TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View
In the past few weeks since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implemented its new “enhanced” pat down procedures there has been considerable backlash from the traveling public. This backlash has been loud and angry … but what is not heard or seen in the media is the quiet resentment of this new policy within the TSA.
A few days ago I contacted 20 TSA Transportation Security Officers (TSO) to ask their opinions of the new “enhanced” pat downs. Of the 20 I reached out to, 17 responded. All 17 who responded are at airports where the new “enhanced” pat down is in place … and the responses were all the same, that front line TSOs do not like the new pat downs and that they do not want to perform them. I expected most to not like the pat downs … but what I didn’t expect was that all 17 mentioned their morale being broken down.
Each of the 17 TSA TSOs that responded to me detailed their personal discomfort in conducting the new pat downs, with more than one stating that it is likely they are more uncomfortable performing the pat down than passengers are receiving them.
Some comments from these TSOs include:
“It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh. Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!”
“Do you think I want to go to work and place my hands between women’s legs and touch their breasts for a few hours? For starters, I am attracted to men, not women and if I was attracted to women, it would not be the large number of passengers I handle daily that have a problem understanding what personal hygiene is.”
“Yesterday a passenger told me to keep my hands off his penis or he’d scream. Is this how a 40 year old man in business attire acts? He’ll scream? My 3 year old can get away with saying he’ll scream, but a 40 something business man? I am a professional doing my job, whether I agree with this current policy or not, I am doing my job. I do not want to be here all day touching penises.”
“Being a TSO means often being verbally abused, you let the comments roll off and check the next person, however when a woman refuses the scanner then comes to me and tells me that she feels like I am molesting her, that is beyond verbal abuse. I asked the woman if she thought I like touching other women all day and she told me that I probably did or I wouldn’t be with the TSA. I just want to tell these people that I feel disgusted feeling other peoples private parts, but I cannot because I am a professional.”
“I was asked by some guy if I got excited touching scrotums at the airport and if it gave me a power thrill. I felt like vomiting when he asked that. This is not a turn on for me to touch me it is in fact a huge turn off. There is a big difference between how I pat passengers down and a molester molesting people.”
Aside from the issue of TSA TSOs being required to physically touch passengers in places they do not want to be touching them during the ‘enhanced’ pat down, morale is decreasing for front line TSOs, due in part to an increase in verbal abuse. Each of the 17 TSOs who responded to me detailed a new level of verbal abuse they are experiencing at work.
The TSA has experienced a high level of turn over since its inception, however its turnover rate has decreased recently. With this decrease in morale, caused directly by a change in TSA policy, it is likely to begin experiencing a higher than average turn over again … which will further decrease the effectiveness of airport security.
Some comments from these 17 TSOs include:
“Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.”
“I come to work to do my job. It is not up to me to decide policy, it is up to me to carry out my duties as dictated by the Transportation Security Administration. When a person stands in front of me and calls me a pervert or accuses me of molesting them it is disheartening. People fail to understand that neither of us are happy about the intrusive pat down I am carrying out. I am polite, I am professional and while someone may not like what I have to carry out, they came to me because they choose not to utilize the alternative and less invasive method of security at my airport.”
“I served a tour in Afghanistan followed by a tour in Iraq. I have been hardened by war and in the past week I am slowly being broken by the constant diatribe of hateful comments being lobbed at me. While many just see a uniform with gloves feeling them for concealed items I am a person, I am a person who has feelings. I am a person who has served this country. I am a person who wants to continue serving his country. The constant run of hateful comments while I perform my job will break me down faster and harder than anything I encountered while in combat in the Army.”
“Do people know what a Nazi is? One can’t describe me as a Nazi because I am following a security procedure of designed to find prohibited items on a passenger’s body. A Nazi is someone with hatred and ignorance in their hearts, a person who carried out actions of execution and extermination of those based on their religion, origins or sexual preferences. I work to make travel safer, even if I do not agree with the current security procedures. Further more, I am Jewish and a TSA Transportation Security Officer, an American Patriot and to call me a Nazi is an offense beyond all other offenses.”
There are multiple sides to every story, and I think the point of view of those on the front lines of the TSA, those required to carry on the policy and procedures created by the TSA, are an import part of this story. I think those organizing efforts to change the TSA’s policy should also consider the impact to the TSA TSOs.
Rather than dehumanize the TSA TSOs, work with them, understand their views and opinions and work together to change the current TSA policies.
Happy Flying!
The entire issue with the TSA and their procedures are that those procedures are Reactionary.
Since 9/11, no terrorist has succeeded in bringing down an airliner. We have a lot more to fear from bad maintenance, improper cockpit procedures and navigation issues (controlled flight into terrain) than we do from terrorists.
The aircraft will certainly NOT be brought down by nail clippers, bottles of water bought outside the terminal and cosmetics.
The TSA is trying – and succeeding – in doing the terrorists a favor by implementing these asinine reactionary regulations, many of which are in violation of our rights under the US Constitution.
In order for the TSA to get any of my respect, they need to STOP being a bunch of wimpy bureaucrats who run crying over the threat of yesterday, and work on a different, less invasive system.
Check out how the Israeli airline El Al handles it, by personal one-on-one interviews of everyone. It’s easier to spot a probable terrorist this way instead of treating every passenger as a possible terrorist, including someone’s frightened 2 year old.
It’s a bad system, but in place by bureaucrats who do not know what the hell they are doing.
You cannot win in this war on Terror by treating everyone as a criminal. You cannot win by being one step behind. Do you really think they’re going to try another underwear bomb or shoe bomb?
Again, we have more to fear from a rudder malfunction on take-off than a bomb in some kids panties.
Last year some really upset gentleman in Austin flew a fuel laden Piper into the IRS building here. No TSA screening could have ever preventing this. Yet those morons talked about placing new restrictions on General Aviation until a cooler head prevailed.
The whole system needs a top-down restructuring, and a new “Mission Statement”… with consultants from El Al brought in to show us how it’s done by grown-ups.
Dave
“Do people know what a Nazi is? One can’t describe me as a Nazi because I am following a security procedure of designed to find prohibited items on a passenger’s body. A Nazi is someone with hatred and ignorance in their hearts, a person who carried out actions of execution and extermination of those based on their religion, origins or sexual preferences.”
Actually, no. Most “Nazis” were ordinary German citizens doing what they had to do to get by. You were either a member of the party or you were a second class citizen. With the exception of the Schutzstaffel, many of the camp-workers were “just following orders” and “just carrying out policy”. I don’t give a damn if you’re a Jew. In fact, if you are a Jew and doing what you’re doing, you should be even more painfully aware of how wrong “just following orders” is.
I have not pity for these people. They have chosen to do this and deserve the criticism for not doing something about this policy. I do not care how these comments make these people feel.
The company that I work for has a motto; “You are the company, your actions represent the company”. The person doing the pat down is feeling my genitals or my children’s genitals is the creep.
I normally am not a person who is in favor of civil discontent, but I encourage all flyers to “opt-out” and make the TSA agents as miserable as possible.
Cry me a freakin river. If these power-tripping community college dropouts don’t want to sexually assault people, here’s a thought: DON’T. Get a real job and drop the “we were just following orders” excuse.
I have absolutely no sympathy for these thugs and perverts. They are sexually assaulting people in order to put on security theatre. They are criminals ans should be treated as such.
The saddest to me is the ex-military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He risked his life willingly to protect our way of life, our freedoms, our safety. He risked his life to give Iraqis and Afghans a chance at freedom. He deserves our love and respect. Gut then he came home and went to work doing this kind of stuff, directly undermining his earlier work. It’s got to make him sick. I’m sure it’s not what he signed on for. He does have a choice though. A person’s got to do what a person’s got to do.
I cannot believe that 1. this will make flying significantly safer or 2. that it’s worth it to give up our 4th amendment rights. Finding a syringe with heroin and 129 undisclosed things doesn’t strike me as a fair trade for 300 million peoples’ civil rights. It doesn’t matter that all 300 million don’t travel. It will come to everyone soon enough. Anybody want to do this to go to a football game, travel on a bus, see Disney on ice, go into a mall or restaurant? Our nannies would only be trying to protect us.
Really I think it would be best if we were all just tasked with watching our neighbors and turning them in if they do anything suspicious. To keep us honest, the government could hire actors to do suspicious things and have heavy penalties if we don’t report them. That’ll keep us safe for sure. Let’s ask Dear Leader what he thinks. “American”? You want to chime in with some support here?
BTW “American”, how strongly did you voice support for the NSA wiretaps? Those were much less invasive and all you had to do to avoid them was not use the Internet or phone after all.
Its all spin, don’t fall for it..
Don’t believe anything these fake employees are putting out there in the hopes of swaying public opinion their way.
TSA is a useless..and they are just eating up our tax dollars doing nothing but stealing crap from our luggage and now feeling us up.
TSA employees could organize & revolt, just like the passengers are. No frisk day, or whatever. The supervisors can’t run everything, and probably a lot of them want to revolt, too. An organized effort would cripple the system.
Just doing a job isn’t an excuse for violating your personal integrity.
And as for the TSA reputation – there are too many power trippers. If the nice ones would report them, stop them, do something – that might help. I’d call it 25% power tripper, 75% nice/decent – but that 25% spoils it for everyone.
I could deconstruct every one of those comments, but this one is the one that really made me spit nails:
Quote:
“Do people know what a Nazi is? One can’t describe me as a Nazi because I am following a security procedure of designed to find prohibited items on a passenger’s body. A Nazi is someone with hatred and ignorance in their hearts, a person who carried out actions of execution and extermination of those based on their religion, origins or sexual preferences. I work to make travel safer, even if I do not agree with the current security procedures. Further more, I am Jewish and a TSA Transportation Security Officer, an American Patriot and to call me a Nazi is an offense beyond all other offenses.”
That right there is why we are only a few degrees of separation from concentration camps.
This person could not be more wrong.
What, do you think that every NAZI “officer” was a fire breathing, gibbering demon with fangs and baby guts in their teeth???
No, they were people JUST LIKE YOU, convinced by a lying, corrupt regime that you are somehow doing your “patriotic duty” by subjugating and trampling the rights of your fellow citizens for some higher purpose like “protecting the fatherland”.
They were people JUST LIKE YOU, holding mild mannered civil service jobs serving the state, who reacted, when caught and confronted by the atrocities carried out in their name, with genuine surprise, they honestly thought “they were just doing their jobs”.
Did someone put a gun to their head and make them become a TSO? I don’t think so! If you hate it so much, get a different job! BOO FREAKEN WHO!These people are high school diploma/community college graduates who got DAMN lucky to get a government job with all the benefits. They’re complaining, and I’m sure it’s not fun to get yelled at, but that’s life and that’s the price you pay to have a nice government job when most people are competing for $9/hour jobs right now.
I have no choice in the matter if I want to travel to go see my father across the country. I am *potentially* FORCED to either have someone look at my naked body on a screen, or be sexually molested. If I don’t comply, I can’t go visit my father (unless I drive from NY to CA, or take a train. Which honestly, the train is really starting to look nice.) THIS IS NOT KEEPING ANYONE SAFE! Molesting random people does NOT make me feel safer. And regarding the Nazi’s comment… Blindly following the government’s terrible policies that invade the rights of it’s citizen in the name of “safety” IS WHAT the Nazis did! Many were just German citizens who though they were “serving their country”…their country that had effed up policies. I wouldn’t call them Nazi’s but lets keep it real. You are not a hero, even though you want to pretend you are. You are a low level government employee. I’m not saying you necessarily like stroking a men’s penises or fingering women all day, but you are definitely on a power trip if you think you have an honorable job. You don’t, so shut up.
Touching someone’s genitalia AGAINST THEIR WILL is sexual molestation. It doesn’t matter if your employer tells you to. You’re still molesting someone. Anywhere else other than an airport you could charge someone for doing this. But at an airport you have to shut up and let someone sexually molest you against your will, or YOU could end up “in trouble.” So you have to relinquish your rights as an American citizen if you just want to fly on a plane? This is NOT constitutional! I am an American citizen and I DEMAND my rights, whether I’m on the streets or in an airport!
@Jack: wow, maybe YOU should’ve stayed in school! TSA requires high experience or education, and is hard to get employed with. TSA agents probably make way more than you ever could. Last time I checked, Homeland Security is protecting our country. This new system may be intrusive, and probably will not last, but grow up. I like to know when I fly, that someone doesn’t have a pipe bomb strapped to their thigh. You sir, are a whiney MORON! Great article Fish
Lauren,
The only reason you get “molested” is because you said no to the first, far less intrusive option. You know that by saying no to the body scan you will get “groped” therefore, you are consenting.
And flyer, that is the first sane comment I have read.
to American:
so your choice is:
go through a radiation machine so your naked image can be viewed OR be molested. And you must pay for it.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” – The United States Constitution, Fourth Amendment.
If you are so American, you should at least know your Constitution. You probably don’t understand how to break down the legal speak. That’s okay, anyone dumb enough to feel “safe” with these procedures deserves to have their rights taken away.
I can feel empathy for those of you who need the job to stay afloat right now, but you’re still sexually assaulting me, even if the government is ordering it. And no, I won’t go through the peep show machine and possibly subject myself to skin cancer.
Hana @87: Everyone should read your story. I am horrified at the descriptions of your treatments in the states and it makes me ashamed to be a US citizen 🙁 It is sad that it takes treating straight white buisiness-looking males like criminals before anything is done about it, but at least now (hopefully) enough of a fire has been sparked to effect some change, or at least roll policies back to where they were.
I’m sickened by the giant step forward in intrusiveness and security theater that’s the scope-and-grope approach. What’s almost more alarming is how willing many people are to go along with it — and be hostile to those of us who won’t. I’ve read a lot of name-calling from these people, and head-achingly stupid statements (“don’t like it? don’t fly!” … “they’re doing it to protect me!”).
The one thing in this that’s encouraging is that the TSOs are getting grief. They should! They’re voluntarily molesting their fellow Americans, who want nothing more than to go to work or go see grandma on the other side of the country.
Enough is enough. TSOs and scaredy-cat passengers: you’re not making anyone any safer by molesting my children, my wife or me. You are doing real harm, instead. Enough is enough.
I for one am voting with my feet. I will never fly again. I have a perfectly good SUV that will take me where I want to go without fear of a naked body scanner or being sexually molested by a TSA employee. I don’t give a damn about the TSA agents or how demoralized they feel. If they really had a moral compass they wouldn’t be “serving their country” by fondling little children’s genitalia. I’d quit my job and collect food stamps before I’d agree to molest a little kid.
There is only one way to put a stop to this perversion — stop flying. They won’t molest me because I won’t be there trying to board a plane. Instead I’m serving my country by doing my part to put TSA perverts on the unemployment line.
While it may be a “radiation machine” it isn’t even as bad as the radiation you get when flying, so that is a non issue. And doing a body scan is not unreasonable, so you fail on that count. I can guarantee if this came up to the Supreme Court, which it most likely will, it will be upheld.
@Flyer
A pipe bomb?
So when this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/eveningnews/main5347847.shtml
happens here, you will be just fine with anal and vaginal probes as well?
Of minor children?
Whining? You are the one whining, willing to give up any form of freedom, shaking in fear of a threat that is a thousand times less than the risk you face driving to the airport.
“American”:
Also, by the logic “they follow orders, therefore they are like the Nazis” every single one of you who has a job is also a Nazi, because you follow the orders of your boss.
You’re leaving out an important point. They follow illegal orders, orders that direct them to violate the 4th Amendment rights of American citizens. My boss doesn’t order me to commit crimes, and if he did, I wouldn’t obey.
As for all the “just drive” remarks: I am a US citizen who works for a US-based company and must sometimes travel for company meetings. I live in Belgium. Please point out on a map which bridge I’m supposed to take?
Fish…
“Alysha
Keep in mind that TSA WBI scanners cannot store or transmit images while in service in the field … it simply can’t happen with the current hardware … so the images will never end up colour inverted. As soon as someone passes through the scanner the image must be wiped for the next image to appear.
Happy Flying!
-Fish”
At the start, the Nazi party wasn’t doing that either. The national socialist movement took years gearing up for that. While I do not agree with abuse heaped on the agents, I do agree with them seeking other employment… I have been forced to do that before on moral grounds. It does infringe upon our basic human rights.
If the TSA gropers don’t like what they have to do to keep their jobs, they can do what the rest of us are told if we don’t like our jobs…go get another job…if you can.
It’s a terrible thing when someone is asked to act against their personal moral standards. This terrible thing is made unimaginably worse when the request is fulfilled. And still, it is further deplorable when the actor insists that there was no alternate choice.
To the TSO’s: a moral standard broken once, regardless of the reason may as well not have been a standard at all. Band together and quit. Slow the flow of the lines until the airlines pressure the TSA. Sabotage the equipment. Work at McDonalds. You have a choice! Don’t be that character in history that people look back at, and say “I never would have done that. What were they thinking?”
“Do people know what a Nazi is? ”
I don’t think he does. Lunatic fascists wouldn’t get very far without willing people to carry out their dirty work without question.
Safe? Do a search and find out what exactly about the AIT machines has scientists (including radiologists) concerned: The radiation from flying or from X-rays is measured over one whole body’s volume. “In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two
orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.” Anyone with a family history of skin cancer, breast cancer, or thyroid issues (and possibly others), need to read the letter. If you’re in the best of health, with healthy family members, and don’t have children or don’t plan to have children, feel free to waltz through the scanners as often as you want to. Just don’t be so cavalier (or thoughtless) to assume the risks and dangers are the same for everybody, or that everyone can choose not to fly. (I’d choose not to fly, nor to make my baby daughter fly too, if not for my hugely overweight American in-laws being too sickly to do make the halfway-around-the-world journey themselves!)
Sorry. I am not buying this story from the TSA TSO’s.
“I am just doing my job, even though I don’t approve of it?”
If you are helping someone in a crime you are an accessory. Try explaining to a judge or the jury about how you are not an accessory but just doing your job.
Unless someone puts a gun to your head, you are doing the job because you can live with yourself in peace and sleep comfortably at night.
On the flip side of the story, we have to fly. Not an obligation, but better to fly than to travel 2000 miles in a car. If I am molested, how do you expect me to sleep at night? Just convince myself that I have no other choice and accept it?
I do not have any children but if I did and someone even remotely assumed that they can touch them, we would have a serious problem! Same goes for an elderly person.
They should refuse to do it rather than blindly follow policy. If your employer asks you to do something you feel is wrong and humiliating then you should speak up and not just follow orders – or quit.
This scares me, I wonder at what point will people question orders? If I asked an employee to eat feces to check for explosives in the name of public safety I wonder how many would do it?
Freedom means you have to think for yourself!
If you really hate it that bad, quit your job! If all of you would quit or refuse to do these invasive procedures, the TSA would have to get their act together! Put your money where your mouth is and quit!
I wonder if the TSA could be the beginnings of the “civilian force” just as powerful as the military that Obama was talking about before the election?
TSA workers if you don’t enjoy your job quit.
Looks like bureaucrats are using these policies to divide and conquer us.
If the TSA would hire attractive people and offer an “enhanced” pat down for pre-flight orgasm for a fee, I bet we could pay for the whole operation and make air travel something we look forward to once again.
This pissed me off. All of the railroad employees and concentration camp guards in Nazi Germany were just “doing their jobs”, “serving their country”, “carrying out their duties”, blah, blah, blah. The Nuremburg trials proved that “just following orders” is not a defense against criminal charges.
If my employer, federal or private, tells me to do something illegal or unethical and I comply, I am still liable. Even though the threat of economic blackmail is a strong one, I would still go to jail. So would my boss, but that wouldn’t help me. What makes the TSA think they’re so special?
If they do something every day so repulsive that they hate it and their victims hate it, and lash out at them for it, they shouldn’t whine to me that they’re “just following orders”, er… “just doing their job”. They all need to grow a spine, and get a new line of work. I understand signing on a street corner makes about the same and has less stress. I certainly have more respect for an honest beggar.
What TSA people forget is that they aren’t sworn police officers. Not even close. They don’t have a fraction of the training, for starters. Even then, police are bound by the law and the constitution – these people think they aren’t. Guess again.
Seriously, if TSA personnel go along with this, they are saying they approve. Period. Their silence isn’t professionalism, it’s cowardice. Just like the concentration camp guards and the whole apparatus that made it work, little people “just doing their jobs” without question. Is that what our nation is coming to?
AMERICAN,
I truly wish that you were correct in assuming that there is a clear-cut choice between the full-body scanner and the enhanced pat-down.
Unfortunately, there will be a significant number of travelers who will be subject to both regardless of their wishes.
Travelers with prosthetic devices and medical implants have reported choosing the scanner, only to be informed that they must also be physically searched. The experience of a Charlotte flight attendant is a good example, though there are more to be found: http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13536352
If a scanner image is blurred–whether due to movement or a technological bug–an individual may also have to submit to the enhanced pat-down. A highly-publicized example is Dave Barry’s story from last week: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2010/11/groin-update.html
There is also speculation–I personally have yet to read an account of this happening–that women wearing sanitary napkins and individuals wearing incontinence protection may also be subject to further scrutiny. I would be interested in information confirming or dis-confirming this.
I am not a regular reader of this blog–or Internet-commenter, actually–but I thought it important to raise this point. Thanks!
Oh please, I don’t feel sorry for them at all. If they don’t like having to perform these procedures, they should quit. Its just that simple.
Its not like these are highly requested or high paying jobs. Go out and get a real career. I feel as sorry for you as I do for the kid working at McDonalds.
I respect that you were in the military. But coming out of the military and going to wok for the TSA is just baffling. I have quite a number of friends who left varies branches of the military and became cops. Why the hell would you go into the rent a cop business ? There is something wrong with that.
It sounds like there is more to that military guys story. Did he not learn a skill ? Maybe he scored so poorly he was a grunt and that explains why he couldn’t get into a real level of law enforcement. *shrug*
People need to get over themselves. Take it out on the people in power. Not the people with a family to feed.
Unfortunately I have to fly in my profession, but I won’t go through the scanner. What I do however is moan of pleasure when they touch me and afterwards I will look at them and say “thank you, now I have something to think about tonight” while touching my own groin and looking at them with loving eyes. If they want to charge me for sexual assault for groping me..well, I’ve never heard anything more stupid.
I don’t care that the employees feel uncomfortable. They should. They should quit or refuse to follow orders, as anyone with immoral orders.
Just some things to clarify for some people here.
1. Your rights are your rights. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LOSE YOUR RIGHTS. YOU CANNOT “WAIVE” YOUR RIGHTS JUST BY BUYING A TICKET.
2. The Nazi analogy is perfectly sensible. Both extermination camp guards and TSO’s are “just following orders”, although they both knew what they did was wrong. Yet, they still did it. It does not matter the DEGREE of violation of one’s rights, but the concept that a low-level grunt is somehow innocent, although they are ENTIRELY compliant in an unethical system, and they know it. I’m not saying they deserve to get insulted, but I have no sympathy if they do.
This article has strengthened my resolve to opt out of the scan and make the groping process as demoralizing for the groper as possible. I’m encouraged to see that they’re human…if we can get them to quit, this crazy policy will change.
Alouise,
Unfortunately writing nice letters and filing official feedback cards in this case won’t work. TSA is like any other company – they do not do anything unless it affects their bottom line – which in this case is public funding.
So the organization must feel the pain also, and in this case it is justified in my opinion to be rude even to those who work at the lowest level, that is how the message gets through. If TSA:s employee turnover gets unusually hight and training new ones gets more expensive it will at some point begin to interest politicians which give them their funding.
Recent example: NokiaSiemens networks supplied Iran with network equipment which allowed the government to spy on and apprehend opposition during the recent protests after the presidential election. Was it nice letters from those who have relatives “missing” that made the company admit that yes it indeed made a mistake and revised its policy? No. It was because in Tehran where Nokia had 60% market share in phones and was extremely popular in the upper end phones people just stopped buying them and dealers took the phones off the shelves. And complained, rudely and loudly.
“whether I agree with this current policy or not, I am doing my job.”
That’s just what those poor, misunderstood Nazis said too.
Leonidas,
You can, in fact, waive your rights by purchasing a ticket. It is free speech to say “bomb” anywhere, but do that in an airport and bye bye. When you go into a movie theater you can’t yell “fire” and if you use your free speech to threaten to kill someone that is also a crime. So you fail.
Maria Said:
To be honest, I’ve never understood the urge to lash out at the low level grunt with vitriol.
My Response:
Hey Maria – It’s because it’s the low-level grunt who’s putting his hand on my groin or leeing at me with his taxpayer-funded x-ray vision.
I’ve got no sympathy for TSA workers in this situation. If doing something wrong is a requirement of doing your job, then STOP DOING THE JOB and get another one.
Submitting to a digital strip search or state-authorized groping is beneath the dignity of a free man, and it needs top STOP.
Fish,
That line about “serving my country” by working for TSA strikes me as facile and self-serving, and it’s insulting to the people in our armed forces who REALLY serve their country. Just like the TSA uniforms and badges are insulting to the people who really EARN the right to wear such symbols of authority. Finally, when you make claims such as the machines being safe and that images are not stored and transmitted, clarification on the order of “I AM TOLD that the machines are save and images are not stored” would be appreciated.
You may be a fine person, but as a TSA representative you have very little credibility. It has become clear that in TSA, the people at the top lie, and the people down the line are lied to.
The “Nazis” are the bureaucrats who instituted this procedure — because spending money and telling people what to do is the “easy” way to do things here — and they should all be tried for instituting procedures that in ANY other context constitute sexual assault (especially on minors).
The TSA agents are the absolute moral equivalent to the concentration camp guards. They herded them onto the trains. Into the gas chambers. Turned on the gas. No Party affiliation required, “just doing our jobs.” I hope they quit en masse, then charge their superiors with illegal coercion.
Congress and other elected officials must NOT be exempt from this humiliation.
And out of respect to Americans who are finally exerting their rights to peaceful protest, we who fly should either participate with them, or plan to spend a lot more time tolerating it. It is time to be REALLY inconvenienced. To tolerate this is to admit that the Islamic Terrorists have won.
The best security will always be alert passengers in the air, prepared to restrain a dangerous passenger.
This may actually be the most effective way to deal with this problem. Demoralize their workers until they all quit.
As for the guy who was offended by being called a nazi. Your excuse is the same they used at the Nuremburg trials. “I’m just doing my job.” Perhaps it’s time he sought a new job.