What Happens if You Decline a Full Body Scan?

aol ^ | Nov 15th 2010 | Fran Golden

[george76]

When you ask a friend to join you for a nice weekend cruise from Miami, you don't expect the friend to be hauled away by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents into a private room where she says she was practically strip-searched. But that's what happened at Logan International Airport in Boston...

I looked over to the adjacent security line and saw to my horror my red-faced friend questioning TSA officers after she was chosen at random for, and refused to go through, a full body scanner.

My pal happens to be a Boston media personality and crime reporter, Michele McPhee. She is not a shy lady. When this tough blond makes up her mind she makes up her mind. There was no way she was going to be convinced to do a body scan if she didn't want to.

So instead, she opted for a pat down and was whisked away, barefoot, by two women - a TSA officer and her supervisor - to a private room, where McPhee says a very intrusive body search was conducted.

"They run their hands inside your leg and under your bra strap and patted the front of my breasts," she says. "If someone had done that to me at a nightclub I'd call the cops."

"People need to know why we need body scanners," she says. "The humiliation of walking across a crowded, dirty terminal in bare feet, escorted by two TSA agents, dragged into a room and essentially assaulted, I really did leave mad."

[aruanan]

At O’Hare Airport in Chicago, according to some travelers, you pass through the standard metal detector first. If you don’t set it off, then you go on to your plane. If you set it off, you are diverted for the scan or pat down.

[stephenjohnbanker]

LOL!