Very well say it.

So I guess I imagined the pat-down I got at IND, and the one that the elderly man behind me also got. And yes, you must have the process "down pat," because only people who screw up get the pat-down. Right.

Interestingly enough I have spoken to cancer survivors in the last week and they all said that they did not know what the fuss was about. I guess when you are going through a fight for your life, getting through security is the least of your worries. One lady was bald because of chemo and I did not ask her to remove her headwear and she was suprised by that.
Morals are an iteresting topic. I have a job that I have to do to protect something that I believe in. What would be the bigger moral dilemma? not doing your job and risk the consequences OR doing your job to the best of your ability without the mindset that you are doing something that other people dont agree with. IT is opinion I guess and half the fight on here is about whether or not there is a threat. Well just last year someone tried again with an IED in the underwear. You cannot discount that. You cannot discount that if nothing is done to attempt to close that vulnerability it woud not happen again. If your house gets burglarized, you take steps to stop it from happening again. The scope is wide and the issue is diverse and there is no easy answer.

Honestly, I don't believe that it is because you have the process down pat. You have been fortunate, as have many others, to encounter nothing unremarkable.

I was the same, for many years, and was skeptical of a lot of what I read on line. But that changed very dramtically this year, and I have had several encounters which were inappropriate and simply wrong. My ratio of good to bad encounters changed significantly.

I do think that some of the anger may be turning off potential supporters of thsi cause, and I have never been one to use names or hyperbole. But at the same time I understand that anger, and why many are now releasing the anger. But I also find it wrong that too often every bad encounter is simply dismissed as 'it didn't happen' or 'the passenger was embellishing'. I cannot believe that is the case every single time.

There are a lot of stories coming to the forefront from people who were too scared to speak up before, or thought that their incident was extraordinary and not commonplace. Now they are speaking up and thus we are hearing more stories than ever before.

And a lot of the people who find nothing wrong with the process have not flown since the process changed. It goes both ways.

NOT being reported in media outlets
 

Actually, I'd disagree with this. My mom, who doesn't travel much and gets a little news from locals & CNN, had NO idea about the detail of the scanners or the invasiveness of the pat downs. She had no idea that "touching junk" was actually part of the pat down, even though she did hear about the don't touch my junk guy.

Also, she did not hear (and I am not seeing it widely reported) about the GAO report that said it's unclear whether the NoS could have even detected the underwear bomber, nor is she hearing about the many other security experts that think it's unlikely that neither the NoS or the new pat downs would have detected it.

The TSA is not saving anyone from the underwear bomber, but hardly any of the general public seems to know that.

You apparently behave differently than the folks who damaged the gentlemans urine bag or made a breast cancer surviving flight attendant remove a prosthetic breast. I'm very pleased about that. Some of your co-workers do not behave so kindly.

I think anyone with half a brain recognizes that there is a threat. I've never said otherwise here. I don't think anyone wants no security. What I want is more humane security. Security that doesn't stick its hands down my pants or see me naked. This is a violation of my dignity. I don't think you need to get into heavy duty philosphy to recognize the right of a person to control who touches his or her body. This is as basic as it gets. This goes beyond personal opinion.

I think you are setting up a false moral question. Its not a question of do this or do nothing. The question rather becomes: Are you willing in the course of your job to harm and violate innocent people to get to the terrorists? If so the ends justify the means. If the answer is no, then we have to ask ourselves given the threat what can we do to mitigate that threat while still maintaining the dignity of the people.

JBC78

Yeah right--only the TSA tells the truth. Everyone else lies.

It's been an interesting week. This quiet little home on FT has become a very busy place. I've never seen so many people gathered around TVs at airports to watch CNN reports than I did last night at MDW when Anderson Cooper did the NoS piece.

Is this being overblown? Maybe, but I don't think people are accurately focusing on the prospective health risks associated with the scanners. For me, I fly about 50 weeks a year, with anywhere from two to four trips through security a week. If I were to use the back scatter scanners every trip through security, I'd be exposed to an extra 200-400 minutes of radiation a year. Add that up over a 10 year period and you get A LOT of extra radiation dosage. It's just not worth it to me.

Why has it taken the TSA ~11 months to attempt to "fix" this security loophole?

Just last year, 30,000 people died in automobile accidents in the United States. Discount that.

The problem is that most people aren't using half their brain. They are using their amygdala (governs emotional response) rather than using their cerebrum to make a logical assessment of the risk. Just because you are more afraid of something, doesn't mean the actual risk is higher.

So let's do the math:
Assume that TSA had backscatter as primary screening for the entire decade 2000 - 2010 and this backscatter imaging allowed them to stop every terrorist attempt on an airplane. There were 7 billion enplanements over that decade. Independent researchers say the cancer risk if TSA relies on x-ray backscatter is approximately 1 in 20 million. (Rez et al)

7 billion divided by 20 million = 350 cancer cases would have been caused from using backscatter imaging for the past decade. In that same time period, 674 air passengers were threatened by terrorism (the four 9/11 flights, shoe bomber, Christmas bomber)

So for the entire decade from 2000 - 2010, the risk of dying from a terrorist being on your plane was TWICE the risk of cancer if the TSA had used the backscatter machines.

But TSA says the backscatter risk is negligible, it's equivalent to the risk of death when you drive in your car for one minute. Using that same logic, the risk of dying in a terror incident is equal to your risk of dying from riding in a car for two minutes.

There is a risk, but I think that it is very small, even negligible.

I don't want "no security", but I want reasonable, non-invasive security in line with the actual risks. I put on my seatbelt when I get in a car. I don't put on a racing harness and a helmet.

Google let me to this thread on an unrelated forum. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...ur-rights.html

It is not just FTers who are reporting experiences. There are a few stories about the new procedures, second hand report that TSA can indeed pull out elastic waistbands to look down pants/skirts, and a report of a woman forced to remove an incontinence pad.

"We". Who is this "we"?

If you leave out Iraq and Afghanistan - where the US started wars,

More people around the world are killed each year by lightning than terrorism.

Yes, let me say that again. You are more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than a terrorist.

And TSA can't take credit for this - It was true before 9-11 and it is true today.

Fact is, we are spending $8.2 Billion tax dollars per year on TSA when the threat is almost (not completely) non existant. It is a total, total waste of money. And that's just the tax cost. The cost to our economy of their interference with air travel is immeasurable. If someone told you they would save you from lightning strikes for only $8.2 Billion a year - you would tell them to buzz off...

This is the fallacy of news: The reason Terrorist attacks are big news, is that they are very rare.

TSA has been talking about one guy with an unsuccessful underwear bomb for over a year. Meanwhile 30,000 Americans have been killed in car accidents and 1000 Children have been murdered by their parents - most just as violently as an airplane crash.

Please pardon what might seem to be a slippery slope argument -- except that it feels like the slope has been quite slippery already indeed since 9/11.

When I flew to North Carolina the Thanksgiving after 9/11, I booked less than 12 hours before my flight -- I wasn't going out there for turkey day, but because my paternal grandmother had went into kidney failure. I was subjected to secondary screening, there were armed guards at the airport, etc... but no one felt my privates or even between my breasts. My father, who had not seen me in two years, was not allowed to run to hug me when I disembarked -- a man holding a rifle said "No, you wait for HER." But I did not feel violated.

Then they took our shoes, which made me feel a bit violated because of germs, but I got used to it. Then they started feeling underneath and sometimes between my breasts, which made me feel more violated but mainly for the humiliation of having to stand with my legs spread like a criminal and be seen by my male coworkers being touched. Then they wanted to take naked pictures of us, but said that was fine because if we didn't want to have someone see us naked, we could go through the patdown I'd gotten somewhat accustomed to after flying for work. Now, potentially I am facing a choice if I'm randomly selected or if something alarms the WTMD: either be seen naked, or have my breasts and genitals touched by a stranger.

There's no way that Thanksgiving in 2001, with body parts still being found from 9/11, that I ever would have imagined anyone would be asked to choose between virtually stripped or be felt between their legs to fly. But one man who sewed explosives into his underwear changed that.

So the IMHO not-so-slippery slope argument I have: What will happen when someone puts C4 inside their rectums or vaginas and boards a plane? How do you propose that threat be dealt with when it happens? What steps can be taken, and where will the line between the right to the privacy of our own bodies and the right for people to fly without blowing up be drawn?

I stumbled on your post which brought you to FT (or should I say your untruth? ;) )

That led me to a number of horrific first hand accounts which I posted on the urine thread from travellers with medical conditions.