Posted on 01/31/2014 2:22:26 PM PST by matt04
A former TSA officer has confirmed many of the worst suspicions about airport security screeners: they stop passengers for having an attitude, they confiscate snow globes from children and nail clippers from pilots, they profile passengers based on their nationality.
And yes, they do see travelers naked in the X-ray photos.
...
‘I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots—the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying,’ he wrote.
One of the most coveted rotations while he worked at Chicago’s O’Hare airport while Harrington worked there from 2007 through 2013 was the secretive Image Operator room where guards took turns sitting in the windowless room- that also lacked security cameras- viewing the pictures of passengers that the x-ray machines took.
‘Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern—their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area,’ he wrote in the Politico article.
‘All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.’
The I.O. room turned into its own experiment in explicit behavior as agents would use it as a secret meeting point for mid0-work rendez-vous since the lack of security cameras kept them from being busted.
The TSA issued a statement in response to MailOnline, saying: 'Many of the TSA procedures and policies referenced in this article are no longer in place or are characterized inaccurately.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Classic TSA response, we didn’t know but it was only a few bad apples out of the thousands of TSA “officers.”
TSA agents aren’t smart enough to realize they live local to those airports and not everyone are passers through.
ping
“Public Servants”
I’ve had three TSA agents get in my face.
I reported all three to their supervisors.
They probably got promotions.
“You can’t professionalize unless you federalize.” - Tom Dashole..................
TSA, HSA and EPA.
What are they good for?
Thugs
Any complaint against a TSA agent ought to be treated the same as an accustation against a catholic priest. It should be catalogued and fully investigated. When there is question, they should be treated the same as catholic priests and discharged. There are TSA agents abusing their stations. They need to be monitored more closely.
What are they good for?
Ask the GOP presidents who signed them into law.
Yet, the American people pays good money to be treated like so many cattle. It’s never made sense to me.
Wait until the next time I travel by air ... the apple butter will be a little more “buttery,” if you divine my drift.
Sloppy of me. That should be “pay.”
Holder/DOJ has been actively recruiting ex-cons to apply for these and other federal jobs.
Clearly the goal is to make the travel experience (the hallmark of American freedom) as miserable as possible so as to discourage our desire to move about. What amazes me is how the airlines have gone along with this despite major financial hurt.
If the TSA were truly looking for dangerous people boarding planes, would this be the modus operandi, confiscating a pilot’s nail clippers ???
I had one who wanted to do the explosives swab on my laptop bag for some reason. I asked him to change gloves, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of gloves and some candy wrappers. I asked for glove out of the box, he called his supervisor and said I was “hostile.”
The supervisor came over and asked what the problem was. I explained, they called the Airport Police over. The cop asked what the problem was and I explained, the TSA “officer” concurred. The cop told them to get gloves form the box. They tested it, it came back negative and threw my bag on the table. I asked the supervisor for their boss, some suit came over. I explained the situation and was told they couldn’t comment on how I was treated as the was “a classified procedure for scanning potentially explosive items” and walked off.
When encourtering the very rabid, rude TSA agent who has an attitude problem at the high end of the scale (we have ALL seen them and experienced them in cowered fear), and one who is clearly harassing both yourself and others around you, surreptitiously take a photo of the federal violator of our Rights, with the sound function off of your cell phone camera. Then upon approaching this cog in the wheel rentacop, take note of, commit to memory BUT NOT PAPER, and once clear of Reichsstatzione Checkpoint, write down that full name immediately, time, date and nature of inicident. Then, finally, combine the two. There is a thing called the Internet. Offshore the website overseas in a country and under a DNS for a nation which does not have any kind of bilatral treaty with the USA on these matters. Seizer people power bacck! Let them know in crystal clear terms they will be publicly exposed by name and face by a traveling public who will not take this power harassment anymore. That will then serve as a lesson to others to "walk it back, and take it down a few notches and get off their Gestapo high horses" when dealing with the average public whose only crime is to want to get from point A to point B in the domestic USA. Isn't that still a right? The right of free passage?
Any uniformed officer with a beard should be excluded (referring to the photo).
And they wonder why they are treated like the enemy. Because they are!
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