Take a look at the screening picture associated with this article--looks to me like that girl's right breast is being touched in rather sensitive/private areas:

http://www.kirotv.com/consumer/3765174/detail.html

Just like some TSA FSDS/checkpoints/individuals interpreted the (old) shoe rules as "all shoes off," and just like some now are interpreting the outer-garmet rules as socks off or even shirts off (see other posts), there will be some who regularly interpret the pat-down rules as "fondle everything" by grabbing and squeezing.

A big problem is that just like with the shoe rules, there will likely be no recourse whatsoever against these overzealous interpreters of policy. Those of us who have complained about shoe-carnival airports and whatnot have mostly received BS replies about it being "for our own good" or "SSI" or "within policy" or whatever. There's no (visible to the public anyway) TSA history of punishment for overzealous FSDs/checkpoints/screeners. So the abuse will go on.

Thank you, studentfff, for a great link. I'm glad to see that eyecue is wrong when he says that only a small minority of travelers are upset about the kinds of invasive and abusive treatment we're subjected to at checkpoints. And yes, what they're doing to the victim in the picture looks an awful lot to me like fondling a young woman's breasts.

Allowing screeners ANY latitude to touch a person's private parts is playing with fire, even if myrgirl and other individual screeners are making their best efforts to treat passengers with dignity. The bottom line is that forcing women to submit to having their breasts touched by strangers is indecent and revolting. Breast fondling as public policy is just shameful. I hope the perverts who thought this one up spend a long time in prison and a longer time in hell.

If you blow up the image you will see the hand is at a right angle to the chest and going straight down the sternum, not the nipples.

Does it really matter? I think the main point is that this shouldn't be happening in the first place. Unless the TSA considers a woman's breasts to be dangerous weapons...

What's next? Will I have to endure some TSA goon groping my crotch some day? How about anal cavity searches-- people could surely hide a weapon there. I can tell you that the first TSA agent who sticks his (or her) hand on my genitals is in for a big surprise... perhaps a knee to the jaw or a fist in the face, coupled with a loud scream of "rape!" will catch their attention. (I'd do it too... You have to admit that it would be kind of funny for a guy at a checkpoint to be screaming rape...)

Where does the line get drawn? I think that any reasonable person would agree that touching a person's private parts, or areas around those private parts, is over the line. No matter how you spin it, this is unacceptable. There is no need for this to be done in the name of "security", especially when there are so many other potentially effective measures that are being overlooked.

That's truely an awful picture because the screener's hand isn't shown well and you can't tell by a still picture as much as by a video but it looks to me like the side of her hand on her cleavage and not on her breast, which is correct. Was there a video? The way the article reads it sounds like there's one but I didn't see it.

I enjoyed a "closer inspection" last week at a major airport to remain nameless.

However, fortunately, it was far from the nether regions, it was still unpleasant:

1/ Having to be frisked criminal-style with hand on the table
2/ Having the agent go through each and every piece of plastic (credit and memberships) and analyze them
3/ Count my cash (which I could understand if I had a huge wad of bills -- I had a $20 and $10 note on me)
4/ Once finished with the first round of searches, re-did a 2nd and 3rd time for accuracy
5/ AND THE ABSOLUTE WORST: The TSA screener put my wallet on the table behind me, out of my view with my back to it and kept telling me to stop looking around (as I didn't want to leave it out of my view).

In retrospect, I wish I would have asked for a manager, but one didn't seem apparent in the immediate area and I really couldn't afford to miss my flight.

In about 85 segments this year, this one is the worst.

I would refuse. Unless they can show me a PRINTED, VISIBLE POLICY showing why I am to be treated like a criminal, I REFUSE to accept such treatment. If it means I don't fly, then fine. I will not accept being treated like a criminal, period.

I would not let this happen. I trust TSA agents about as much as I'd trust a group of convicted burglars to guard a million dollars in small, unmarked, untracable currency. There have been too many incidents of people in white shirts stealing for me to even think of them as being credible or trustworthy. There's the definite possibility that a credit card may be stolen from you, or at least the credit card number may be stolen.

Besides, trust is a two way street. If they don't trust me, then I don't trust them.

Again, none of their business. Even if I were carrying an illegal amount of cash on me while I was headed out of the country, it's still none of their business. The TSA folks are not law enforcement (I think this was covered in a thread yesterday). Because they are not law enforcement people, they have no business acting like such.

I would trust the TSA with my cash even less than I would trust the TSA with my credit cards.

I would refuse the 2nd and 3rd round of searches unless they told me specifically what they were looking for. No specifics = no 2nd or 3rd round of unnecessary harassment. After the first time through they should have to make a decision right then and there-- either you're a terrorist or you aren't.

[QUOTE=dctorres]5/ AND THE ABSOLUTE WORST: The TSA screener put my wallet on the table behind me, out of my view with my back to it and kept telling me to stop looking around (as I didn't want to leave it out of my view).[//quote]
I'd rather rudely tell him that I'll look where I want to. And I'd tell him why I was looking there-- I don't trust him or his fellow employees with a single item of mine. These people need to be told EXACTLY what their place is and EXACTLY how unnecessary their secondary harassment of passengers is whenever the opportunity arises.

since I am male, you wont find my hands near your body. Perverted? I dont believe that it is. Perversion is in the eye of the holder. We wear gloves too so they arent filthy! BTW Do you see us saying "PAX are dirty?" NOPE, so here we go again with the cheap shots from the oral minority. It has been said that when a person runs out of intelligent things to say they resort to insults.

I read the article. It was mostly supportive of our position on this issue. I dont gather from it that there is a multitude of passengers that are up in arms over this. The picture plainly shows that the procedure is being done correctly.

Gee, I'm glad there's a "correct" way to cop a feel...

So, how many airplane bombings have been prevented by touching a woman's breasts? Zero.

Perhaps if our government stopped focusing on junk like this and started focusing on screening all employees, uniformly enforcing all policies at all airports, and eliminating secret directives that help nobody then complaints against the TSA would decrease. The TSA as it currently is neither serves nor adequately protects the public.

Cop a feel would to me mean that it was a male doing it.Lets not even dwell on gay or lesbian screeners. We arent supposed to have co-ed secondary searches. Your remark about prevention is a test of the theory of displacement. We can never know. The theory says that when you displace an act you have sent it somewhere else. Hence no one tries it. Now if you were to say" How many people have you caught with TATP in their bras, that would be different. WE DO SCREEN ALL EMPLOYEES NOW. Lastly, complaints against TSA are not that high considering the massive number of people that fly. I wont venture a guess but last month 5 million people flew out of the airport that I work at. Was there 500 complaints, 5,000 ? See where this is going?

Not quite. No need to exaggerate the number of people who likely encountered the TSA at DIA last month; the denominator of the fraction you are pointing out would be impressive even with the accurate number.

DIA traffic might have reached 5 million in August (it reached a record 4,260,361 in June http://www.flydenver.com/pr/DIAPR_040805_1.pdf ), but not all those people who "flew out of the airport" you work at encountered TSA employees at a checkpoint.

Given that the 5 million number encompasses departing, arriving and connecting passengers, the number that "flew out" and probably encountered the TSA (since connecting pax probably stay airside and don't need to pass thru security) is probably closer to 2.7 million.

DIA claims that about 54% of its passengers are O/D traffic, and the other 46% are connecting.

http://flydenver.com/biz/news/wingti...3.html#soaring

Granted, SOME connecting passengers probably do pass thru the checkpoint, either because they are changing airlines or becuase they want some fresh air or to smoke or because they are confused or they want to wander around, but it's unlikely that all of them do so.

Add to this the very real prospect that most O/D pax are double counted (once when they depart and once when they arrived home to DIA) and the real number may be only about 1.5 million or so.

Still, even with more realistic numbers, your point is well-taken: Most sheople aren't violated sufficiently to warrant a complaint. Of course, some experts estimate the percentage of reported rapes at a small fraction of the actual number of rapes.

If rape is severely underreported, I would suspect the percentage of people groped and fondled by TSA employees would far exceed the reported number of complaints for some of the same reasons. YMMV.

Actually, according to the DOT, in the first quarter of this year there were three times as many complaints about the TSA as were directed at all airlines, airports, airport vendors, et cetera combined. In the complaints numbers game, TSA takes first place in a landslide.

Cleaning up the filth has nothing to do with soap and water. It has to do with ending the disgusting, prurient, abusive physical assaults on passengers that happen daily at our airports.

When the government runs out of intelligent responses to terrorism (or maybe fails to consider them altogether) it employs thousands of people to forcibly feel the breasts of innocent women.

I've been subjected to secondary searches that were done by women, and I'm a guy. It's not supposed to be done, but it happens every now and then nonetheless. Perhaps that's something that I should start filing complaints about if it ever happens to me again.

To be honest, out of the times I've flown I can only think of once or twice that I've been secondary screened by a woman. But that still doesn't mean it doesn't happen or isn't a problem when it does.

OK, so how many women have been caught with TATP in their bras? I'm not trying to be cute; this is really a matter of curiousity for me. If the TSA is going to use the old security ruse to pat down privates, then the flying public has the right-- and duty-- to demand adequate justification.

Out of the women that have been caught with TATP in their bras, how many of them were arrested, jailed, tried, and convicted of terrorist activities? How many of them had adequate reasons (like job-related or something) for having TATP there? From the numbers I'm imagining I'm likely to see in responses to these questions, I would guess that checking people's private parts is likely a waste of time.

That's great. Does this include all folks working with baggage in every area, all folks working at concessions behind the security checkpoints, and anybody else that might come into contact with the "sterile" area as well? Is it done every time they come in and out of every checkpoint at every airport? If so, that's one GIGANTIC hole that the TSA has closed. I'm glad to see that they have done something with this-- I always thought that letting anyone who deals with working on planes, refueling planes, working on baggage, working in or around the sterile area, or flying anywhere not get beyond the checkpoint without being inspected was a good idea. If all passengers have to do it, then everyone else should too.

No, I don't. Are you implying that there is some "acceptable" number of complaints from passengers for the TSA? As far as I'm concerned, the only acceptable number of complaints for the TSA should be "0".

There are many reasons why there could be this small of a number of complaints; many of them are totally unrelated to the TSA's quality of service:

- Many people may be unwilling to take the time to file a complaint
- Many people may feel that being fondled and harassed about taking off shoes actually increases their safety, so are willing to put up with the procedure
- Some complaints may just be thrown away by the TSA in an attempt to hide how bad the agency and its screeners actually are
- Some screeners may lead people to believe that fondling breasts is a legally sanctioned activity, as long as it's done at an airport security checkpoint
- Many people may not like what the TSA does, but are not upset enough by it to be moved to action (we're generally a society of whiners that don't do much to change things... compare the number of people that actually vote with the number of people that complain about elected officials as an example)

This is only a few reasons that I can think of off the top of my head.

Now, I am willing to concede that the lack of complaints could be due to some TSA checkpoints being friendly, effective, and efficient. Part of the reason I often fly from IAD instead of DCA or BWI is because most of the TSA folks there are friendly and efficient. A lot of times at least one of them will say "hello" or "good morning" to me, or at least give me a smile, before I'm on my way. (The other reason I fly from IAD is because it's only 20 minutes away from where I live.)

It is unfortunate that not all TSA checkpoints are like the ones I usually go through at IAD. The checkpoint at MLI is a perfect example-- the people I've dealt with there are know-it-all jerks who like to make up policies as they go along. They have directed profanity toward me before and have subjected me to unnecessary secondary searches while calling me an *ssh*l* to my face. Extremely rude and unprofessional. And it's not just the front line folks-- one person identifying himself as a manager acted this way toward me too. This is a good part of the reason why I try to fly into other places when visiting the Quad Cities area. Cedar Rapids is sometimes a decent alternative; on one other occasion I've just flown into ORD and driven the 3 hours down from Chicago.

If the truth be told, there will be nothing that the TSA could ever do to get me to not mind secondary searches in any way. However, there are things that they could do to make such searches more tolerable (I'm likely to get them, as I no longer remove shoes when going through the checkpoint). Here's a start to my list:

- Tell me WHY the secondary search is necessary. Tell me what part of my clothing, person, shoes, jacket, or carry-on triggered the problem. Tell me exactly what the problem is. And don't give me any of this "it's a secret" crap-- there should be no secret rules, secret profiles, or secret anything at the checkpoint, period.

- Tell me WHAT you plan to do BEFORE doing it. If you need to search my laptop, fine... Tell me what you are doing before you take the laptop away. If you need to check my shoes, fine. Tell me what you will do with them before taking them from me. This stuff is mine (or is stuff I'm responsible for), and I have a right to know what you're doing and what you're looking for. To the TSA's credit, they have done (mostly) a good job here. Procedures have been explained to my satisfaction when I've asked questions for additional details at times.

- Keep ALL of my stuff COMPLETELY visible to me AT ALL TIMES. I've said it before, and will say it again... TSA agents cannot be trusted with nice stuff. I have a right (and responsibilty) to protect my belongings, and the TSA has no right to interfere with me protecting them. To the TSA's credit, I will say that my experience here has been rather good. When my laptop bag needs to be searched further, I have told them to wait until the wand raping has concluded and keep all items in my sight at all times-- they have complied when told to do so.

- ALWAYS be COURTEOUS and KIND and RESPECTFUL. People that treat me in those ways get treated in like manner. Those who don't also find themselves treated in a like manner. I don't expect people to kiss my butt, but I do expect a certain level of decorum. I expect to be called "sir" (or alternatively "Mr. clrankin", if they see my name on the ticket). I'd like to see a nice smile and have someone wish me a good flight or a good day. Simple things like this would go a long way to help with the TSA's reputation. It would certainly cut down on some of the complaints I've filed in the past.

- Do NOT inspect people's private parts. This is just disgusting and degrading. I doubt that any terrorist has ever been caught smuggling explosives in her bra, and I doubt that any ever will. There is no need for this. Fondling women's breasts in the name of airline security sits just as well with me as if someone were to grab my genitalia and "feel around" for something. Neither is necessary, and the public should not accept either as standard procedure.

The above doesn't constitute a complete list, but I'd consider it to be a good start.