petaluma1

@angela_rye

@TSA is being inundated with comments, 99% supportive of Ms. Rye.

This is at least the second journalist in about a week TSA has groped. The first one was Pam Coulter.


OK, why aren't the links to tweets showing up in the body of this comment? They are in the preview.

ETA from Ms. Rye's Twitter page:

GUWonder

Wearing a skirt, dress, kilt, lungi, sarong, loin cloth, or sheath/gourd at a TSA screening checkpoint is risky for passengers. All because that's how the TSA wants it to be.

Where are the videos of what the TSA does nowadays to passengers wearing bikinis or Speedo swimming briefs flagged down for the same kind of screening as the passenger in the above video?

yandosan

What was that aggressive, spastic maneuver near the groin at the end?
Very odd. Does this have something do with keeping people safe or is
it just about control and intimidation?

GUWonder

It's about touching "the resistance", more commonly known as the groin/genitals area. The TSA does this because they have to act as if they are doing something effective against bombers concealing explosives in their groin area. Amusingly, the TSA ignore the oral and upper digestive tract in a way that they don't ignore the pubic and backside cheek areas when it comes to this.

How long will it be before the TSA wants to do oral swabs too?

FliesWay2Much

The "this", of course, pertains to her TSA groping.

chollie

Very strange. I think it's clear the screener gave the pax a gratuitous thumb-jab to the groin. As I've posted before, some TSOs apparently have been trained that if a pax doesn't flinch, the screener hasn't encountered resistance - either because the pax has something nefarious preventing the contact and protecting against the chop, or because the screener failed to make sufficient contact with the crotch to generate a reaction.

However...there must be more footage, because the screener didn't do the full breast cup-lift-grope, nor did she do the legs twice, front and back.

I think the screener was retaliating. That's why the groin jabs that were out of sight of the camera. The TSO wouldn't have been able to hide excessive breast handling. Kind of creepy, though, when she stuck her nose within inches of the pax's breasts. Was she trying to smell her?

FlyingUnderTheRadar

Not my title: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/16/opinio...rye/index.html

petaluma1

From the link above:

As usual, nothing was found during the very aggressive "patdown".

The fact that the scanners alarm far too often on absolutely nothing diverting the TSA's attention to conducting useless "patdowns" says that the scanners make air travel less safe. I wonder if anyone at TSA sees this.

Emma1420

Angela Rye who posted this also has an oped on CNN.com about her experience. This type of intimate contact is simply not appropriate. I set off the scanners probably 90% of the time. It doesn't seem to matter what I'm wearing. Most of the TSA agents I deal with are fine (and I haven't had to have a patdown of the genital area yet, and hopefully I never will), but there have been a few that have been aggressive and made me very uncomfortable. So I can't imagine how distressing it would be in this person's shoes.

And this was always a disaster waiting to happen. They've asked people who have no real training, who are too often on a power trip, and who they pay poorly to take on a duty that should be left to the professionals. Israel, which has system that thwats terrorists (unlike ours) doesn't feel the need to grope their citizens just because they are getting on a plane.

Perhaps the TSA would be better off working on making sure knifes, guns, and other weapons don't get through security rather than groping passengers.

Himeno

That would require TSA to be capable of thinking.

petaluma1

TSA has responded, invoking the underwear bomber in an attempt to justify this grope:

http://buzz.blog.ajc.com/2016/12/22/...abby-pat-down/

Boggie Dog

Clearly not the back of the hands when the upper thigh/groin is groped.

GUWonder

Not so amusingly, they were groping around women's breasts even before the TSA started acting out in response to the failed underwear bomber on the DL/NW flight from AMS to DTW. And even after that failed underwear bomber (on a plane) and the semi-"successful" rectal bomber (on the ground), the TSA is still not groping around male genitals and rear cleavage like they have been groping women's breasts. Perhaps it really comes down to there being a more extreme societal discomfort about open display and groping of male "private parts" than about female "private parts". This may also explain why the "until we meet 'resistance'" language came up only after the TSA decided it wanted TSA screeners to make some genital contact with male passengers after the failed Christmas underwear bomber story got around. Using a euphemism for genital area contact makes it easier to get the TSA workforce to make contact with body areas that may otherwise have caused the employees to freak out more and not do all that the TSA wants in this regard too.

petaluma1

Unless I blinked when I watched the video of this "patdown", the screener forgot to "clear" the breast area.

petaluma1

I think it could be easier to do the genital jabs that Ms. Rye received when the back of the hand goes up the thigh.