Looks like TSA finally started to listen to folks who don’t like posing for nude pictures while going through airports.
Good for them. Of course being stuck in a wheelchair, I still get the full on gropefest. :mad:
I saw these in action at National Airport in DC last week.
I really don’t get the body scanner outrage and I’m generally someone who likes to have needless outrage about things :p. When these things were originally implemented, I was reading a blog where a woman was (virtually) freaking out because, “as a fat woman, I don’t need screeners seeing my body shape and mocking me.” I felt like a total bag of dicks (particularly as a fat chick myself), but I couldn’t help but comment, "Honey, if you’re fat, it doesn’t exactly take xray vision to know that. " What a silly reason to be opposed to these things.
I finally went through one of the machines back in July. Were they supposed to be a time savings? Because honestly, the scanner line moved much, much slower than the old fashioned metal detector line. Either way, I didn’t feel violated at all, but I guess that’s just me, since there seems to be some tremendous outrage from some folks. Violating is getting some officer’s hands stuck up your blouse in a Peruvian airport back room, not standing in front of a big plastic wall for 10 seconds with your hands in the air.
I figure that if the TSA and whatever the equivalent is up here (I don’t know what we call ours) want to get their jollies by groping me I’ll go along with their fun. There are very few non-accidental situations that cause me to be embarrassed. I don’t even ask for privacy for their groping session. Haven’t needed to travel since I got a colostomy; that might be even more fun to bring up in my next TSA groping session.
(I’m serious - I figure there’s no point in getting embarrassed about a situation that is out of your control and caused by someone else)
I had great expectations for the body scanners. I thought they would be more convenient and do a better job of detecting weapons. But I was so wrong.
Let me say first, that I don’t give a frick if they produce perfect images of my private parts or not. What I hate is that you have to remove your belt and COMPLETELY empty out your pockets to go through the damn things. And they take several times as long to go through.
With the metal detectors, you removed metal from your pockets and walked quickly through the metal detector, got your stuff and were on your way. With the scanners, you have to remove your belt and empty your pockets while a TSA guard paces the line yelling “remove your belts, everything out of your pockets, put it through the x-ray.” Then you stand waiting for the scanner to clear. Then you wait for a TSA agent of the same sex to walk to the other side of the scanner to watch you (if the previous passenger was of the opposite sex). Then you are told to enter the scanner, turn and stand on two yellow footprints facing the wall. Then you wait some more, then the guard tells you to raise your arms over your head and shows you how to hold your hands. Then you wait for the scan to finish. Then you must walk and stand in front of the guard on two more yellow footprints. The guard stares at you until somebody radios them. You worry that somebody has taken your stuff from the x-ray line (including the money you had to take out of your pockets). Finally, the guard gets a call on his/her radio at which point they either frisk you or send you on your way.
Then you have to grab your stuff, put stuff back in your pockets, and put your belt back on in a cramped little area. And I always miss a belt loop.
I just don’t understand why these things can see through my denim pants, but can’t see through a dirty tissue in my pocket, let alone my belt. I can’t believe they couldn’t have created some better device.
Coming home last week my husband was routed through the scanner. After being told 3 times to empty his back pocket and insisting it was empty he was sent for a patdown.
At which point the TSA agent said “Hey there isn’t anything in your pocket”
:smack:
I don’t think they work as well as they think they do.
This was not the nerfed cartoon human scanner either, it was the all detail all the time scanner.
Sorry, I have arthritis and several other medical conditions that make being touched painful at times. I prefer not to be touched other than by my husband, actually. He has enough practice at touching me without causing pain. Travel is pain and stressful enough, I don’t really need more. I don’t mind being wanded, but probed hurts.
Sorry :smack: - I didn’t realize that there was more than embarrassment involved. That’s obviously a very different situation from mine where pain (within reason) is not a problem. Mea maxima culpa. 
Do we still have the option of posing for the nude pictures if we want to?
Do you agree that some random dickhead off the street should not be permitted to use these sorts of tactics and devices on unwilling subjects? In my opinion the TSA has done nothing to raise themselves above that level. It has existed for a decade, but I haven’t once heard of the TSA doing anything positive - at best, they just aren’t fucking anything up at that moment.
Due to circumstances I haven’t traveled in about a year, but I went through a lot of porno scanners, as did my girlfriend.
What I can’t figure out, is why when I left my boarding pass in my shirt pocket, they had to grab my balls. She couldn’t figure out why having an underwire bra meant they had to grab her coochie?
I just talked dirty to 'em, act like you’re having a happy ending massage while they are molesting you. Saying “Oh baby” to a 50 year old balding guy, while moaning. They don’t like that much. You get a really dirty look when you tell them “a little to the left”. I figure they are a TSA agent, and they don’t know left from right, so either they are going to crush my balls or bruise my thigh, just fun to mess with them.
Honestly though, 97.215 percent of all the TSA agents I’ve dealt with are decent folk. Doing a shitty job for decent pay. Same with them border patrol bastards at the internal checkpoints. If you want to get pissed off, watch for the useless assholes with the supervisor badges, absolutely purely fucking useless.
When there is a problem, they will stand 3 feet away and push their “supervisor” badge out for all to see, but never intervene in the situation that they really really need to be there for.
I’m mainly talking about that short semi-chubby useless bitch at the el-paso airport. Useless waste of organic material, especially one that gets a paycheck, even more so considering they are supposed to be a supervisor.
No problem =) Many people have pain issues that go unnoticed by people. I think everybody can see I’m fat 
Nothing I am embarassed about there. I had no issues last summer traveling, they wanded me. Nothing beeped so I never got physically touched. I learned to travel with no metal on my clothing so I didn’t beep =)
I have no trouble with the concept of the TSA, the execution on the other hand sucks ass.
Back in the 80s when I worked in nuke plants for a living, they didn’t grope us, they simply ran us through metal detectors and explosives detectors on the way in, and radiation detectors on the way out. I find it difficult to believe that they can’t do the same now for a hell of a lot less than those uncontrolled undocumented radiation emitting devices. [I have serious issues with exposing people to untrained people running effectively uncontrolled xray machines.]
I’m not outraged about them, so I can’t really speak to that, but the fact that they are irradiating people with X-Rays with no oversight is somewhat troubling. I opt out of the scanners because (last time I checked) the only people who’ve quantified how much radiation they throw out are the TSA themselves.
This is what I find annoying. I don’t really care that it gives an image of my genitals, but I still had to take off my shoes and belt and remove my wallet, cell phone and other stuff from my pockets. They even wanted the handkerchief removed from my pocket. (But it’s cloth, very similar to the cloth that the trouser pocket itself is made from. So why the insistence that the pockets be completely empty?)
And as you said, it’s way slower than the traditional metal detectors.
The first time I had to go through one of those things the TSA agent did not make it clear that I had to remove everything from my pockets and I got patted down because of my handkerchief and some Lactaid packets. The pat-down itself was not nearly as intrusive as the public outcry made it sound, and I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.
Oh, and the last time I flew, earlier this month, all I had to do was walk through a metal detector. Are they optional now?
I have no idea. I’ve flown several times since they were put into operation and I’ve never actually had to go through one. They were sitting there, shut down, or they had one group of people going through them, but everyone certainly wasn’t. Good thing, too, or I’d have had to get to the airport 4 hours before my flight to get through security.
Where I normally fly, they have them at each security check station, but they seem to funnel about 60% of people through the normal metal detector and the remaining 40% through the x-ray scanner. It takes a ridiculously long time for each person to go through, and as far as I can tell, is a complete waste of time and money.
Now that Canada has implemented them, a lot of my friends who are trans will just not fly. They don’t need the scrutiny and harassment that will obtain from being outed in front of a lot of security officers.
Supposedly the image is seen only by a TSA agent in another room.