Re: TSA

[digitaldiscipline]

So, I wrote my Congressional Representative and both senators (and senator-elect) this morning.

They get my unfiltered attitude, just like everyone else:

I trust you have heard no small amount of discontent over the TSA's invasive and potentially harmful new "enhanced screening" techniques, which, for lack of a more tactful description, have earned the name "Scope or Grope."

Further exacerbating this is the TSA's own guidance to make the enhanced pat-downs as punitive and shame-inducing for the recipients as possible, to make people unwilling to submit to them.

To be blunt: WE DO NOT LIVE IN A COLD-WAR, COMMUNIST BLOC TOTALITARIAN STATE. WE LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. LET'S DO OUR BEST TO REMEMBER AND ACT LIKE IT.

The new TSA groping patdown regulations:
http://drwho.virtadpt.net/archive/2010/11/14/the-people-said-no-more-and-the-tsa-said-shut-your-pie-holes

These regulations hurt everybody. We should not have to choose between using potentially unsafe (and naked) imaging machines and/or submitting to having private areas like buttocks and genitals fondled in the name of security. Invasive is an understatement.

Please strike down this onerous bullshit.

Thank you.

Comments

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

Have you read the piece about how the TSA is doing to US citizens what the military is not allowed to do to locals in Afghanistan?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

No, that's a new angle I've not previously seen. Linky?

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

linky link (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/body-searching-children-no-for-the-us-army-yes-for-the-tsa/66535/)

Jeff Goldberg and James Fallows have a few articles about the TSA screenings at The Atlantic.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I've seen a bunch of Goldberg's stuff (it's ended up in my twitter/facebook stream, rather than here); but, yes, aaarrrrggghhh.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I'm not visiting the States again until this bullshit is stopped.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't have that choice, unless I turn around to a dear friend I've known since 1986 and say "sorry I can't come to your wedding".

Then again, it's not till April so there's no point worrying about it just yet.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

choice is choice....

"sorry the TSA won't let me come to your wedding"

there's always driving, the bus, the train... i myself am looking to see if i can train to Vegas and considering a bus and/or driving to see a friend in NC. not only to avoid TSA BS but because it's different.

flying is a privelege of sorts. lots of people can't afford to do that even today.

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[farchivist.livejournal.com]

there's always driving, the bus, the train

*drily* I doubt inulro can take a bus, train, or car from the UK to the USA without some serious investment in a transatlantic tunnel.

There is also the issue of time and money, of course. It would actually be more expensive for me to drive or take a bus from Atlanta to San Francisco than take a plane. Flying is not a privilege when it's the most economical way of getting from one location to another.

[vatine]

There's always the boat. These days, horrendously expensive (and with an assumption taht you'll fly one way). I'm certainly considering that if I need to go to the US.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

If it were me, I'd say, "I understand and would never ask a friend to undergo sexual assault in order to attend my wedding." So maybe you should talk to your friend.

[sestree.livejournal.com]

I've been very fortunate to have a nice TSA person the 3 times I needed additional screening (emergency round trip, meeting a minor at the gate, emergency 1 way ticket-all in a 2 month period). He was friendly and courteous with the wanding and limited pat-down. It was so bad when he got me the 3rd time we joked about having to stop meeting like that.

From everything I've read, I was the exception. Also from what others have said, I should have had a female for the additional screening.

Never thought about it.

However, I'd be really concerned putting that much power on an everyday basis in the hands of the people from TSA.

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

I've been wanded and patted down many times. The one time I forgot to take off my belt (definitely my bad) and I still had the navel ring, so the airport security guy (immediately after 9/11 before TSA took over) explained that he needed to keep undoing layers until he was confident that whatever was causing the beep was something safe to take on the plane. Mostly it's my bra that sets off the metal detector. In the US they wanded me and patted down the spots that set off the wand. In Germany they patted me down after the metal detector beeped, it wasn't nearly as thorough a pat-down as the one at the gate in London, which was apparently for no reason.

Next week I'm flying to the Bahamas for vacation. I bought the tickets right before the new scanners hit the news. I still want to spend 4 days on the beach, so I'm not canceling the trip. I'm still undecided about opting out of the scanner. I don't fly enough that I'm worried about the radiation exposure, but I don't believe the TSA when they say they don't store the images and even with a privacy filter that's still an image of my body they're looking at. What I can't decide is how much I really care about that because if I were to walk through the scanner in a bikini or my skivvies, I'd be a lot less bothered by them storing the picture of that than I am of them storing an image of my body under my clothes.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

I think we should all start wearing bathing suits to the airport.

[ubiquitous-a.livejournal.com]

Actually, this is a variation that's certainly more reality-based than the showing up naked at the airport idea.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

If I didn't live in Utah, I'd consider it. But here? Brrrrrrr.

You know, maybe if they made it like those roller coaster rides, and you could pick up prints at your gate, it wod be whacky and hilarious? Ha.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

BoingBoing had an entertaining take on this today: Rate my Backscatter. *snrk*

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

This is not your standard pat-down-- it is not what you've experienced in the past.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/us/17security.html?_r=1&src=sch&pagewanted=all

well, the TSA is getting questioned, and they pull out the lame answers "well, if something happened, you can be sure that EVERYONE would demand we do something"... "so we're doing it now". uh huh

#

[sharkskitten.livejournal.com]

Ngggg...

Xmas cruise [mostly, i think to separate me from my corporate laptop] and so help me, they touch my 10 year old daughter's private parts, i will scream on the top of my lungs. While videotaping it with my phone.

Of course, i apparently have anger issues.

[ubiquitous-a.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that the stories coming out of next week's holiday travel weekend will be.....interesting.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

If they could just really lock down the stupid backscatter bullshit and stop lying about safety, storing images and image quality, we'd be fine.

The funny thing is, I've been held up after doing the scan to get a pat-down on my left arm several times. I'm not sure what's making them do a feel-up there after the x-ray. It could be my skate bracelet - which is just a braided rope I've had on my wrist since I was 18 ... or it could be the tattoo. I have no idea.

In anycase, they need to fix what they've got instead of pissing people off even more.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

Also, I think if we all start going into the pat-down with the attitude of "Oh HELL YES! Let's get it on, honey!" - it'd be hilarious.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Kilted, regimental, "do it in front of the other passengers so they can see this bullshit, and make you as uncomfortable as you're trying to make me" is going to be my approach if I fly while this bullshit is in practice.

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

I was a little skeptical myself at first, but it looks like this is a really bad idea. Even setting aside the massive potential for blowback (the reports of the procedures do not appear to be exaggerated), terrorism isn't something that has a simple technical solution-- we can either get into an arms race with detection technology vs. detection-evasion technology or we can approach this intelligently.

I think a lot of us saw the Israeli airport security on Olbermann the other night saying we need better trained security personnel not more gadgets or more invasive illusion-of-security procedures. He's basically just saying that competent people are better at catching terrorists than half-trained people grabbing passengers' genitalia, and I think that makes a fair bit of sense.

In addition to being likely to cause more problems than it solves, the body-scan worries me a lot for pilots & other people who fly a lot for a living, because flying already involves a higher-than-average dose of ionizing radiation.

As for sexual harassment of TSA personnel & wearing kilts, let me know how the former works out, and the latter, while a neat gesture, would not be as effective as eating lots of cabbage, no?

So that's my $.02