Because the cop on the street is looking for a gun or a knife, and the TSA guy is - in theory - looking for explosives or contraband.
So either explosives are or aren't a threat, you can't say they are only a threat at airports but no where else.
Because the cop on the street is looking for a gun or a knife, and the TSA guy is - in theory - looking for explosives or contraband.
Ignoring the last two paragraphs, he just sounds like an unreasonable arsehole. What did he expect to happen if he refused the checks? I can accept not wanting to be subject to the full body scan but not the pat down. Any reasonable person knows that there is a chance that you will have to undergo a pat down as part of the checks at an airport.
The difference is that they won't slightly touch it, but that they are ordered to explicitely touch your genital area until they feel genitals. The reasoning behind this it to make people feel uncomfortable so they won't opt-out again.Quoted for truth.
This guy is just a douche who wanted to argue the unarguable. A pat down is not a sexual assault. So what if they slightly touch his "junk"? Is that going to traumatize him for life? Pat downs are standard procedures at a lot of night clubs and concerts.
Ask that question to someone who's been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. It's pretty insensitive to think that just because it doesn't bother you, it won't bother anyone else.This guy is just a douche who wanted to argue the unarguable. A pat down is not a sexual assault. So what if they slightly touch his "junk"? Is that going to traumatize him for life? Pat downs are standard procedures at a lot of night clubs and concerts.
You go up to somebody on the street and start frisking them, chances are you'll get your face kicked in. You have the right to deny a back scatter and a frisking at an airport just as much as you have the right to deny police searching your car without a court order, it's up to you to use it. It's so stupid how these back scatter devices are suddenly forced down our throats, what happened that made a regular metal detector not as useful? What happened to actually having military at the airport who can profile people more successfully than some jamoke hired off the street and trained to pat you down and run you through rings to board your flight?
It's so stupid how these back scatter devices are suddenly forced down our throats, what happened that made a regular metal detector not as useful?
What happened to actually having military at the airport who can profile people more successfully than some jamoke hired off the street and trained to pat you down and run you through rings to board your flight?
Ask that question to someone who's been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. It's pretty insensitive to think that just because it doesn't bother you, it won't bother anyone else.
Pilots hate them. Passengers who avoid them get a groping. They're the TSA full body scanners presently deployed at airports near you. Their effectiveness is unclear. What is clear is that lobbying for them makes you a ton of money. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for airport security and stopping the terrorists before they can cause a horrific mid-air explosion with their shoe bombs or dog bombs, or whatever it is they're going to try and use to create terror in the airways. But how about a little rationality and common sense?
Take effectiveness for example. These scanners, for all their naked human goodness, cannot see through skin. It's a gory thought, yes, but as it has been documented in movies and more importantly reality over the years, a dedicated bad guy doesn't really mind hiding a little PETN in his or his dog's body cavity for a few hours, given that it's going to be a one-way trip.
But safety, writes Washington Examiner Senior Examiner Columnist Timothy Carney, might be a secondary concern of the so-called "naked scanner" movement.
You see, there are basically three big players when it comes to the full body scanners you will see in a U.S. airport: l-3 Communications, Rapiscan and the American Science and Engineering company. All three have made hundreds of millons of dollars since terror-related events like 9/11 and the "Christmas Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a passneger plane in 2009 (an attack, if you'll remember, that the Government Accountability office said would probably have not been prevented by full body scanners).
All three firms have cozy ties to sitting U.S. Representatives and lobbyists, from both sides of the aisle. Writes Carney:
L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company's behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D'Amato to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park's L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse [...] Rapiscan's lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee [...] AS&E's lobbying team is impressive, including Tom Blank, a former deputy administrator for the TSA. Fellow AS&E lobbyist Chad Wolf was an assistant administrator at TSA and an aide to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who sits on the Transportation and Defense subcommittees of Appropriations. Finally, Democratic former Rep. Bud Cramer is also an AS&E lobbyist ? he sat on the Defense and Transportation subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.Then of course there's the ridicule and teasing many people will never know is happening, because it's being done behind closed doors by TSA officials when the airport's closed down for the night.
During training on the scanners, a group of TSA workers noted and mocked the genitalia of the guinea-pig employee sent through the scanner. The guy soon beat down one of his mockers and was arrested for assault. After assurances by contractors and the TSA that the nude images of the scanners' subjects weren't being stored and saved, the U.S. Marshals Service admitted that it had stored thousands of such images.Oops! Ah, hell, as we've pointed out here before, sometimes it's being done in broad daylight too!
Lastly, there's something to be said of Britain's ol' axiom (and current Internet meme) "Keep Calm and Carry On."
[H]ow far are we willing to go to prevent weapons or bombs from getting on airplanes? In the past decade, terrorists on airplanes have killed just about 3,000 people ? all on one day. Even if the Christmas Day bomber had succeeded, the number would be under 3,500. Those are horrible deaths. But in that same period, more than 150,000 people have been murdered in the United States. We haven't put the entire U.S. on lockdown ? or even murder capitals like Detroit, New Orleans and BaltimoreIndeed! Can you imagine the shitstorm that would descend upon us all if the United States government locked down the country because of a few murders? Pandemonium!
Sorry pro-naked scanner people, but I'm with the pilots, the flight attendants, disgruntled passengers and Ben Franklin on this one. We need to put things into perspective.
If we're going to spend hundreds of millions on something, I'd rather it be something effective that's truly benefitting my fellow passenger, not some lobbyist and their current client.
What I hate is when the TSA targets people that are clearly not in any possibly terrorists.
Example: LAX in september, my parents and I were flying to India. A male Sikh and his wife were asked to get in the special line for the backscatters. How old were they? 20s? 30s? Nope. At least in their 60s. The man had to get up from his wheelchair and couldn't even walk properly. Yeah, he's the one that's going to blow up the plane! Get him!
Oh and you know where they booked their tickets? Economy? Business? Nope, first class. They were affluent punjabi sikhs (most likely in business).
You won't need to search long before you find horror stories on Israeli airport and border security checks. I've no intention of judging or defending them, but here's an example:How do the Israelis do it?
Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel
An American student entering Israel from Egypt via the border crossing at Taba two weeks ago stood stunned as Israeli Border Police officers determined her laptop computer was a security threat and shot it three times.
Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that the police officers subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches, before firing three bullets into her Apple Macbook.
Beats me, too - however, I do think it was a malfunction of the individual rather than one of the system.how does shooting at it make the threat go away? What if it was a bomb?
I honestly don't believe that people, on average, are as scared of attacks on planes as politicians would have us believe. But it's a wonderful way of "fighting terrorism" without annoying too many people's daily lives, so it's a sort of gold standard for any politician's smokescreen actions. Just imagine what would happen if they tried to control terrestrial transportation in a similar way - road and rail tankers carry all sorts of dangerous goods right through our cities. Or imagine a pat-down every time you board a commuter train, it'd be chaos at the station and hence also in the streets.planes get the attention because frankly everyone is scared shitless of them, even without militant jihadis on board.
I honestly don't believe that people, on average, are as scared of attacks on planes as politicians would have us believe. But it's a wonderful way of "fighting terrorism" without annoying too many people's daily lives, so it's a sort of gold standard for any politician's smokescreen actions. Just imagine what would happen if they tried to control terrestrial transportation in a similar way - road and rail tankers carry all sorts of dangerous goods right through our cities. Or imagine a pat-down every time you board a commuter train, it'd be chaos at the station and hence also in the streets.
A car or train bomb would cause similar collateral damage.
Hell, cars without bombs in them cause more damage than planes.