Fly the Friendly Skies! Or else!
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Posted on 04/12/2017 8:41:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Little can surprise me in terms of the TSA’s waste, incompetence and sheer indignity, but this story may mark a new low.
It’s about Evelyn Harris, a 65-year-old retiree who was flying out of Washington, D.C., this past January when she committed the terrible terrorism crime known as wearing a pantyliner.
Harris went through the body scanner and thought she was free to proceed to her flight. A TSA agent thought otherwise.
“I started to ask if I had done something wrong or if this was ‘random,’ but before I could get a second word out, the TSA agent yelled at me,” Harris told The Washington Post in an interview. “She grabbed my throat hard, causing me to choke and cough. She yelled at me for coughing.”
“She then put her hands inside my bra and panties and groped my private parts with the front, not the back, of her gloved hand. Afterward, I worried that I may have been infected if she had groped someone else without changing gloves,” Harris added. “Her attitude was so threatening and hostile, that I was afraid to look at her face and name plate.”
After her ordeal, Harris filed a complaint. As the Post details, her concerns didn’t receive much sympathy from the TSA:
[T]he pat-down was legit, the investigator said. Intimate apparel has been a source of concern ever since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to bring down a plane on Christmas Day 2009 by detonating a bomb hidden in his underwear.
The investigator told Harris, she said, that “his own wife carried a panty liner with her and put it on after security, as this is something that could trigger a search.” Indeed, turns out all sorts of feminine hygiene products could be grounds for a search, according to the TSA.
It’s that last bit which really gets me: This is a government agency which says that basic hygiene products are all the excuse it needs to permit agents to stick their hands inside your underwear, in public, without a warrant or, it seems, much in the way of a warning. Ladies, just plan your hygiene needs around the TSA’s preferences if you don’t want to be molested.
Tales of TSA misconduct are a dime a dozen, but this is the first I recall seeing the agency affirm this level of groping is standard procedure. Anyway, here’s yet another reminder that the TSA still sucks and we’ve become way too complacent about it.
TSA and the DHS. Two of the biggest, freedom stealing organizations ever to hit this country. All brought to you by George W. Bush, Compassionate Conservative.
I am ashamed I ever voted for him.
“Sorry sir, my knee does that often when strangers reach down my pants”
It’s a reflex, you know.
Give government burocrats a chance and they always turn into fascists. Why we should not give government power over us.
Give them power, they want more. Always.
So, like bringing your baby through TSA with the dirty diaper, I guess we now need to start wearing dirty underwear?
“In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.”
I’d have kicked the crap out of that person on the spot, consequences be damned.
L
Ok, but they don’t call me Skids for nothing.
THIS is why I don’t fly.I can drive anywhere in the continental US and I just write off the rest of the world.
:: She grabbed my throat hard, causing me to choke and cough. She yelled at me for coughing ::
Under the 4th Amendment, I would have ceremoniously WALKED this agent into the nearest wall-structure and claimed physical assault.
Don’t be sheep.
Some frequent traveler should develop the ability to precisely time a bout of projectile diarrhea, and really give these punks a good time.
At some point, hopefully the court will decide whether it is legit for TSA to molest people, under the excuse of a intrusive search, where they do not have specific, individual probable cause.
I am ashamed I ever voted for him.
The worst thing Ronald Reagan ever did was to choose George Bush as his running mate--and I have held this view since the second it happened. Had Reagan chosen someone else such as Paul Laxalt or Jack Kemp, there would have never been a Bush dynasty.
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I would have very carefully written down her name found the nearest cop and filed asaault and battery fir the chokehold and sexual assault for the groping. I refuse to be so scared and intimidated that I wouldn’t make eye contact and just slink away in embarrassment
And the TSA is a large reason I only fly when I have to. I used to fly over 50K miles a year. Now I look to travel less. I drive to many cities that I can get to in less than 6 hours. And I use calls instead of travel whenever I can. Airlines and airports have become such a hassle. Its just not worth it. Besides the fact that its profoundly uncomfortable.
I once read a letter from a TSAer who moaned that he felt degraded by people who resented and criticized him ‘after each day of honorably serving my country.’
Sticking grasping hands inside underwear is honorable? Manhandling children is ‘serving?’
Military and cops serve honorably. There is no honor in playing untrained, poorly-educated, psychologically-askew government stooge.
The TSA is unfit for purpose - which explains their great big goose egg in the success column. ‘Oh, but if we caught terrorists and announced it we would be less effective.’ Horsecrap. After 9/11 no terrorist would ever attempt to board as a passenger anyways since that tactic had been well and truly exhausted. In reality, the TSA would be so desperate for good publicity they would be shouting from the rooftops that they had nabbed a baddie.
Replicating the mindset, conditions and educational/intelligence level of post office workers in every airport was always going to be a disaster but the TSA have managed to make it much, much worse.
They would undoubtedly lock me up, but I’ll be DAMNED if some TSA goon would grab me or mine like that and I didn’t beat him/her until the others pulled me off of him/her.
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