being molested, fat lot of good that did.

[Happy Mom]

Bulls**t’: It Was Posted on a Humor Site, But This Serious Takedown of the TSA Is Blistering
Dec. 25, 2013 11:30am Sharona Schwartz


In a blistering takedown of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s approach to airport security, the former chief of security for Israeli airports described an agency riddled with incompetence and wastefulness and that, despite large infusions of government money, may never have actually stopped a single terror attack. The TSA may even be inviting a deadly attack on airline passengers due to poor planning, he charged.
It Was Posted on a Humor Site But This Takedown of the TSA is Epic

Rafi Sela, the former chief of security for Israeli airports, has a blistering takedown of the TSA .

Though his analysis was posted on the humor website Cracked, airline security expert Rafi Sela detailed serious flaws in American airport protection, ones he contrasted starkly with his own experience in Israel.

For one thing, Sela said the notion that standing in a security line and stripping off one’s shoes is a “necessary precursor to safe flying” is “bullsh**.”

“The TSA couldn’t protect you from a 6-year-old with a water balloon,” Sela wrote.

Sela told TheBlaze that despite posting the article on a humor site, it is serious and accurately reflects his analysis of the dire state of American airports, which he shared in detail with Cracked writer Robert Evans.

“There is truth in every parody,” Sela told TheBlaze in an email. “I think when we get to a stage where Congress has been made aware of the issues and decided not to act even on a pilot basis and continue to waste billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money to make the big industries bigger, it might be a good idea to just joke about it because NO ONE is taking this seriously anyway.”

He said that after years of “trying to get the attention of the U.S. Senate … White House, airlines and airports,” he has decided that “the USA is no longer a leader in security.”

’Hiding things is so easy to do, it isn’t even funny’

Sela told Cracked that “Ben Gurion [International Airport, near Tel Aviv] is probably the most threatened airport in the world. It has between 50 and 70 incidents every day. Nobody hears about those because we handle them.”

While the Israeli airport drills its screeners seven times a day, Sela said TSA agents are drilled only once or twice a year. With the high turnover rate in the agency, many operate without having been tested.

“Security can’t be treated like a fast food company. These people are tasked with finding bombs, not flipping burgers,” he told Cracked.

Sela made a strong case for profiling – not racial profiling, but behavioral profiling.

“[I]f you only check luggage and you don’t check the person behind the luggage, how do you know he hasn’t camouflaged something into the luggage that you can’t find? Trust me: Hiding things is so easy to do, it isn’t even funny,” he said.

Sela described one scene in Newark when a TSA agent found a laser pen Sela had received as a gift.

“They told me they had to confiscate it, because apparently laser pointers are just a couple hundred degrees away from being the new box cutters. Many of you have probably lost trinkets and gadgets in the same way,” Sela told Cracked, then described the clever way he got it back:

I tell the handler, “OK, take it. But that pen is company property, so I’m going to need some sort of receipt.”

He says, “What?”

“This pen isn’t owned by me. My boss is going to need to see some proof that you took it.”

So he calls a supervisor and asks, “Where do we keep the receipts?”

His supervisor says, “What the f*** are you talking about, we don’t give receipts.”

He explains the situation, and his boss asks, “What’s the contraband?”

“A little laser pointer.”

“Give it the f*** back! What do you care?”

Two seconds go by and he hands it back to me. It’s as easy as that.

And here’s the rub: “The TSA treats each traveler the same because of some stupid idea that everything needs to be fair.”

“Security needs to be done due to risk — and risk means that in Israel we don’t check luggage, we check people. And I’m not talking about racial profiling here; that’s a product of poor training. Regardless of race or creed, people with bombs strapped to their body behave in similar ways,” Sela said.
It Was Posted on a Humor Site But This Takedown of the TSA is Epic

“Instead of checking intent, they check luggage. And they don’t even do it well,” he said of the TSA. “I have orthopedic insoles in my shoes made from composite material. On the machines, that composite looks identical to plastic explosives. I put them on the belt every time, and no one — NO ONE — ever questions my shoes. Some security experts suspect that the TSA has never once caught a terrorist at a checkpoint.”

Eye contact

Sela believes eye contact is one key behavior to examine: “Someone with something to hide, a bad conscience, will cast their eyes away much more quickly. That’s what our security guards are doing: We watch the way you move your eyes.”

Of Israeli screeners, he explained, “We interview every single customer several times, but we don’t really care what you have to say. We’re paying attention to your behavior.”

“At Ben Gurion Airport, we get travelers from their car to their gate in 25 minutes. When was the last time that happened to you in an American airport? Probably never, because a dozen 747s worth of cranky travelers can’t take their shoes and coats off, pull their laptops out of their luggage, and queue up for pat downs without chaos,” he said.

“It’s different in Israel” where passengers are not required to take off their shoes. “You come in, we ask you questions, and we have well-trained people determine if you have any harmful plans. They look at your eyes and your body language, not your loafers. We have threats in the airport, but nothing deadly has happened to us, thank God, in the last 40 years.”

The scary thing about lines

Chillingly, Sela described how easy it could be for a terrorist to attack the actual security lines meant to be screening for bombs. He told Cracked:

In security, if the target is moving, you have to move with the target. There is one place for security in an American airport, and it’s that long line where you wait for Larry, a TSA worker from Des Moines with exceptionally coarse hands, to fondle you. Everything past that line is a lawless free-for-all of Sbarros and tacky souvenir shops.

Sela expounded on the theme: “The TSA conveniently packs hundreds of travelers together in cramped security lines. Terrorists love crowds because they can inflict the most harm that way … So what does American airport security do? It gathers folks together in long lines BEFORE they’ve been scanned at all.”

That’s also why he gets nervous waiting for his luggage at the baggage carousel: “[T]here’s no sort of scrutiny around who gets to walk in there. It’s like the TSA thinks the terrorists have some sort of death grudge against planes. So if we can keep them from getting on one, they won’t bother murdering a bunch of people clustered around baggage claim.”

He took issue with the copious amounts of glass used in the construction of U.S. airports, including Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport in the nation’s capital.

“Now all that glass is lovely, and it saves a bundle on lighting, but have you ever wondered if it’s all … y’know, explosion-proof? Because it totally isn’t. Which makes each of these lovely airports a build-your-own shrapnel bomb kit (just add gunpowder!),” Sela said. “In Israeli airports, the security checks are done in a small, blast-proof area with a few people in it at a time. So if there’s a bomb, we only have to evacuate one room. Not an entire terminal full of drunken businessmen and sleep-deprived families on vacation.”

Read the entire eye-opening article at Cracked.

(H/T: Israel Matzav)
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12 ... listering/

[Happy Mom]

TSA Pat-Down At DIA Leads To Sex Assault Investigation
January 15, 2014 10:11 PM


DENVER (CBS4) – Denver police have initiated a sexual assault investigation focused on Transportation Security Administration officers at a checkpoint at Denver International Airport. It comes after a Colorado woman filed a complaint saying the frisking she received amounted to a sexual assault.

“It’s an open and active investigation,” Denver police spokesperson Sonny Jackson said. “We take all complaints seriously and we are on this case as well. We have launched an investigation into it.”

The criminal probe stems from a complaint filed by Jamelyn Steenhoek, 39, who was patted down by TSA agents on Dec. 26 as she was escorting her 13-year-old daughter to a flight bound for Philadelphia. Steenhoek was not flying, just getting her daughter to the gate.

“I feel like someone who works for a powerful agency that we are afraid of used their power to violate me sexually — to put me in my place,” said Steenhoek, a working mother for a county social services department. Steenhoke is also a full time college student.

Although she had proper credentials to accompany her daughter to the airline gate, an alarm at the checkpoint sounded when she went through. Steenhoek believes the machine picked up the jewels that were sewn into the rear pockets of her jeans. She was asked to submit to having her hands swabbed, which she did.

“Then they told me I tested positive for explosives,” Steenhoek said during an interview with CBS4.

She explained to the agents that the positive hit from her hand swab was probably the result of her pumping gas into her car earlier in the day.

“She said, ‘We’ll have to do a search.’ So I thought, ‘Okay.’ “

Steenhoek said she was just focused on completing the search and getting to the gate with her daughter with enough time to get her teenager something to eat. She said she was ushered into a small private room at the TSA checkpoint with her daughter watching from a few feet away.

“They told me to spread my arms and spread my feet.”

She said the female TSA agent seemed to get agitated when Steenhoek tried to hurry the process along so she could get her daughter to her plane.

“At that point she did a pretty invasive search. They are just areas of the body I’m not comfortable being touched in. On the outside of my pants she cupped my crotch. I was uncomfortable with that.”

Steenhoek said the agent repeatedly dug her fingers into Steenhoek’s armpits.

“The part of the search that bothered most was the breast search. You could tell it shouldn’t take that much groping. To me it was as extensive as an exam from my physician — full touching and grabbing in the front. I felt uncomfortable, I felt violated.”

She said when the search turned up nothing, the agent repeated it a second time.

“So it didn’t make any sense. The whole search was done over and more touching and grabbing than the first time.”

Eventually TSA officers released her without finding anything and she managed to get her daughter to her flight on time. Steenhoek complained to the TSA about her treatment but felt that would not yield any results.

Three days later she went to Denver police and filed a police complaint against the unnamed female TSA agent who searched her. In the report Steenhoek complained of an “intrusive search,” characterizing what happened to her as being “sexually assaulted.”

“I was looking for consequences, for TSA to be accountable for what they do to people,” Steenhoek told CBS4.

“You want one or more of them to be charged with sexual assault?” she was asked.

“I do,” she responded.

Jackson says the sex assault complaint is being handled like any other.

“We’ll present it to the district attorney and see if there’s enough to charge,” Jackson said.

Carrie Harmon, a spokesperson for the TSA at Denver International Airport, declined a CBS4 request for an on camera interview but released a statement saying, “TSA’s security officers are trained to perform each pat down in a professional manner to ensure that all individuals are screened to the same standards. Complaints about pat-down procedures are thoroughly investigated, and the agency takes appropriate action, if warranted. The agency cannot comment on an ongoing law enforcement investigation, but is confident the facts will support our officer’s adherence to proper pat-down procedures.”

The TSA’s security pat downs have long been controversial:

This month a Boston law firm argued in federal court that the TSA pat-downs are unconstitutional and discriminate against people with metal implants
Last year Texas lawmakers considered passing a bill to make it a felony for TSA officers to touch travelers genitals areas.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has characterized some TSA pat-downs as “unacceptable” and excessive.



While many people express their displeasure with the pat-downs, it seems few actually file official police reports requesting criminal charges against those conducting the pat-downs.

“There’s a process for making sure agencies are accountable,” Steenhoek said. “Everyone is accountable.”
http://joeforamerica.com/2014/01/tsa-pa ... 70uhTWc.99