Posted on 02/20/2017 3:05:56 PM PST by WXRGina
It was an excellent week-long trip my husband Keith and I took to Arizona to take the 250 Pistol Class from Gunsite Academy. The week ended, and it was time for us to fly back home this past Saturday, February 18th. While I have gone through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) regional airport checkpoints since its spawning after 9-11, I had not yet gone through a TSA checkpoint at a major airport. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a major airport, and on Saturday, I was immersed there in one of those TSA "horror stories" about which I had previously only read.
My very dim view of the TSA has been shaped by all the reports of corruption, misconduct, molestation and sexual assault, theft, abuse of power and ineptitude by the TSA. To find these stories, you need only do an Internet search with any of those terms along with "TSA." In addition to all that, air travelers in the United States are now stupidly forced to remove their shoes because of one Muslim maniac.
Needless to say, as we stood in the moderately long line of the Sky Harbor TSA security checkpoint, I was not happy and only wanted it to be over. We finally arrived at the x-ray conveyor belt with all the gray plastic bins into which we had to put our shoes, belts, purses, bags, watches, cell phones, laptops and anything in our pockets. When flying, I always try to wear nothing that would cause the x-ray imaging machines to raise an alert. So, I wore no belt or any jewelry. I had nothing in my pockets. I only carried my small purse, and I wore blue jeans, a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt and simple leather boots. I removed my boots and placed them and my purse into two of the bins and pushed them on toward the x-ray screener.
I was directed into the – what I call a "rape scan" – body imaging machine. As you may know, we are forced to stand inside it for several seconds with our arms held up as if we're common criminals, and the machine does a circular spin around our bodies. When the scan was done, a black woman told me to step out of the machine. I'm guessing this woman was probably in her early thirties. She directed my attention to the human body outline image on a screen outside the machine, which displayed the supposed results of my scan. There were "warning" boxes superimposed directly on the crotch, one knee and one ankle area, which I instantly knew were bogus.
Because of those flags, she informed me I would be subjected to an enhanced pat-down. I numbly looked at the entirely phony warning box images on the screen, knowing that with the advanced imaging capabilities of that machine, it would not possibly have "seen" any kind of threat anywhere on my body, much less between my legs. Nevertheless, I stood there silently with a smoldering outrage welling inside me as this girl described the sexual assault she was about to undertake on my body.
I hardly heard what she was saying she was about to do, because I was so angry knowing that this was a fake result, either from the machine or from someone's arbitrary decision to subject me to this despicable, Fourth Amendment-crushing, far-beyond-unreasonable search. She finished her little speech by asking me if I preferred [my sexual assault] to be done in a "private room" or right where we stood in front of hundreds of onlookers. I was barely able to mumble a "here" with an indication of my hand gesturing down to the yellow footprint stickers on the floor where I was to place my feet.
She required me to assist her in my sexual assault. I had to lift my shirt to give her clear access to my waistband, into which she thrust her blue-latex-gloved fingers and ran them all around the front and back of it. She made me hold my pants in place from the top as she crouched down and firmly ran her hands from the top of my legs to the bottom, both front, back and sides. She firmly pushed and rubbed her hands between my legs, the entire area – THE ENTIRE AREA – from the front and back.
She finally directed me to hold out my hands, palms up, as she swabbed them with damp squares of white tissue, which she inserted into a machine that I assume "sniffed" for explosive residue. When it gave my hands the all-clear, she indicated that I was free to go.
At that point, I was fairly blind with rage. Shakily, gritting my teeth hard enough to beat the band, I went and retrieved my boots and purse from the end of the screener belt several yards away, where they had remained while I got the enhanced grope-down. I was glad no one had taken my purse. Keith had been moved along after going through security, and from his viewpoint was unable to see my belongings or what was happening to me.
Still seeing red, I slowly walked to a chair near the TSA checkpoint to put on my boots. I was shaking with rage, and my husband had to quickly talk me down from reacting to the powerful anger that was exploding in my mind. The sickening feelings of rage, helplessness and violation continued to roil in me for the rest of the day.
What can I do? File a complaint with the TSA? Yeah, right. Call my congressman? And get a nice form letter reply in the mail in a month or so? Yeah, no. I'm powerless here, as are the many other people who have been sexually assaulted by the TSA. Maybe you'd like me to tone it down a notch and call it "molestation" or merely "groping," but I know what happened to me, and in any other situation, it would be legally regarded as sexual assault. If an ordinary person did to me what that woman – by authority of bad law – did to me, he would go to jail.
The TSA should be dismantled. Airport security needs to be returned to the airlines and local airports. The federal government's takeover of airport security screening after 9-11 has only created yet another unaccountable, monstrous bureaucracy that continues to grow in corruption, especially under Obama's recent lawless reign. Free-born American citizens should not have to abide such degenerate despotism in the name of "security." The TSA has seized illegitimate power in its random imposition of unreasonable searches on innocent airline passengers. If the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution means anything, then the TSA must go.
They have expedited scans here too. But, if you had on more than a regular buckle (and were wearing a full metal accessory buckle) then it appears that the metal detector was set so low that weapons could be smuggled in. The new expedited screening allows for laptops to stay in the bags too, which is really helpful. Can’t remember what it is called off the top of my head. Hoping on my next trip, I get this option. Some people sign up for it, but I don’t travel enough to do all that.
Check out TSA pre check.
But did she demand fresh gloves?
Maybe it is with the pat downs. But, don’t think they do it just to touch a shirt sleeve at the scanner.
After reading all of these complaints I wonder why our government hasn’t learned how the Israelis handle their air security? They have been at it for innumerable years and apparently not enraging people. They use ‘profiling’ and psychological methods. We haven’t seen it fail in all these years. They have been willing to share their expertise with our ‘untrainables’.
I’ve been patted down plenty of times. But, I’ve traveled a lot and it doesn’t freak me out.
Unacceptable, because this still happens to many people who do not or can not get that.
That is the point. We know terrorism is conducted over 99% by young Muslim males. There IS NO REASON and no benefit to be patting down the entire rest of the nation’s demographic. If you can’t call it profiling, call it something else, but in a sane world, there would be one line for Muslim males under 30 and a separate line for everybody else in the world
Oh, and that statistic that shows TSA has not stopped one single solitary terrorist attempt in their existence.
There is no need for the TSA or for this level of security at airports.
TSA is a cure for which there is no disease.
As you already noted. However, this is the United States of America, not some foreign nation where its citizens do not have our freedoms. We are losing our freedoms, and while that may not "freak you out," it does alarm those of us who cherish our liberty.
Can’t imagine what they’d make of my double hernias (”if they don’t bother you, don’t bother them”, says the doc) - just one more reason not to fly......
Gina
I am outraged that you were subjected to that assault.
I will not allow that to happen to me.
Ever.
Disband the TSA!!!!
I didn't have to. She was pulling "fresh gloves" out of the box as she gave me the lecture on what she was about to do.
You are obviously not a woman.
The TSA is predicated on several fallacies:
1) The next attack will be another 9/11 with hijackers entering aircraft as passengers.
2) There are not 100 other ways to gain access to airports and aircraft apart from the ticketing/security line.
3) Passengers who have paid handsomely to be flown elsewhere have a desire to take control of a plane and commit suicide with their family members and/or friends aboard.
4) Pretending we don’t know who is most likely to hijack a plane.
5) Taking this pantomime to the extreme ends of the earth by strip-searching young children, the infirm, the elderly, etc. and by control freakery regarding liquids as if 3 oz is some magical threshold.
6) Hiring poorly-educated slobs more interested in government benefits, overtime and retirement than in security.
7) Giving poorly-educated slobs power over better-educated individuals who almost always have a higher socioeconomic status. A reenactment of the Stanford Prison Experiment is virtually guaranteed.
The TSA have been unfit for purpose from the start, which is why the idea of Tom Ridge being anywhere near the Trump administration was risible. They have become part of the landscape but that doesn’t mean they must become permanent fixtures.
I have to go through this same pat down whenever I fly out of LAX. I try not to fly out of that airport.
I had a cesarean section over thirty years ago and it seems their machine always alerts on the scar tissue.
It truly is a violation of our rights.
What are you talking about? Where did I say I'm "special"?
You're free to embrace tyranny all you like, lady, just like SHEEP all over the world do, but I will speak against it.
Well said!!!!!
Gina I have been through that sh!t THREE TIMES. It is horrible, and the worse of it is standing there spraddle-legged while the freak kneels in front of you with her nose at your genital area feeling your privates while she says loudly ‘NOW I am going to touch your genital area. NOW I am going to touch inside your waistband’ nice and loud so everybody looks over at you. I also saw the stupid yellow boxes on the scan and then was groped afterwards when I had six minutes to catch my plane. They heard me say that so guess what? Full grope plus scan. It is the most goddamned humiliating thing ever. And I felt exactly the same outright rage. They have to all be fired.
Yes, they pick on people who seem the most vulnerable. They are terrified of coming across a terrorist. The last thing on earth they want is to encounter a terrorist. But yet they have to do something to justify their pensions and salary and perks so they haul over young women, women alone, people with injuries and in wheelchairs.
I decided on a defensive technique; wear a hijab! They won’t touch you! I am not kidding. I ordered one from Amazon.
Yes. The Israeli's have a very good system they use at their airports, and they don't have a problem.
The FEDS and TSA try to hide this info, but when tests are conducted, the TSA has failed to find the 'test objects'.
Do you feel safe ?
This whole TSA was a political money scamming game right after it was started. They could have had security staff, with weapons and dogs, trained in profiling people.
For all the P.C. reasons, they decided to use untrained affirmative action/no questions on whether you have been convicted of a felony/thieving people and no dogs. (wouldn't want to 'scare' the passengers).
I have Pre-check and it means nothing. It’s a scam. I have been groped by these mental dwarves three times.
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