http://noblasters.com/post/1650102322/my-tsa-encounter
Granted, he was coming back into the country, not waiting to board a flight, and had he tried this while going the other way through security, he likely would have been forced to "resign" his seat on the flight, but if I'm ever selected for Backscatter vs. pat-down, I'm taking Matt's route. And if I get kicked off my flight, well ... I'll drive.
But I won't allow someone with five weeks of mall cop training and a pair of blue rubber gloves to touch my girlie bits through any number of layers of clothing or to view my naked body by way of any kind of imaging.
A strip search by any other name and with any kind of technology is still a strip search. Prisoners are strip-searched. People entering and leaving the Third Reich were strip-searched. I - an American traveling within my own country and with no criminal history or demonstrated intention of harming anyone in my country - should not be subjected strip-searched - in any form of the action - for having the audacity to buy an airplane ticket.
My (main) issue with these new "security" measures is not an insecurity about my body or who may be looking at it or touching it (although the TSA has failed to reassure me that they're screening any but "aggravated" sex offenders from their applicant pool, and they seem more keen to let people know that TSOs have passed a credit check ... because that's SO what you're worried about when someone's hands are between your 3-year-old's legs or groping your teenage daughter's breasts).
No, my concern is this: As a United States citizen, I have the right to move freely about my country without being detained or having my person or posessions searched, unless there is documented proof which indicates that I am a criminal or am suspected of participing in or contributing to criminal activity. Without that proof, no member of any branch of the government has any right to search my body or my property, regardless of whether that "search" is conducted by an imaging device or a physically violating touching process. You've got my driver's license. You've got access to my records. Under permission from our previous president, you've probably got access to every phone call I've made and every text and e-mail I've sent to my parents, my brothers, my friends and my boyfriends, and you know exactly what I think of this nonsense, swear words intact.
People have said they'll accept any increase in security to make them feel safer while traveling.
Really? You feel safer in a country where you are now guilty of being a terrorist until a person of unknown charcater wearing a blue shirt deems you to be otherwise? You feel safer in a country where deigning to travel is a crime that could earn you a choice between a strip search or a physical assault of your body? Your children's bodies? THAT makes you feel safer?
Terrorists continue to slip through existing security measures that should have sent up red flags across the board, despite ever-decreasing levels in our rights as U.S. citizens that supposedly correlate to increases in security. A demonstrated inability to use the tools already at hand indicates the government clearly can't be trusted with its current violations of our rights - forget any further violations to bump up the false notion that they're keeping us safer.
I am not a terrorist. I'd appreciate it if my government would quit treating me like one.
Side note: There is no argument that will sway me to sympathize with TSOs. Statements that they "go home and cry every night" and that they "don't want to be here all day touching penises" do nothing to touch my pity nerve. They are the paid and willing practitioners of government-sponsored sexual assault and digital strip-searching who seem to be more concerned with determining that your toothpaste is 3 ounces and not 3.5 ounces (God save us from too-large tubes of toothpaste) and, now, whether your boob really is your boob (please demonstrate the legitimacy of your anatomy) than with actually catching terrorists. Telling me the minimum wage of a TSO means nothing - I am certain that no one snapping on those gloves to feel up my jibbly bits is at the bottom of the Government Groper pay scale. Spare me the weeping.
