This morning, we were trying to decide how to pay the TSA back in some small measure for this latest affront to dignity & intelligent security practices.
Here’s what we came up with so far-
Go commando for your pat down. Ladies should wear a dress or skirt, and gentlemen might try a Utilikilt. If it’s gonna get grabbed, let’s make it count.
Try for a Meg Ryan “I’ll have what she’s having” moment while being reasonably screened. I would pay to see Betty White do this.
Print up a bunch of t-shirts with slogans like “Hey TSA! How about a happy ending?”. Hand them out for free in the security line.
Get the full name of the person groping you & your children, and sue them personally for violating your civil rights. Add that their position does not provide them with immunity from this. True? I don’t know but I’ll try it anyways.
Any ideas? I’m almost willing to go cause a scene on a day that a discount airline has a $19 special, and I don’t actually intend to use the ticket.
Uh, you first. That said, I will be going commando on my next flight. If they want me to strip I’ll be showing off the twig and berries.
I don’t know why that reminded me, but you could always say “I know the drill, this is how they told us to do it in prison” and move things aside for them.
Let’s instead argue it through political channels, which is already happening and is gathering great notice from the President and Congress. What good does it do to take it out on people who are just trying to perform their minimum-wage job? What good does it do to take it out on one’s fellow travellers?
I don’t get the “let’s mess with the TSA.” Do the TSA agents get to go home after screening a certain number of people? Do they care if the lines move fast or slow? If a number of people do that opt-out thing, will it make any difference to the TSA? I guess if enough people miss their flights (and a smaller number get their asses kicked) there might be a headline or two.
I’m no fan of rent-a-cops, but poking at the TSA agents with a stick when I’ve got a plane to catch isn’t the best transportation advice. If I’m not flying that day, heading down to the airport to screw with TSA (and a lot of people waiting in line) is a few lines below “stick my ear against a wasp’s nest and thwack it with a stick” on my things-to-do-when-I’m-bored list.
I suspect most of this is fantasizing and most of you have the good sense not to fuck around at the airport.
In any event, I’m just gonna pop a couple of Viagra before I get in line.
The last time I had to go through a full-body scanner, three TSA employees, all male, gathered to watch the monitor and check out my breasts. If I had protested, I would have been arrested. Never again.
This has gone way beyond security theater and is actually a violation of people’s persons. I am sick already of reading about women being forced to remove prosthetic breasts, men with colostomies being humiliated and similar stuff. Political channels? They came up with this nonsense. My European (and especially Israeli) friends are way past laughing politely behind their hands at us- now they alternate between horror and hilarity at what we are doing to ourselves.
I will be a contrarian pain in the ass, as far as the law will allow.
I cannot abide by half-measures. I say that in addition to the Viagra, you ought to slam a dime bag of high-test Czechoslovakian Angel Dust in the security line so the TSA can really see what’s what. Also, if you have any secondhand Liberace outfits to wear to the airport, (“Oooh, sparkles!”) so much the better…
Flying sucks enough these days without getting arrested, or at least missing my flight because of pulling some silly stunt like those in the OP. Thanks, but I’ll pass. I already only fly when absolutely necessary; I’d rather spend all day driving if I’ve got the time, and have several times already. With the new ‘security’ measures, somebody better be dying for me to get on a plane.
I’m totally serious, I’m definitely sporting a boner if I get chosen for a scan/pat-down. One that points hilariously straight out of my crotch, like on Anchor Man. That way EVERYONE will be uncomfortable. “What? The thought of someone seeing me naked is a turn-on for me…”
Yes, but maybe making them hate it a little bit more will be enough to get it changed. They have a bit more power with the authorities than the average flyer.
I don’t know why you think that the average TSA agent has any more influence with upper management than the average passenger has. They don’t. The White House, Congress and the Dept of Homeland Security are well aware of public opinion on the matter of these searches, and I expect that they’ll change the procedures within a couple of weeks.
I wonder, though, where the uproar is coming from. Have these procedures become more onerous in the past few weeks. or is it just people have become annoyed by search procedures that haven’t changed in a while?
An interesting question involving Constitutional and criminal law issues:
For those non-American airports with US pre-clearance customs facilities (as a number of Canadian airports have), how does this affect travellers? Does CATSA (the Canadian equivalent of the TSA) have to follow the TSA’s lead, given that US Homeland Security is prominently staffed, mentioned, and displayed at such Canadian airports (right down to Homeland Security seals, the portrait of the US president, and the Stars and Stripes hung prominently). And most importantly, if such searches are the case, how could the US government defend itself against ss. 7 and 8 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms? The US cannot enforce its laws and regulations outside its borders unless the foreign government lets it–and given that Canadian law is in force in such pre-clearance facilities and that the Canadian government has defied the US before, I cannot see the US demands for unconstitutional (Canadian constitution) searches being necessary will carry much weight.
Of course, the US government could simply close its pre-clearance facilities at Canadian airports, but I’d love to see a Charter case in a Canadian court based upon a CATSA employee violating Charter s. 8 because the US said it was necessary.
I’ll also refer CATSA (and the TSA) to ss. 37, 150 et seq., 162, and 173 of the Criminal Code of Canada. Can these TSA-mandated enhanced security screenings endure these provisions of criminal law?