Spaceduck

There are also passengers who walk through the WTMD with their arms over their heads.

Ysitincoach

No way!!!! That is classic. Wow, I have to watch for that.

Remember when they told everyone to put shoes in a tray, then they tried for like three months to tell people not to put them in a tray, just on the belt. That was such a miserable directive. The sheeple had already been trained, so they had to renege on barking to put the shoes on the belt.

IrishDoesntFlyNow

Blogdad Bob was/is never "active" in the sense that he posted/posts much of anything here. But the issue was, does he monitor this board; and the answer is that he openly admitted to watching this board. If it's not still him personally, you can bet your bippy that somone (or more than one) from TSA monitors the board regularly.

~~ Irish

ediemac1

Told the barker I could not hold the position (everyone through MMW, orange cone blocking WWMD). He beckoned to one of the clerks on the other side of the WWMD, pointed at me and gave an exaggerated shrug - code for medical I guess. The cone was moved, I went through, and was told to have a nice day. No patdown.

cottonmather0

Went through BOS Terminal C just now and it was ridiculously easy to SDOO. Some scanners were roped off and some were in use... I just got out of the line I was in and walked over to the WTMD lane, right in front of the barker. Half expected to get yelled at and made to stay, but she just watched me do it and did nothing.

I was through security in less than 10 minutes without a lick of trouble.... Have my GE interview next week, I sure hope that this is a harbinger of things to come when I can do precheck.

Darkumbra

I do that very deliberately and theatrically. Why? It creates a very visual image of someone 'submitting' to a heavy handed police state. I have about a 1 in 7 (I keep a count) success rate in having the screener telling me to 'put your hands down - this isn't a hold up'.... When I respond 'really?' I am rewarded with this peculiar look on their face as they reconsider what is actually going on.

A tiny, pointless victory - but then you take what you can get

dan1431

Last weekend, I along with a good friend were leaving a small airport and he was ahead of me in-line when a TSA employee motioned to him to enter the body scanner, he opted-out due to health concerns.

The TSA employee insisted it was safe, but my buddy explained he was advised by his MD to avoid all radiation if at all possible (including chest x-rays and such). The TSA employee had him walk through the metal detector and wait (along with three other male passengers) for the lone other male TSA employee to take him to the pat-down area and start the pat-down process.

I was directed to the body scanner and I opted-out, the TSA employee got somewhat nervous as he was the only other male at the check-point that day (something about somebody else being out sick) and begged me to go through the Body Scanner, I insisted that I wanted to opt-out and for the first time since the body scanners rolled out, the TSA employee walked through the machine closed it and had me walk through the metal detector ONLY! I stopped on the other side expecting him to have me wait in-line to be patted down, but no, he said collect your things and have a safe flight.

My friend had to wait in-line for about 15 more minutes before he was patted down and allowed to leave the checkpoint.

I guess if the checkpoint is inundated with pat-downs and there are not enough of the needed the gender they can close the machine for a bit until the backlog is caught up.

Either way, I was happy that I avoided the body scanner and a pat-down.

Dan

Ysitincoach

Hence why the TSA just shut down the scanners on National Opt Out Day, Thanksgiving, day after Super Bowl leaving IND, and seemingly any other big event.

Bravo for the fellow opt out support. Now say there were 19 of you, perhaps a collegiate sports team? What better team building than to all opt out.

cottonmather0

Which exemplifies the cynicism and hypocrisy of the whole system. If it's such a "key" technology that is more secure than WTMD's, then you should never bypass it without resorting to a patdown.

But if the scanners and the patdowns can just be bypassed whenever things get crowded or backed up, then it must not be that critical and therefore it's not needed at all. This is what seemed to be missing from coverage of Opt-out Day, that one final step of journalistic inquiry.

mathe

Opted out for the first time last night at LAX (always found the WTMD until now--I don't fly a huge amount). Contrary to expectations, it was totally painless. It seemed like the guy directing traffic wanted me patted down as quickly as possible. My guess is that the opt outs come in waves--someone else did right after me--and they don't want people hanging around giving others ideas.

(The frustrating thing is that they'd shut down the NoS while I was stuck in line behind a family with 9,000 bags, but had started it up again by the time the family had gotten a move on.)

dan1431

Interestingly, I opted out at FLL a few days ago and the TSA employee actually said to me, "I don't blame you, I hate the darned machine too".

While he was searching for a box of gloves (all three were empty) he said that, "that the body scanners make the employees lazy as they assume the machine is perfect".

I said I am not used to a TSA employee openly speaking out against his employers choices/technolgy and he said, "I was a cop for 22 years in Miami and we did not have all this technology to assist us and we still managed to find criminals and get the bad guys off the street, most of my (TSA) colleagues would not know when a bad guy stared them in the face."

He then started his extremely cursory pat-down and finally said to me, "I can tell from just looking at you that you are not a problem and this pat-down is a waste of mine your time, but sadly I cant break policy, I wish TSA was smarter", he then finished his pat-down and wished me a nice day.

I said to him, I wished more of your colleagues thought like you and he smiled, chuckled and said me too.

Dan

Caradoc

I always wonder, "What happened to make you decide to give up a mostly-legitimate line of work in favor of assaulting American citizens for a paycheck?"

InkUnderNails

He is probably collecting retirement and the TSA salary.

Caradoc

I understand that part of it. I just question as to whether he retired his conscience on the previous job, or sold it for the new one.

dan1431

My guess as well, just a retired Police Officer collecting his pension and working for the TSA to augment his income.

I think the simple answer is that most TSA employees do not give half as much though about theirs jobs as we do on this board. My sense from the few conversations I had with TSA employees over time is that most see it as a paycheck, nothing more, nothing less. Some are not even sure why they do what they do, other than it is in the name of security.

I had one TSA employee flat out tell me, he has very little understanding of the reasoning behind the actions of his job, other than what TSA has told him, that by following their policies and procedures he in ensuring the safety of the nation. Essentially he is trained how to do X, but not given much of a reason for why he does X.

Dan