Earlier this week, coming off a wonderful visit with family in Northern California, I was about to board a flight home from Sacramento, my two kids in tow. We walked through the metal detector without a beep. Better yet, no Rapiscan in sight! Our luggage rolled right through the x-ray machine without a glitch. But then, just when I thought we were home free, I was summoned for a pat-down.
Aside from my principled objections to invasive and needless patdowns, I feel an extra layer of anxiety when I’m pulled aside while traveling with my kids, especially as a (temporarily) solo parent. What if the officers decide to separate you from the kids? This had happened to us once in Berlin, when my husband was hauled off to the bomb-detection room; fortunately, the whole family was traveling that day, so the kids were never left alone.
The TSO who conducted the search informed me that the kids had to stay with our luggage and I couldn’t touch our bags or, for that matter, my kids until she was finished with me. I have to say that she was warm and reassuring as well as professional. I have no beef with the Sacramento TSA personnel, who acquitted themselves well. My gripe is the TSA’s silly policy, obsessed as it is with security theater.
I asked the TSO why I’d been singled out. She said, “Because you’re wearing a loose skirt.”
Behold the skirt of terror!
The astute reader will have already noticed that this skirt contains four of the five colors from Homeland Security’s sadly defunct terror-threat color chart: blue, green, yellow, and orange. Logically, the red must be somewhere, too … perhaps under my skirt?
No, the TSO didn’t inspect my underwear, and the patdown stopped just short of the “enhanced” standard. She did not move her hand up my thigh until she met “resistance.” My ladyparts were left undisturbed. She also didn’t search above my waist.
But the patdown was still an exercise in foolery. Being separated from my kids would have been stressful if my younger son were still of the age where he routinely ran away in public. The delay, too, would’ve been irksome if we’d been short on time.
I spoke to the supervisor on the way out and asked him why long skirts weren’t listed on the TSA website as objects of interest. I said that if travelers were forewarned, we might choose to wear clothes that didn’t trigger a patdown. He, too, was warm and professional, but his response just floored me:
“Because we don’t want to let the bad guys know all about our methods. They might find someone who looks just like you and use that person to try and sneak through a bomb.”
Leaving aside the extreme shortage of blonde female terrorists since the demise of the Red Army Faction, what purpose does this faux secrecy serve? Blogger Bob at the TSA likes to emphasize that different methods are used at different airports to keep the terrorists off balance. That’s always been a transparent excuse for TSA excesses.
My own personal theory is that searching passengers with long, loose skirts is a way to target women who appear to be Muslims. Inclusion of a few blonde gals creates a smokescreen of plausible deniability in case anyone charges the TSA with racial or religious profiling. I’m positive the policy is motivated by xenophobia, but you can’t prove it.
All you can do is wear jeggings (eek!) the next time you fly.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Sorry to hear you got pulled for the grope, Sungold, though glad it didn’t include the ‘bad touch.’
Maybe next time you should just do what furry girl did.
ballgame,
I LOVE what furry girl did. I tried several times to post at her blog about it back when it first appeared but was never successful. Don’t know why; but then I’m lucky I can turn my computer on, let alone understand the arcane workings of internet access.
I loved Furry Girl’s stunt when she did it, and I still love it! I could never pull that off. I did, however, hike up my skirt to my upper thigh to show how silly this was. Maybe I, too, have a future as a camgirl?
Sungold,
The last flight of my life — September 2010 — I refused to go through the scanner. This was before the gropefests had been instituted nationwide. Other than deliberately making me wait, and wait, and wait, even while there was NO ONE else in the security line, and yelling at me when I asked a question, the TSA agents were mild. The woman who finally ended up searching me was very respectful.
She still wanded me to within an inch of my life, including my bare arms and bare feet (explosive thingies concealed in biceps or wedged into toenails?). And when the hand-held metal detector kept dinging near my bra, I finally just pulled the shoulder of my dress away from my body and said, “underwire bra.” That’s about as close I got to Furry Girl’s escapade.
Protesters in Germany, though, stripped down completely at one of the airports last year.
I arrived home tonight from a cross country drive from New York City. Obviously I realize that driving is not always a practical method of travel, but if I never had to take an airplane again I wouldn’t. What a pleasure to be able to eat and go to the bathroom when I want, and to drink 12 ounce bottle of water with impunity. The TSA and Homeland security have my utmost contempt.
Keith, I kind of wanted to drive this summer, but time just didn’t allow. One of these years, I hope to take the kids to Yellowstone and other national parks.
I do have to say that the Delta flight crews were really relaxed about using the bathroom. Twice my younger son had an urgent situation while the seatbelt light was on (once early in the descent, once while parked on the tarmac) and both times the flight attendants were perfectly cool with it. I think they are so disgusted with the chronic lateness of their flights that they are willing to bend the rules a bit to help keep peace. (And yes, I do hound my kids to use the loo at appropriate times, but the Tiger, in particular, is still at an age where nature will ambush him.)
I am going to be the curmudgeon here…we just got back from Africa. The security measures at the international airport makes the TSA look like a walk in the proverbial park. First you have to arrive at the airport 4 hours ahead of time…not at the gate but at the airport. Everyone undergoes an extensive security interview (addresses, phone numbers of who you visited, where in detail you went…) before we even got to start the check in process (kids were also asked questions). Checked in luggage was checked for bomb residue before x-rayed. Then you had to get to the gate 3 hours ahead of time. Part of that was so you could undergo the security screening. This included your standard metal detector plus a mandatory pat down for every passenger, no matter age, gender or religion. Then hand luggage was checked by hand (having already been x-rayed), though this was random. You then got to wait in the departure lounge. When the flight was called you went through the whole process again, including the pat down, at the gate itself.
This level of security was done for all flights, both domestic and international.
We weren’t traveling in a particularly dangerous country. I don’t think this country was particularly paranoid. Because everyone was searched you would not say it was profiling. The airport had technology as most US airports (including a scanner).
My travel in other areas of the world has had me experience more pat downs than I can remember. Pat downs have been part of the travel experience for me even before 9-11. For the most part they have been efficient and professional (Turkey in post-coupe time was the exception). Not all have been done by someone the same sex as me. I guess I would say for many parts of the world pat downs are more the rule, where in the U.S. they are the exception. Maybe patting down everyone boarding a plane in the US would make it seem less nefarious.
Sorra, do you think all that duplication of searches was fruitful? To me it sounds like a waste of resources to repeat the same search over and over. I can see routinely using bomb-detecting wipes; they are quick and non-invasive, though they do give a lot of false positives. If their specificity could be improved, I could see a role for them. Hand-searching luggage that cleared the x-ray equipment makes no sense unless you don’t trust your equipment or your screeners (or both!). The screeners we encountered in Charles de Gaulle, for instance, seemed utterly unable to understand when they were seeing a cable on the display. The result of incompetence is delays for the traveler and a misdirection of resources.
I do think interviews are potentially helpful if done by properly trained officers. I used to encounter them a lot in Europe – lately, not so much. We had an interview upon leaving Germany this time but it was really perfunctory. Trouble is, TSOs don’t seem to have these skills.
Patting down everyone would slow the process tremendously and would not likely be a good use of resources. In Germany (Berlin, specifically) they do a fair number of patdowns, but they are non-invasive and they’re coupled with a wand-style metal detector. They’re also generally limited to people who’ve set off the big metal detector. That seems like a reasonable compromise.
Just to put another set of anecdota out there, in lots of traveling in South America, I’ve found security procedures to be extremely lax, including on U.S.-bound flights.
sorra,
What the TSA is doing isn’t “pat-downs.” They are gropes. Full-on — often punitive — gropes.
I, too, have been patted down in my day — I’ve also been frisking by the police. The TSA isn’t frisking and isn’t “patting down.”
Take a look at these Master Lists of TSA Crimes and Abuses that a colleague and I have compiled. Then tell me if this is what you experienced in Africa:
http://www.travelunderground.org/index.php?threads/master-lists-of-tsa-abuses-crimes.317/
Oops — sorry — typo that has created an inadvertently funny image — I obviously meant “frisked,” not “frisking.”
I dunno – at least you didn’t say you were getting frisky with the police.
And yes, there are patdowns, and there are gropes, which are unduly intrusive and often punitive. Mine was definitely in the former category. I hope we’re seeing a quiet, announced shift away from the grope-downs, though I’m not holding my breath.
What I object to here is the illusion of safety created by security theater, which substitutes for *real* improvements in safety; the unnecessary delays caused by security theater; the diversion of resources from areas where they could actually enhance real safety; and the thinly-veiled racism of singling out certain garments commonly worn by individuals whose faith calls for “modesty.” Hijab has been targeted very systematically, and of course there’s no real figleaf for searching women’s scarves and veils.
Hmm, a country with 13 aircraft carrier battle groups is threatened by a skirt.
But it was a scary, scary skirt! Look at the picture! In fact, I think one of the tie-dyed patches shows an image of Osama bin Laden …
Apparently, TSA is stepping up its efforts to abuse women who refuse the scanners. There have been three incidents this week where women have reported being violently chopped in the vagina to the point of being left sore afterward. This is not security screening, this is blatant criminal assault.
TSA Pervs Gone WILD!
http://www.fiftytolife.com/2011/tsa-pervs-gone-wild/
Luckutt: TSA pat-down the epitome of creepy
http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_18664551
Springs woman says TSA agent groped her vagina during pat-down
http://citydesk.freedomblogging.com/2011/08/11/springs-woman-says-tsa-agent-groped-her-vagina-during-pat-down/9381/
Airport will ‘continue to monitor’ complaint against TSA agent
http://citydesk.freedomblogging.com/tag/tsa/
The American traveler is being punished for the failure of the FBI and CIA to share information and stop the 9/11 attacks. It is both stunning and sickening that so many people are willing to allow a government agency to sexually assault their children a just so they can fly somewhere. Under Pistole’s policies, TSA screeners have been turned into de facto child molesters and sexual assailants. They have admitted that the pat downs involve direct contact with passenger’s penises, testicles, breasts and vaginas which constitutes sexual assault. By their own calculations, TSA gropes over 60,000 passengers every day! This week Denver TSA Area Pat Ahlstrom said of the scans “They were graphic, no doubt about it. Now, they don’t have to be concerned that a private image will be viewed by a TSA officer”.
Since December 2010 there have been 42 screeners arrested for crimes ranging from rape and child pornography to drug trafficking and theft from bags. In the same period, there have been 40 security breaches or failures, dozens of lawsuits and thousands of groping and abuse complaints. Most recently the pat down of a six year old girl and removal of a dying woman’s diaper made headlines. There is clearly a problem when an agency this size has this level of job-related criminal activity and passenger abuse.
TSA has needlessly molested and traumatized thousands of children since November and many of these abuses have been caught on video making national news. This agency is violating passenger rights on a daily basis, committing crimes and endangering airline security with their incompetence. Nothing less than the complete elimination of this agency is acceptable. If there is any justice left in this country those responsible for this criminal malfeasance, including Pistole, will be prosecuted by the next Administration.
http://www.travelunderground.org/index.php?threads/master-lists-of-tsa-abuses-crimes.317/
Morning to you. I suppose it’s going to be the price of doing business as long as people put up with it by continuing to fly. Last two times I tried to fly I was wearing a pair of steel-toed high-top work boots wouldn’t let me through, so they sat me down in view of other people going through to pull off my boots. High-tops allow me to not pay attention to my color socks. One orange, one green that day. Lots of laughs and double-takes by passers-by.
Next time around it was my medicine bag bothered them, hanging around my neck. They took me into a back room, brought some stainless steel pans for me to put things into. When they saw the bear claw, coyote teeth, fox fur, bone particles the examiner tried to pick one up, I announced, “Don’t touch that!”
He left me and found a uniformed Native American to come in and talk it over. Almost missed my flight, but it was a nice chat.
Never again. I’m finished flying.
Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
— Frederick Douglass, 1857
OMG by making this post you’re totally helping terrorists attack the US!
Seriously – how do they expect this stuff to remain secret in the information age, when they do it to many people over the course of a few days, and at least some of them will have blogs or twitter accounts where they will write about the unusual (for them) experience they just had?