I'd didn't ask for details about how the seach was done. Frankly, I just didn't want to know. All I had to hear was "body cavity search" and that was enough for me to be horrified.

I'm wondering if something like a body cavity search is still incredibly rare, and my friend's girlfriend was just horrifically unlucky, or if they are becoming increasingly common? Especially when they aren't based on any evidence of explosives or drugs. This is obviously the first time I'd heard of anything like this personally, so I don't have a very good frame of reference.

I fully understand why she would not want to file a formal complaint. She is a victim of sexual abuse and is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Perhaps at some point in the future, she will feel strong enough to file a complaint.

Even if your friend's girlfriend finds herself unable to file formal charges at this time, she can help just by sending a very brief description of what happened to her to the ACLU at this website: http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=17104&c=39

The ACLU is considering taking action against patdown searches! I will triple my annual contribution if the ACLU files a lawsuit.

IMO, you (or anyone else, for that matter) who wants to take legal action against TSA should get a jump start immediately. The last thing you need is to run into problems with statutes of limitations, or especially evidence like logs and checkpoint videotapes getting tossed or erased. The sooner you start, the more likely the discovery process will yield all available evidence.

Will anyone at the TSA confirm that such searches have happened?

Wow Body cavity searches can be performed over here in the UK, but only if a magistrate has signed an order allowing it, which means Customs (its usually only for smuggling, I've NEVER heard of it being used as a security thing, and not sure that would actually be legal) must show probable cause.....

Please don't tell me that body cavity searches are subject to no oversight, and require no legal review before being proceeded with? well if so there's yet another reason not to visit the US!

What I consider reasonable: jackets off, not shoes. Patted down if alarmed or wearing anything too bulky. I don't even mind my underwired bra being felt up. Handbaggage searched as required by x-ray. Total hold screening (as defined in Europe - where everything going in gets screened), and no baggage flies without a passenger - i.e passenger no-shows, luggage is offloaded before plane departs - commonly called baggage reconciliation. Where baggage misconnects, it gets special screening.

Somebody should probably direct this poor woman to some sort of counselor to deal with the after effects of this abuse. The ACLU or some civil liberties group might also be interested in taking her legal case pro bono if it is as extreme as it sounds.

She should seriously consider ensuring that any checkpoint video is preserved, although my guess is that this would have occurred in a non-video "private" room and it may be too late anyway.

Retaliating against the people who did this with legal, criminal, and or media publicity may very well make her feel better and would do a public service. The media may be willing to keep her anonymous.

I think immigration/customs has to have a sign-off from a pretty high-level supervisor to do cavity searches, if I recall correctly. I've never heard of TSA having the authority to do such things. However, tt is inevitable that this sort of thing will occur, even in isolated incidents and without sanction by official policy, given the TSA's general tolerance for overzealous screeners/checkpoints with shoes, jewelry, clothes, patdowns, cross-gender secondaries, etc.

I hate to be a skeptic -- and this post is totally guaranteed to get me flamed big-time -- but I have a little trouble believing that the TSA did a body-cavity search on anybody. The TSA can search up to a point. That point keeps moving forward, beyond what most of us like, but it certainly hasn't reached body cavities yet. We would know about this! It would be in the news.

Moreover, passengers can stop a TSA search at any time and simply leave the airport. How many women would allow a search to reach the point described in this story? Wouldn't most women just leave and find another way home?

I am a major opponent of the TSA. But I try to base my opposition on actual practices and events, not stories that seem false. Sorry if I offend anybody.

Bruce

This is either an urban legend, a fabrication or a lie, It did not happen.

I wish I had absolute certainty about things I haven't seen. I'd be like you and Santa Claus, seeing everyone all the time, knowing whether they've been bad or good. It would be neat, but my head would hurt, I think.

I, too, questioned it's truth (see my first responsive posting where I wrote "It this happened").


Bruce, I think you might be surprised at the number of women who are submissive enough to allow this to happen without questioning it.

I'm skeptical too. I didn't see it happen and it seems way out of line. I guess the fact is that none of us knows.

I can completely understand why you wouldn't believe me, and I don't blame you for being skeptical. Honestly, if I weren't the one who had posted this, I'd figure I was a crackpot who made the whole thing up. I mean, how can this sort of thing be true? How can this actually be happening in a country like America? In a fascist dictatorship, sure, that's believable, but in America? It's logicial to dismiss the story as just some legend posted on the internet, too absurd to be believed. And in a minute, even the people who believed me before are going to say I'm making the whole thing up. But, at the risk of any future credibility, here goes...

After I heard this friend's story, I e-mailed a friend of mine who is a public defender, since I don't know anyone more knowledgeable about search and seizure law, because there was no way in my mind that this could be reasonable under the law. And here's the part where even the people who weren't thinking I'm making this up start to believe I must be a liar: she said her stepmother was also subjected to a body cavity search on her last flight. She said that the TSA people told her that it is their policy to do regular extra screening (pat-downs and questioning) when someone has booked a one-way ticket, and to do a body cavity search if they're on a one-way ticket that they didn't pay for themself. Since her step-mom was on a one-way ticket and hadn't paid for it herself, she got the "extra screening" that involves a body cavity search.

When I read her e-mail, I thought to myself, "Someone is playing a sick joke on me." I mean, it's just not possible that I, a boring middle-class suburbanite office worker, could know not one, but two people who have been given body cavity searches by the TSA. I mean, if it's this prevalent, it would be all over CNN, wouldn't it? But my friend the public defender lives in the Pacific Northwest, and my friend whose girlfriend got searched lives in the DC area, and they've never met each other. And neither of them is psychotic enough to play that kind of joke on me.

My friend the public defender says that the ACLU is probably going to be taking action on this issue, so she recommended that people who have been subjected to cavity searches contact their local ACLU chapter.

Personally, I just can't bring myself to believe that there is a real TSA policy allowing body cavity searches simply because someone bought you a one-way plane ticket. If there is, wouldn't this board be covered with personal stories about these kinds of searches? Wouldn't the lawsuits be all over the news by now? I do believe that these two people were searched, because these two friends of mine are not prone to making things up, but I guess I'm inclined to see it as some bad-apple TSA agents who need to be reprimanded, not a systemic issue.

Now, everyone can go ahead with their "This is totally not believable" posts. Like I said, I don't blame you a bit, if it were anyone else but me writing this I'd be thinking the same thing.

OK, let me ask you: Why didn't either of these women just say, "I'm outta here," and leave? The TSA is not the Bureau of Corrections. They don't hold people prisoner and search them against their will.

Let me ask the women on this forum: How many of you would agree to a cavity search by the TSA? I can't believe that even one woman would agree to that. Submissive is one thing, but cavity searches from untrained strangers is quite another.

Bruce

That's exactly what my husband said when I told him about it. He said, "Why didn't they just say 'no, I'd rather go to jail than have a body cavity search?'" That's a very reasonable point, and probably what I would have done, along with demanding a lawyer. Then again, I've never been searched by the police before (other than the typical airport searches), so it's hard to say what a reasonable reaction would be. I don't want to invade this person's privacy any further, but I will say that the girlfriend who was searched has had some past experiences that may have affected her ability to think rationally in this situation.