Originally Posted by
studentff
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.
Regarding your BTW paragraph: personally i don't think the procedure should be SSI, as it is performed on individuals. To me, once that happens (as it already has happened) it is no longer SSI. But I do not determine what is SSI or not, so I have to keep it "secret", despite the fact that i tell passengers what i will do, why I'm doing it, and what it entails. Nope doesn't make sense to me.
However, in all the years TSA had other pat-downs, over reading the post of the last year, i failed to find those procedures properly defined. So i will take a wait and see attitude as to whether or not someone will post it accurately here. And if they do, I hope you don't plan on getting your jollies thinking my bubble is burst (for the reasons I mentioned just above.
Originally Posted by
RichardKenner
Just to be 100% clear, are you saying that there is only one pat-down that can be performed by TSOs and one (the "very very rare" one) that can only be done in private and not by a TSO or are you saying that there are two pat-downs that can be done by TSOs and one additional?
It sounds like you're saying the former, but I thought the situation was the latter, that there were still different pat-downs in the more routine alarm and non-alarm cases.
To be 100% clear all I have said is that TSOs are not trained or certified in the procedure that is most invasive. If a TSO is patting you down, you are not receiving that procedure.