Originally Posted by
Vidiot
Mods, if there's a better/preferred way to embed tweets, I'm happy to edit this. Wasn't sure how to do it best.
My reactions to this story:
--I can understand a trans woman presenting the MMW scanners with the Gumby software as an "anomaly." She said she flies all the time and has never run into this problem before, however. I think that if her descriptions are accurate, TSA could still have handled this much better, by explaining the need for a patdown, not doing the apparently-retaliatory explosives-scan patdown, dismantling her luggage, sensitively offering her a private screening and the opportunity for a witness, et cetera.
--Why did the TSA detain her? TSA has no detention authority, and it sounded like it was not a law enforcement detention predicated on reasonable suspicion of criminal behavior, though LEOs were eventually present.
--Why was she told she couldn't take pictures or document her experience at the checkpoint? This is, once again, contrary to what TSA says on its site and in all its communications (save for the request not to take photos/video of scanner screens.)
--Why did TSA tell her she would have to leave the airport, once she'd made it into the sterile area, past the checkpoint?
There's lots of stuff that don't seem to make sense. But, we have to remember that the victim was obviously stressed out because of the TSA harassment. There's no doubt in my mind that the TSA clerks did what she is accusing them of doing.
It's interesting that the TSA software tripped on the victim's groin area when the clerk assumed the victim was a biological female and plumbing showed up. Apparently, a female clerk groped the offending area and everything else. I don't know why unless it was pure harassment. Since the victim was already being detained in what looks like the former Voyeur Booth and didn't witness any of the glove swabbing of the female clerk, there's a high degree of probability that the lead clerk falsified the positive alarm just to pile on more harassment.
It also sounds like one of the clerks wanted to force the victim to declare that the victim was a male, which would have given the male clerk justification to set the <deleted by moderator> to "male." In the clerk's feeble mind, the <deleted by moderator> would have been set to "male" and the victim would have gotten through because the plumbing would have been ignored.
I hope the victim gets a good lawyer and comes forth with a more coherent story than what you can tell in 140 characters or less. As the rights of the LGBT ("T" in this case) become more and more established, the TSA needs to change how they do the <deleted by moderator>. I can't imagine that the TSA would bother to do anything about accommodating transgendered people because it's cheaper to just pay out a couple of lawsuits every year.