Posted on 11/06/2010 3:58:56 AM PDT by SkyPilot
HAVING been taught by nuns in grade school and later going through military boot camp, I have always disliked uniformed authorities shouting at me. So I was unhappy last week when some security screeners at OHare International Airport in Chicago started yelling.
Opt out! We got an opt out! one bellowed about me in a tone that people in my desert neighborhood in Tucson usually reserve for declaring, Rattlesnake!
Other screeners took up the Opt out! shout. I was marched from the metal detector lane to one of those nearby whole-body imagers, ordered to take everything out of my pockets, remove my belt and hold my possessions up high. Then I was required to stand still while I received a rough pat-down by a man whose résumé, I suspected, included experience at a state prison.
Hold your pants up! he ordered me.
What did I do to deserve this? Well, as I approached the checkpoints, I had two choices. One was a familiar lane with the metal detector, so I put my bag on that. To my right was a separate lane dominated with what the Transportation Security Administration initially called whole-body imagers but has now labeled advanced imaging technology units. Critics, of course, call them strip-search machines.
I dont like these things, and not just because of privacy concerns or because of what some critics have asserted are radiation safety issues with some of the machines that use X-ray technology.
No, I dont like the fact that I have to remove every item from every pocket, including my wallet and things as trivial as a Kleenex. You then strike a pose inside with your hands submissively held above your head, like some desperado cornered by the sheriff in a Western movie, while the see-through-clothes machine makes an image...
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
FINALLY A great alternative to body scanners at airports . . .
The Israelis are developing an airport security device that eliminates the privacy concerns that come with full-body scanners at the airports.
Its a booth you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you. They see this as a win-win for everyone, with none of this crap about racial profiling. It also would eliminate the costs of a long and expensive trial. Justice would be swift. Case closed!
You’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system . . . “Attention standby passengers we now have a seat available on flight number 1234. Shalom!
*snicker*
Mongo like CandyGram . . .
LOL!
From what I read on a blog (FWIW), the TSA employees call them "Dick Measurers." Guess why.
Dittos to what you said. I haven’t flown in many years, and won’t unless I have an extremely good reason.
I am one citizen who has had enough.
I love flying, airplanes and all things aviation and am totally jealous of your flying experience.
That said, I quit flying with the airlines.
With tremendous help from GovCo, the islamocrazies have won this battle as far as my flying is concerned.
BTTT.
This strip searching is nothing but money making for corporations that produce these systems. The TSA loves it because they think it justifies their existence. At the same time, illegal aliens and foreigners work at the back door cleaning the planes, putting food onboard, etc. TSA agents are also non-citizens. Many TSA employees are foreigners holding visas. Many in the Denver airport are Somilis, the same skinnies that killed our troops in mogadishu. We are being subjected to unconstitutional searches for no reason. If the terrorists wanted to do damage there is nothing stopping them.
TSA = Too Stupid for Arby’s
The panty bomber didnt have a body scan or pat down.
You dont want the pat down? Than accept the body scan or dont fly.
Would you feel the same way if you were with your family flying at 30,000 feet and a passenger jumped up, yelled Allah Akbar and detonated a suicide vest? Or, would you just think of you and your family as being martyrs?
I don’t know what to think. I just had a total hip replacement, and they’re going to strip me and force nasty instruments into me in every orifice. I’m terrified.
I was born in the ‘80s so as recent as 20 years ago, some of my cousins flew unescorted. And they were what? Maybe 9 or 10 years old. Probably wouldn’t do that nowadays.
Didn't they do enough of that during the hip replacement?
Well, yeah. But I paid those guys to do it, max $2K OOP.
Quite true. The yelling “opt-out” was for the benefit of anyone within earshot who had a similar notion. The simple fact that they even do a swab strikes me as totally bogus, as theoretically you are supposed to be subject to the same search as everyone else, not what amounts to a random drug test.
When my son last flew back to base after a visit home, we watched the TSA pull aside a frail old guy in a wheelchair. We watched with disbelief as they made him remove his shoes, gave him a pat-down and wanded him, after making him stand with difficulty in their spread out footprint spots. They were disrespectful and terse with him. It was shameful. Just shameful.
They’ll assign Big Dyke Doris. I hear she likes it rough.
Seriously, they put one in the local airport and a friend of ours didn’t quite get everything out of his pockets. THEN he himself had an appointment with Doris.
Always remember you are still free to not fly. Comfort yourself knowing that you are still free.
I too had one several years ago. The hospital issued me a card stating about the artificial hip. When I pass through court house security I go through the metal detector, show the card, and get wanded. No strip search, no cavity search.
Well, how did that work? The "TSA" was in place and the panty bomber happened. So if they are THAT ineffective, why not have them out on the tarmac checking packages, maybe they'd find one. What good is something that "doesn't work?" (And if you say it wasn't the TSA's fault, because they weren't at the checkpoint in Europe, then your logic of using the Panty Bomber as an example is illogical, TSA had nothing to do with that one.
Best they be looking for Muslim-Middle-East young men and women and spending the time checking them THOROUGHLY. Go with the odds, what percentage of these jerks are Islamic? All of them ... so that's where the "search time" should be spent. When you go fishing, if you want to catch fish, you don't just throw a line into "any" water (swimming pools?) you throw your line in where the fish are!
Yeah, I got a card from my Orthopod, but it was not a well-made ID card. I could have forged one like it in 10 minutes.
When did the TSA get authority in other countries?
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