Hug A TSA Agent
by Kevin Nakao
Summertime and the living is easy, except for those that insist on boarding a plane. Pushing SUV-sized strollers & booking 2 stop connections to earn more frequent flyer points, many travelers set themselves up for failure. The customer is always right, so indignant air travelers will share their air whines at barbecues and on Facebook posts. You’ve heard them all — lost luggage, crying babies, canceled flights everywhere, you know the airlines just don’t care.
The most pedestrian of the genre is the TSA shake down. From the start you know it ends badly with fructose-free yogurt confiscated from the lululemon MILF. A child goes hungry.
TSA is always good for a quip and agents are easy targets for passive aggressives to unleash the latter half of their personality disorder. A Florida woman who asserts she was groped by a TSA agent went Rambo and is now facing misdemeanor felony charges for grabbing the crotch of a TSA agent as payback.
It’s rarely a hot girl complaining about being felt up during a pat down, I would remember that. TSA only picks on the bacon-fed lardo’s. Wouldn’t you want to use those scanners to check out those muffin tops and beer belly’s?
Politicians have jumped on the TSA-hate wagon. Crafty Rand Paul raised $250k in 3 days when he pledged to privatize and end the reign of TSA. Rand also demonstrated his Tea Party cred by refusing a TSA pat down when he triggered a scanner alarm. He was not allowed on that flight, his childish protest is just another reason he’s stuck in the fringes.
In an official hearing on TSA, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Transportation Subcommittee suggested TSA stop doing pat-down searches of well-known passengers such as Beyonce and Donald Rumsfeld. Maybe TSA should keep copies of TMZ nearby to identify all the celebrities trying to fly incognito.
Much respect to the TSA agent who padded down Rumsfield. Why would anyone trust “Rummy” after he pushed us into the Iraq invasion and then ignored the advice of our military leadership on resources, strategy, and a post-invasion plan. He was probably concealing that weapon of mass destruction Saddam was hiding. Oops my mistake, there were no WMD’s found.
The subcommittee went on to address the agency’s efforts to fix its “poor customer service image and become a leaner, smarter agency.”
Leaner and smarter is always good, but a better image shouldn’t be a priority. I don’t want my TSA to be friendly, just effective. I like security that is intimidating, serious, focused and on high alert. I’m not proposing Rodney King beat-downs (well maybe on those who wear flip-flops into airplane bathrooms), just the right level of authority and unpredictability to deter evil-doers.
TSA agents work to keep us safe and for that reason alone we should respect them. Like anything else, there are both good and bad actors. We get to travel, while they are on the ground working in the same place doing the same thing. Even with business travel, visiting another city is at least change of scenery and an opportunity for a different experience. Flying is a luxury not everyone can afford.
But please do not really hug a TSA agent, you may get in trouble for that. I’m sure just a simple thank you to the TSA agent is enough, reminding us all that they are doing their job to keep us safe.
Disclosure:
I’m guilty of almost everything I call out above, especially ranting and whining about “first world” problems I should be thankful to have.
Epilogue:
Guns found in the week of 6/15/12-6/22/12 by TSA. During this week, they also confiscated a Bazooka round, throwing stars, IED training aids, knifes, stun guns, mace, and 2 cane swords.
I think I’m going to barf – hug a TSA agent? These people take money to sexually assault children, dude. They create, transmit, and view nude images of teenage girls. These GED-wonders with no training in radiology are dosing pregnant women and kids with cancer-causing ionizing radiation. They rub little girls where their bathing suits cover for cash. What kind of sick criminal would do that? They all belong in jail for their crimes, starting with the psychopath who ordered the ritualized molestation of innocent people – John Pistole, TSA Pervert in Charge.
A TSA screener raped me with a metal detector at BWI. She inserted a foreign object into my body, shoving my underwear into my vagina. She had a sick powerlust smirk on her face when she did it. When I got my congressman involved in the incident, the TSA sent me a pathetic letter explaining that it was just too “difficult to screen women without accidentally” raping them, and that shoving foreign objects up between my legs and inside of me “was not sexual”.
It’s long past time to reign in these pervert monsters. Get these TSA criminals out of our airports, now!
Based on a separate email conversation I had with this commenter, I have struck-through a section of this post.
It’s rarely a hot girl complaining about being felt up during a pat down, I would remember that. TSA only picks on the bacon-fed lardo’s. Wouldn’t you want to use those scanners to check out those muffin tops and beer belly’s?
This was insensitive of me in a failed attempt to be funny and make a point. It is offensive to dismiss or discredit victims of abuse, this was not my intent. There are both good and bad actors at TSA, I was hoping to give credit to those agents that do a good job of keeping us safe.
Annapolis, thank you for taking the time to point this out and share your thoughts.
My god, knakao, whoever you are, you certainly do like Kool-Aid.
The TSA is a criminal, out-of-control agency that abuses people withe impunity. It hasn’t caught or thwarted a single potential attacker in its multi-billion-dollar history.
Pistole and Napolitano are its sick, twisted ringleaders. They should be fired — after being forced to go through a few gropes themselves — and the entire agency dismantled.
But I’m not holding my breath. Congress is craven, the president clueless (after all, his wife and children don’t have to get stripped or groped), and half the population willfully ignorant, as displayed by this post.
A colleague and I have kept track of accounts of abuse, and they are legion:
bit.ly/TravelUndergroundTSAabuses
You’re more likely to drown in your bathtub than be killed in a terrorist attack. To be struck by lightning. To choke on a sandwich. And certainly to be killed in a car accident (35,000 traffic fatalities a year in this country).
And guess what — metal weapons are caught by — duh — metal detectors. Not by stripping and groping.
But empirical evidence, risk assessment, statistical analysis, security experts, logic — none of it matters to the United Sheeple of America. “The Terrorists! The Terrorists Are Everywhere!”
So many cowards and paranoiacs. They won’t be happy until Uncle Sam is sticking his fingers up their a**es.
Kevin, I challenge your assumption that the TSA “keeps us safe.” Please tell me – besides finding guns but arresting NO ONE possessing said guns (which means the police do not believe the persons with said guns pose a danger) – the basis upon which you make your assumption.
If you check your facts, you will find that the TSA has not in ANY instance “kept us safe.” They have found no terrorists. Not a single one. But then, it appears that terrorists are an exceptionally rare bird: if they were legion, then the US would have experienced the recruiting station-police station- club-hotel-market-restaurant-airport-subway-bus-train attacks that the rest of the world has. We have those venues, they have been unprotected for over ten years, and they have not been attacked. The TSA is a big dog-and-pont show that egregiously assaults citizens without provocation or palpable cause.
Thanks for taking the time to read & comment. I specifically said “works to keep us safe” since TSA will not publicly disclose any known terrorist attempts. What they have prevented are dangerous weapons from getting on planes and that information is disclosed weekly on their blog http://blog.tsa.gov/ which I researched prior to writing this post. It’s not clear if any of these weapons violations were accidents or foiled attempts with intent to harm. I do believe it is possible that there are special interests from airlines to government that have a vested interest in not disclosing this information if it in fact exists. My larger point is to suggest that if we want respect when we travel, we should be polite and appreciate those who try to make it safer.
I am quite impressed with your civility and interest in discourse, Kevin. However, as a woman that is approaching cyborg-like status with all of the metal in and about my body I cannot nor will I ever again willingly submit to the degradation and forced violation of my body by TSA screeners. I have seen nothing but blatant and inane procedures. If I can get into TSA HQ with nothing more than a metal detector and secondary wanding (from about 12″, by the way) then I should be able to expect the same level of privacy getting onto an airplane. Since I can’t, i totally gave up flying in October 2010. You have no idea, I’m sure, but Flying While Handicapped (def: medical metal/prostheses) has become the new Driving While Black. You may believe that there are those that are keeping information about found terrorists quiet, but it is my believe, based upon all of the brouhaha surrounding Abdulmutallab and Richard Reid, that such findings would be shouted from the rooftops. According to Annapolis (above, and a friend of mine), it would take the equivalent of 1,776 Times Square-type plots to be thwarted for the TSA to be cost-beneficial. She’s quite brilliant, you know: PhD MIT, undergrad Stanford. And a tenured professor of mathematics and operations research at one of our military academies. If the TSA applied the science as military does we would not be in the pickle we are. Do you know math? If you do, try applying Bayes Rule, base rate fallacy and game theory to the current TSA. You will be appalled.
Kevin, metal weapons are caught by — uh — metal detectors.
Not by scanning, stripping, and groping.
In other words, by the same methods that existed before 9/11 and after 9/11 — until the Reign of Molestation was implemented.
It’s nice that you haven’t (yet) been bullied, harassed, threatened, robbed, or sexually assaulted by the blue-shirted thugs. But tens of thousands of people have.
Don’t believe me? A colleague and I have been tracking the crimes and abuses. Go to Travel Underground dot org and see for yourself. (Can’t post link cause when I tried to do that earlier today my comment never appeared.)
The idea that any terrorist plots have been foiled by the TSA and are being kept quiet is completely absurd. Any terrorist apprehended by TSA would be arrested by law enforcement officers. Any arrest is a public record. Newspaper reporters routinely scroll the public arrest records for stories. Any person apprehended by TSA and arrested as a terrorist would be blazoned across every news media in the country within 24 hours.
@Daisymae: absolutely.
You’ve engaged the fallacy that the absence of something is proof it doesn’t exist. By such logic, the retail store that engaged a vigorous loss prevention effort and, as a consequence, has lower loss levels than compearable stores in comparable neighborhoods where those other stores have a lesser investment in loss prevention, are simply enjoying the benefits of a random absence of a known phenomenon, shoplifting? Such assumptions, are, to put it mildly, fantasy-based. And, unfortunately, too typical of the anti-TSA or any anti-policing argument (this logical fallacy is a staple of the type). If you really want to know whether deterrence has an effect, do comparables of targets that don’t employ comparable deterrents. That most other target nations do employ comparable deterrents shows that you are in the distinct minority regarding your ‘invented threat’ hypothesis.
@Curle: I submit that you are exactly right: look at comparables. I submit we have a test case – the TSA and airliners; we have a control group, all other domestic venues that have been proven attractive as targets elsewhere in the world (and which have been attacked a magnitude of order more frequently that airliners), namely clubs, markets, hotels, subways, busses, trains, police stations, recruiting stations… etc. Our control group has NOT been protected by the TSA or anyone else beyond normal policing. In the last ten+ years we have had an absence of incidents in our control group, just like we have has an absence of incidents in our test group.
Over ten years, millions upon millions of opportunities for attack (# of potential venues x number of days x number of years). I therefore submit that the treat of terrorist attack is hugely less than promulgated by the paranoid DHS and all those security companies that are making fortunes off of this egregious sham.
To Wendy below: your conclusions do not follow from your example. Again, the idea that an absence of attacks proves that deterrence doesn’t work is a logical fallacy. We know, from experience, and intelligence, that terrorists seek large and soft targets. TSA reduces the softness of airplane travel as a target. We also know that there are terrorists with motive and means. The only thing they need is opportunity. It is eliminating that opportunity that lies at the heart of deterrence. That they will be seeking other target, such as shopping centers, etc. says nothing about their willingness to target airplanes if that target again becomes soft. That we need to use our resources intelligently is a given and worthy of debate. But, the idea that our investment in TSA isn’t operating to protect our airlines is a conclusion that does not follow from the evidence.
Your entire argument is predicated on the existence of an able group of terrorists intent upon attack. Even the State Department says that the number of Al Qaeda that is able to carry out such an attack is at most in the hundreds, worldwide. Security experts have stated over and over again that hardening cockpit doors, the lack af future acquiescence of passengers and metal detectors are very satisfactorily adequate. TSA groping anyone they want offers exactly zero additional deterrence. Sorry.
Your argument is tautological. It is therefore flawed.
Hi Wendy and DaisyMae, I can’t argue with certainty that there are undisclosed terrorist attempts, but conversely, I am not sure anyone without direct evidence or inside information could make the claim that such an attempt would certainly be made public. I respect and understand both of your points of view in terms of ineffectiveness, abuse, & infractions. I’m just wondering if you can understand my position that a little gratitude for the good agents might be in order or must they all be castigated?
Kevin, I have actually been hugged by a TSA agent before (that’s right: the woman that gave me a hug because I was so memorable taking off my artificial leg to hop through the metal detector). I also had a TSA guy in charge of the screeners in Dallas tell me that he hoped I could get procedures changed because he knew what he had been told to do was stupid. That man was a pilot that got laid off and took the TSA job because he needed a job. He showed me pictures of his wife and kids. But I guess my position is this: these are people who took jobs that entail assaulting fellow citizens. Feeling their private areas. Seeing naked pictures of them. Rifling through their belongings. I’m sure that many of them believe they are “keeping us safe”, and I also believe that many of them probably hate what they do. That being said, I can never feel grateful – for any reason – for someone whose job it is to assault me. While I understand your position, I simply cannot be grateful to anyone that works for the TSA. I don’t hate them personally, but I can’t understand how they sleep at night with what they do all day long. The job they do is positively disgusting. And since it’s my opinion (and also the opinion of many security experts: check out Bruce Schneier) that it’s all window dressing anyway [i.e., totally wasted effort], it makes it even worse.
I think the answer turns on something the TSA has lied to the American public about: does the TSA order its screeners to touch the sex organs of travelers? Although TSA refuses to answer this question, it’s clear from TSA’s public statements that “proper procedures were followed” in many cases where victims clearly stated that their genitalia were violated that the TSA does order its employees to conduct sexual assaults.
Thus, the only “good agents” are those who secretly disobey orders to sexually violate innocent travelers. It’s hard to know who those screeners are, but there are certainly some because frequent flyers describe widely varying experiences, from painful deliberate karate-chops to the testicles all the way to a complete lack of sexual contact.
Good night everyone, be well. It’s clear that a victims point of view on the matter is much different than someone who has been fortunate not to have endured this type of violation. I hope it never happens to you or anyone again.
Trying again to leave a comment. My other two weren’t allowed to post. If this one is, perhaps you’ll tell me why the other two were deep-sixed.
No posts were deep-sixed by me, I have posted all replies and comments.
Is the writer an idiot, a masochist or both? The only hug I want to give anyone at TSA is one that is tightly around the throat until their heart stops.
TSA is staffed by pedophiles and criminals and most people don’t want to believe that they are being groped by a a high school dropout with a rap sheet, but the fact is that they are. Even TSA admitted that 98% of screeners have a high school equivalency or less.
This week a former TSA screener was arrested for “assaulting” a TSA supervisor after the passenger was molested in retaliation because the supervisor didn’t like her.
Last week a TSA screener reached inside a 73 year old woman’s bra at a checkpoint in Bozeman, Montana while she was at the checkpoint in full view of other passengers.
Two weeks ago CBS 3 reported that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over child molestation allegations now is a TSA Supervisor at Philadelphia International Airport. This week they fired seven screeners at PHL for bribery but allow a known pedophile to continue to grope children at the checkpoint.
Two weeks ago they lied to Congress about having $200 million in new, unused equipment hidden in Dallas that they were going to destroy to conceal the waste. Then we saw footage of a TSA screener purposely smacking a Congressman in the privates and the screener is still on the job.
A month ago, TSA molested an elderly couple and robbed them of $300, molested three children, a ten year old with a diabetes pump, a four year old who hugged her grandma and a seven year old with cerebral palsy, twice!
There were a total of 91 TSA workers arrested in the last 18 months including 12 arrested for child sex crimes, over 25 for theft, ten for smuggling and one for murder. Even Kip Hawley, the last TSA Director, has called for its overhaul.
In April, a report from Atlanta indicates that they are allowing airport workers to operate in secure areas of airports without completing background checks and Congress took them to task for not reporting half of the security breaches at Newark.
TSA continues to fail 70% of GAO security tests and contraband still gets through security on a daily basis. Yet the TSA apologists continue to say that this crime and abuse by TSA is somehow improving airline security.
There are laws to protect citizens from abuses by police for a reason and the same standards should be applied to TSA.
It’s long past time to replace this agency with a sensible and effective system and prosecute those responsible for this travesty.
Hi Bill, if you are trying to persuade someone, your position might be better received if you just stick to the points and not lead off with the name-calling. Just saying…
Knakao:
I don’t believe most folks who object to the TSA are just blindly reacting and lashing out at the TSA out of some weird hatred of blue shirts. Here are the core issues of TSA practices and procedures that we find intolerable, simply on a human decency level, not to mention due to our expectations under the US Constition of having our body left alone:
1. The repeated touching of someone’s sexual organs, buttocks, hair, feeling inside someone’s clothing NOT on the basis of even reasonable cause, but at random for no cause. (The random searches.)
2. The same behavior for insufficient cause (ie, mmw scanners that alert falsely on a very high percentage of cases, unlike the WTMD that rarely generated false alarms).
3. The same behavior for those refusing unsafe X-ray machines that still, to this day, render one’s near naked body visible to someone looking at them in a booth.
4. And even worse behavior, the open palm and fingers massaging your groin and sex organs if you alarmed an ETD swab test that has false alarmed 100% of the time.
Coupled with this is the complete vulnerability of the passenger and complete inability to defend oneself or seek redress if the clerk abuses them in the high crotch touching or in the private room where they get their testicles or labia racked.
Compounding ALL of this is that I can do nothing to change my odds of this happening to me.
Have a drink? The TSA wants some of that
by LISA SIMEONE on JULY 5, 2012
Every time you think the TSA can’t come up with anything more stupid or abusive, they prove you wrong.
http://tsanewsblog.com/3839/news/have-a-drink-the-tsa-wants-some-of-that/