Originally Posted by
SATTSO
You think that's the only profession - qualified medical - where the genitalia have to be patted down? Really? I have mnow many others - none TSA employees - who have had to do as such in their profession, including federal LEOs. But I guess FBI agents, military personal, etc., are all perverts?
The overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens will never be strip-searched in a federal or state prison, never be booked into their local lockup, never be arrested, and arguably, never even subjected to a stop-and-frisk Terry Stop by a LEO. (though the increasing erosion of freedoms in this country may eventually change at least the last point.) And while a lot of things go on in the military, for a lot of good reasons, I don't think aggressive patdowns are routine affairs for most soldiers/sailors/airmen.
In fact, prior to TSA, I suspect that a substantial plurality. if not a majority, of citizens never came face-to-face with an on-duty federal employee over the course of the average year. Like it or not, TSA is *the* visible face of the federal government. (The IRS on the other hand, is more of a disembodied impersonal entity to most folks.
What TSA is doing is subjecting large numbers of law-abiding citizens to a non-trivial portion of the treatment normally given to criminal suspects or convicts. So, yes, I think that the only "professional" contact with that part of the body that most citizens experience is from a physician.
BTW, re: the "super secret uber patdown/search with cause not performed by an officer and required to be in private:" how long before you think a full account of one of these searches gets posted here, or worse (for TSA), in the mainstream media? While individual TSOs are bound to not release SSI, that only delays the inevitable egg on TSA's face. Secrets can only be kept if the secret activity is either private or extremely rare, and TSA contacts so many passengers that even if only 1 in each million gets this treatment, it will be public knowledge before Christmas.