PVDtoDEL

I'm rather disappointed that you decided to submit - I think that I'd rather my family get a quick patdown than make the TSO feel powerful, get my family radiated (causing cancer), and let some unnamed person in a booth get to see my family naked.

Just my $.02.

goalie

Which sadly, is SOP at many airports

spd476

I have noticed that most of my patdowns, extra screening, etc. happen when I'm traveling with my wife rather than when I'm travelling alone for work. Almost every time I'm travelling with my wife, we are going on vacation. In those cases, I'm going to be less likely to complain. I want to start my vacation as soon as possible and the wife probably wouldn't appreciate me taking a stand at that time. I never seem to get hassled when I'm travelling for work and I generally would have time to catch a later flight.

It would be interesting to see if the entire family got groped if they all opted out. I think I would have tried to get through security first so I could get my phone back to record the patdown on the wife and especially the child.

Mr. Elliott

I would immediately ask for the FSD and a LEO, explaining to the screener you want to confirm with upper management that this is the policy when families travel together and the reason for the LEO is you want a witness, just in case you want to file a lawsuit in federal court against the TSA.

Then lets see what the screener does, if he stands fast, in all probability a LTSO or STSO will be the first supervisor called, then I would demand to see someone higher level then them, hopefully they will defuse the situation, but if not, then keep on demanding someone in upper management.

And by all means, whatever the outcome is, file a complaint against the screener. We do not need any more of these Castro types using retaliation as threats for standing up to them.

My gut feeling, he will back down, unless it is a new policy that is SSI, if he does not back down and the supervisors back his decision, then we know the TSA has instituted another harassment policy in the abundance of caution.

Mr. Elliott

studentff

It seems like the learning from the OP's experience is that if presented with this situation, the "volunteer" for the NoS should delay opting out until the rest of the family (and their stuff) has cleared. That could be easily accomplished by insisting that they go first and that the volunteer watch the property as it enters the x-ray.

It is much more embarrassing/humiliating for TSA to initiate retaliatory screening after the rest of the family has cleared, particularly if they walk away from the checkpoint after being cleared. TSA may still do it, but at least they will look like fools and possibly be forced to explain their actions.

that we even have to think about this in America.

billycorgan

From reading the OP story, it sounds like the screener just wanted to intimidate people into the NoS so they didn't have to do pat downs.

This highlights the biggest problem of keeping their policies SSI. They can literally be made up on the spot by TSO/LTSO and the passengers have no way of knowing if that is correct or not.

Wally Bird

<TSA shirt on>This highlights the biggest advantage of keeping our policies SSI.<TSA shirt off>

MaximumSisu

Just to clarify, Wally doesn't really have a TSA shirt. His posts are much too intelligent.