Tag Archives: TSA

Keeping the skies safe from 4 year old girls

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To make everyone feel better about this, I would like to emphasise that no profiling whatsoever – racial, religious, or otherwise – was performed by the airport Stasi in their efforts to purge dangerous Grandmas, 4 year olds and teddy bears from our fragile skies.

As an aside, when I flew to Athens last year, while I was being probed by prurient gloved hands as I struggled to hold my beltless pants up, a 350lb Muslim lass, swathed from head to foot, waddled past me untouched to plant herself resolutely in two seats in the centre of the plane. I’m convinced there was at least one stowaway under her burka.

My two young children, aged four and six, were particularly excited their Grandmother was catching the same flight out of Wichita. Since she lives in California, and we live in Montana, they’ve never had a chance to fly with her. Tired and eager to return home, we began passing through security. My children and I went through without an incident. My Mother, however, had triggered the alarm. She was asked to go through the scanners again, and when the source of the alarm could not be identified she was told to sit aside and await a pat-down. All of this was perfectly routine.

When my Four-year-old daughter noticed her Grandmother, she excitedly ran over to give her a hug, as children often do. They made very brief contact, no longer than a few seconds. The Transportation Security Officers (TSO) who were present responded to this very simple action in the worst way imaginable.

First, a TSO began yelling at my child, and demanded she too must sit down and await a full body pat-down. I was prevented from coming any closer, explaining the situation to her, or consoling her in any way. My daughter, who was dressed in tight leggings, a short sleeve shirt and mary jane shoes, had no pockets, no jacket and nothing in her hands. The TSO refused to let my daughter pass through the scanners once more, to see if she too would set off the alarm. It was implied, several times, that my Mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.

My child, who was obviously terrified, had no idea what was going on, and the TSOs involved still made no attempt to explain it to her. When they spoke to her, it was devoid of any sort of compassion, kindness or respect. They told her she had to come to them, alone, and spread her arms and legs. She screamed, “No! I don’t want to!” then did what any frightened young child might, she ran the opposite direction.

That is when a TSO told me they would shut down the entire airport, cancel all flights, if my daughter was not restrained. It was then they declared my daughter a “high-security-threat”.

The TSA is keeping the skies safe from the threat of nursing mothers with breast pumps

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Flying has suddenly become much more appealing knowing that the threat of breast pump wielding mothers has been contained. First the underwear bombers and now the breast pump guerrillas. I wonder what would have happened if Amy Strand had been wearing a burka?

From here:

The Transportation Security Administration in Hawaii says an agent was wrong to tell a nursing mother she couldn’t board an airplane with her breast pump.

The TSA tells KITV the agent at the Kauai airport mistakenly told Amy Strand she could only bring the pump onboard if the bottles contained milk.

She was allowed to board after pumping in a bathroom and showing the full bottles to the agent.

Strand was traveling home to Maui with her 9-month-old daughter Wednesday when her pump raised questions during screening.

She asked for a private place to pump and was told to go to the women’s restroom. Strand says the only outlet was next to a sink facing a wall of mirrors, so she had to stand in front of others.

Boxcutters on a plane

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A few years back I found myself about to wander through airport security in Paris with a Swiss army knife in my pocket. I had meant to put it in my checked luggage, but had forgotten; groaning inwardly, I stuck it in a pocket of my carry-on bag.

After a ritual removing of my shoes, losing my pants through having to undo  my belt and being prodded in undignified places, I sailed through security – so did my Swiss army knife.

Sadly, a year or so later, I lost it to a paranoid Russian ex-commissar at the entrance to a museum in St. Petersburg.

The moral of the story is that you are more likely to be stabbed by a Swiss army knife on a plane than in a Russian museum.

From here:

Boxcutters on Flight From JFK — No, We’re Not Safer Than Before 9/11.

Recently a passenger brought box cutters through a passenger screening point and on to an airliner. In response to this, the Transportation Security Administration announced that the screeners responsible would get “remedial training.”

There’s been a lot of coverage of this event, including legitimate outrage that the sloppy TSA employees weren’t fired. What most people don’t realize is that tolerating failure and outright sloppy work has been a hallmark of U.S. aviation security from the beginning. The truth is nobody has ever been held accountable for aviation security failures – nobody. From top to bottom, the TSA arrogantly claims it does nothing wrong.

Body scan ogling

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From here:

Former “Baywatch” babe Donna D’Errico is barking mad about being body scanned.

The 42-year-old actress, who spent two years running around in a tiny red swimsuit on the hit series, and also posed nude for Playboy, said that she was subjected to an embarrassing full body scan at the airport, purely because of the way she looks.

After being subjected to the scan by TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport, “I noticed that the male TSA agent who had pulled me out of line was smiling and whispering with two other TSA agents and glancing at me,” D’Errico told AOL News.

“I was outraged.”

Most of us don’t want to be body scanned because, being neither exhibitionists nor particularly proud of our unadorned nakedness, we are less than keen on the thought of the real or imagined suppressed snickering that such an unveiling would provoke.

But how can someone who has made a career out of prancing around without – or almost without – clothes for the lecherous to ogle be outraged because – well, the lecherous want to ogle her?