Hair touching/head grope
 

I have short hair. Not a buzz cut, but pretty short.

I always opt out of the nude-o-scope. And so I always get groped.

Never before today have I had a dude who wanted to head grope me and run his fingers through my hair.

I recoiled when he went after my noggin and the security guard called over some kind of lead and asked him if he had to grope my head. The lead sensibly said "no" and so the security guard went on with groping the rest of my person.

Weird. Hair/head groping.

Been going on for ages and it's disgusting. You've been lucky to avoid it for so long.

I shave my head daily, and get groped there every once in a while. I don't understand it, nor do I speak to the bozo doing it. I just look at him like :eek:.

Flying out of BOS once I opted out and asked for a private screening. It was two- or three-striper that was the second TSA agent in the room, and a one-striper that conducted the grope. My hair was short enough that my scalp was visible, but the agent patted it down anyway. When he stepped out to test his gloves, I asked the other agent if it was normal for my head to be patted down, and he said that the agent had been a little too enthusiastic and that he would talk with him. Haven't had my head patted down since.

I continue to contend that the grope's primary purpose is to obtain a sample for the ETD and only secondarily to feel around for something hidden. It helps explain the head/hair rubs, the bare arm checks, the foot rubs and the collar and waistband intrusions. They are trying to get to as many areas that may have explosive traces as possible.

Exactly. And it goes to prove that the pat-down is not the "same level" of search as a strip-search machine, but goes far beyond what a strip-search machine does.

Of course.

The grope-down is also used as a punitive measure for people who either can't or won't assume the "surrender" position, so they'll think twice about making a TSA employee feel them up next time they come through a checkpoint.

The screeners are practicing phrenology. :p

Ah, so that's what the BDO program does...

Mike

I disagree. I believe the purpose of the grope is to intimidate as much as possible under the all-for-safety guise and convince people to go through the scanners.

Explosive trace analysis, if properly conducted (not something they excel at) does not require more than traces, and therfore samples can be from small areas, and don´t have to be from intimate areas. Hands would be good.

You may be correct. The search seems to be designed to get the sample from places it would be if the explosive was planted by someone else to avoid direct contact by the carrier's hands.

You bring up a good point, that basically all of the opt out pat downs are retaliatory pat downs just to get people to go through the scanner. However, would they not minimize the random and follow up pat downs to make the scanner easier? I have not seen much evidence of that except that empirically the ATR system has fewer resolutions needed than the human operator method.

I think they think that their technology is good enough that if we just use it they will find all of the E's in the WEI's. If we opt out the only reason is that we must have E and they are darn certain that they will find it even if it means that they have to touch every inch of our body that they can. It is not so much retaliatory as it is "Aha, we have caught one we just need to prove it" thoroughness. The only way they can prove it is to maximize the exposure to the E traces for which they are looking.

Now that the scanners have become primary, their first assumption is that if we do not want it, we must be hiding something. We are more certainly criminals than if we voluntarily surrender to the scanner. It is like the BDO farce, in that it is not the accuracy of the scanner that indicates culpability, it is our unwillingness to use it that makes us suspicious.

That, and they are getting very tired of rubbing down fat old men (like me) and never, ever finding anything.

Not tired enough to quit.

Besides - if you stand near a checkpoint and watch long enough, you'll notice that the TSA employees all like to watch the women get "patted down" much more than performing the "pat-downs" on the fat old men like us.

A friend swears that the reason TSA likes to rub the hair/head is that they have been told that the oils on the scalp will "hold" the explosive chemical residue.

If a person has any residue on their hands, then rubs their head it will be transfered. So they like to rub the scalp/head/hair to pick up any residue.

I have NO scientific reason to back that up. Just what my friend says he got from an ex TSO.

That makes as much sense as a lot of stuff they do.

Leaked from the TSA's s0uper sekrit development lab in in Arlington, the proposed explosive scalp detector (political wheel-greasing by the Chertoff Group):

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...2ce03d99-1.jpg