Yes and more than likely it has the following sentence right next to it that says... This does not apply since this is an administrative search of the passengers and we can do anything we please.:rolleyes:

You're right, you CAN'T know if someone is "clearly" NOT a threat. But under U.S. law those opposites don't have equivalent strength.

There is confusion here among logical "truth," legal "proof," and rights. At its core, our legal system is practical. Charges laid against people must be specific rather than general; jurors are expressly enjoined to think about their decisions. Offense is to be determined "beyond a reasonable doubt:" neither to abstract logic, nor arbitrary doctrine. As these core principles demand deliberation and common sense, so they guide the details of enforcement. LE's are directed to find reasonable suspicion; charges are based upon probable cause. Other legal systems, which allow casting a wider net and deigning to release the innocent fish later, are available elsewhere.

Every person who vows to uphold the Constitution promises to uphold the principles that innocence must be assumed until disproven, and rights may not casually be abrogated. Often this makes the practical aspects of enforcement more difficult, even for those who benefit from long experience and special expertise. Public safety would be easiest to accomplish by locking everyone in their homes, but that's antithetical to what those oaths defend. When you override the difficult parts, you aim the "loaded gun" of Jackson's dissent to Korematsu vs. United States at innocent people.

Someone who's "clearly a threat" has something twelve reasonable people can get verify later: a gun, a big rock, a threat to punch someone in the nose accompanied by a credible fist. If what you know doesn't meet that standard, you haven't got enough to impede them from lawful activity.

SATTSO didn't say "we're instructed to refrain from" or "our policy dictates that we not". He said "we cannot".

I fail to see the distinction you're making. If I'm an employee (say, a customer service call-taker) and my company's procedure's handbook doesn't allow me to do something (e.g., ask the customer where they bought my company's product), then it's quite correct to say that I "cannot" do that. It doesn't matter to me if it's something my boss told me I can't do, if I received a memo yesterday, if it's in a handbook, or if I know it's against the law: in all cases, it's something I "cannot do".

Must have been a response to the infamous nipple rings and pliers incident.

How does that a pax offering to remove clothing to prove their innocents can do that.
When we have been told over and over again that TSO doesnt want to see or feel naked skin.
And that a pax doing this can get in trouble.

So what is it?

This is the gospel truth!

For a minute lets forget about the privacy/radiation issues of the new techniques and think of the cost.

We are spending our way into bankruptcy. I am very worried that in less than a decade we could be in a similar situation as Greece. Every election no matter who wins the government spends more money.

We as humans are illogical creatures, for some reason we overreact to certain outcomes. The general population is more afraid of dying by a terrorist attack than a heart attack even though the end result is the same.

I don't know if anyone has read superfreakonomics, (its a book by a famous US economist that came out in 2009)

Here are some chilling stats from the book about airline travel post 9/11.

We are spending billions of dollars a year to try and prevent something that is extremely rare.

The probability of dying in a terrorist attack in America is roughly 1 in 5 million. You are 575 times more likely to commit suicide.

Yet we appropriate billions of dollars to the TSA because no elected official wants to look soft on "safety". So organizations like the TSA get a blank check and like every government agency they are ineffective in both time and money spent.

If you assume that it takes on average a minute to take off and replace your shoes when going through a checkpoint. This happens 560 million times a year, which is the equivalent of 1065 years. If you divided that by the average life expectancy 77.8 even though the shoe bomber failed to kill a single person he wages a yearly tax of 14 lives per year in time.

In the three months after 9/11 traffic deaths went up an extra thousand people, per mile traveled driving is much more dangerous than flying.

So every person that chooses to drive rather than fly for whatever reason (TSA policies, fear of terrorism, hassle/cost) is much more likely to die than if they flew to their location.

Yet we appropriate billions of dollars to the TSA because no elected official wants to look soft on "safety". So organizations like the TSA get a blank check and like every government agency they are ineffective in both time and money spent.

Perhaps someone smarter than me can determine the additional risk of cancer you get from going through the backscatter and MMW machines based on data available. If the odds of getting cancer are more than 1 out of 5 million it could easily be argued that TSA policies are killing more Americans than the terrorists themselves.

I am not describing an arbitrary process.

For example, someone walks through the WTMD, they alarm, they exit, remove an item, but alarm again, and claim they don't know why they have alarmed. The screener conducts a pat down, feels something underneath the clothing where their stomach is, and to make a long story short, the passenger refuses to lift their shirt. They will be denied entry. That is not arbitrary.

What I have described in the above post is not done on the whim of a TSA employee. There must be a specific reason.

Consider this, the other day I was on x-ray, I thought I saw something, perhaps a knife. Another screener checked the bag, took out items, could not find it, re-ran the bag, and I could not see what I had seen before. This is the moment you describe, the "put up or shut up" moment. We did not deny entry to the bag - the passenger and his bag went on their happy way.

And what I described for the bag check is the same for AIT. The TSO viewing the screen sees something, calls for a pat down, the pat down reveals nothing - and the passenger is not denied entry, or ask to remove clothing, but is considered cleared and finished with screening.

As you say screening should be conducted - "put up or shut up" - I believe it is conducted in that manner.

Incorrect, please refer to my response to RK above.

I mean actually what I wrote, Phil, what is so hard to understand about that?

I appreciate the clear explanation. Just so I'm clear, it is correct, then, that there are situations in which, unless a passenger shows bare skin, they will not be allowed to fly?

Wow, Phil, really? That is how you want to try to do this?

What???

Do you have any idea how lifting clothing to show a naval piercing (etc.) would demonstrate that the object cannot take down a plane? :confused: