Boggie Dog

I agree completely. What really makes one grasp at TSA's reasoning is how a grope down mitigates an alarm on some other physical item. The same logic would suggest that if passenger A alarms the screening for that alarm should be a carry on bag.

jkhuggins

The first paragraph of her Facebook post (emphasis added):

JakiChan

May I suggest:

"Now that you've completed touching me, I feel I should inform you that my doctor has informed me that I have been colonized by an aggressive form of MRSA. If I had known your patdown was going to be so invasive I would have informed you in advance. You may want to ask your doctor about if you should complete a course of aggressive antibiotics first."

And then just walk off leave the "office" wondering how sick he's going to get...

GUWonder

You won't see the "apology" in action at the airport.

The "apology" from the TSA was so "meaningful" that the TSA was doing this same thing to children and adults at airports even after the "apology" too, yesterday included.

The TSA "apology" is just cheap words when the manifested intent is to continue with the same fondling of genitals that they did to her son and to co-opt the complaint and complainant in order to do so.

Boggie Dog

Apologized for her experience but not for what TSA did.

We're sorry you think we abused you is no apology and that is essentially what TSA said.

petaluma1

Exactly. All TSA is trying to do is buy her silence by helping them to "address their shortcomings"

FliesWay2Much

That's their standard drivel: "We regret that the passenger was upset by the screening experience." or something like that.

GUWonder

Unfortunately, many people don't apply their mind enough to understand that this is the classic non-apology from spokeshole-type people meant to make the gullible think there was an apology for the disturbing action even as there was no apology for the action given by the perpetrators/defenders of the disturbing action.

Even if the TSA were to give a verbal apology for engaging in disturbing actions, their actions speak louder than their words: the TSA is still feeling up passengers' genitals in the very same way as they did to the boy.

petaluma1

I propose a Depends week at the airport. Every passenger would wear a Depends undergarment through security to bring TSA to a halt. :-)

MDtR-Chicago

Had an interesting variation this week... screener insisted that I stand with one leg forward when he did the groin-chop move. Not sure what his motivation was but it ensured an additional two genital contacts during the screening.

Four instances of direct genital contact in one screening.

At this same checkpoint, the MMW was throwing alarms on nearly every passenger. Long patdowns. Don't worry, they let around 10 people go thru the WTMD while I was waiting for my patdown, since the MMW was so slow.

jkhuggins

I don't disagree. And, of course, what we have is the report of what the mother said TSA said, rather than a direct statement from TSA. It's hard to tell what form the apology took without directly hearing the words.

But even a poor non-apology is still technically an apology.

txflyer77

A non-apology is worse than no apology. It's an insult—an implicit assumption that the recipient is too stupid, lazy or afraid to reject it.

rustykettel

Just assuming what the TSA claims is the reason for the groping and using their logic, the swipe strip tested at the end of the grope tests for residue so therefore it's good enough to clear an alarm on the laptop that belongs to the boy.

Laptop>laptop owner>TSA gloves>test strip

which is a really tenuous transfer chain to rely on if actual screening is the goal rather than a system of CYA processes.

Boggie Dog

It doesn't take a full body grope down to test for trace explosive residue.

WillCAD

I'm not sure what the real reason is for these new abusive gropes. There may not be a logical reason, it may simply be TSA upper management responding with a random escalation to show that "we're doing SOMETHING, ANYTHING to correct the embarrassing 95% failure rate from last year's tests." Or they may have a hidden meaning of some kind, possibly related to the recent electronics ban. Or perhaps it is an intentional retaliation, since TSA seems to blame the traveling public for ALL of its own shortcomings (i.e. it's always the traveler's fault that something went wrong, even in cases of TSOs stealing or improperly using their badges to conduct sexual assaults in the stairwells).

Either way, a full-body rubdown with multiple direct genital fondlings is certainly not for the purpose of gathering residue for an ETD test. TSA already has a procedure in place for that - directly swabbing the travelers' hands with the sampling swab.

One small glimmer of hope here is that TSA, for all of their abusiveness and bluster, <deleted by moderator>, so eventually the extra work this process generates for the rank and file TSOs at the checkpoint will cause them to complain up the pipeline, and the targeted area pat-down will be restored. How long that takes is anyone's guess, but much like the "NoS for everybody!" policy, the "sexual assault for everybody who alarms the NoS!" policy will simply be too much work for the average TSO, and slow down the lines too much, to continue indefinitely.