so, the terrorists win...

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I meant 'mule' in the sense of anything: drugs, weapons, whatever. If they're going to be screening people, it would seem a fairly large hole in the process if all you had to do was bring a kid along with you to hide stuff. It didn't have to be a bomb. Could've been a blade or what have you.

Yeah, next thing you know people will bring their kids to a concert so they can get into the ellipse.

Oh, wait. Wrong thread. Wrong year. Oops.
 
If the TSA's explicit policy is to not conduct thorough pat-downs on children under the age of 13... that would appear to me to be a thorough pat down. The woman was in the child's waistband and on her chest. She told then she would put her hand in the waistband and be in "sensitive areas". Don't see what can be more thorough than that, based upon what we've already seen and read about since this pat down thing went into effect. Unless they're going to say that "thorough" would mean a strip search or a body cavity search :shrug:
 
(CBS News)

The Transportation Security Administration defended on Sunday the actions of its airport security officers at a northwest Florida airport after the agency came under criticism for requiring a 95-year-old woman to remove her adult diaper during a pat down.

The incident took place June 18 at Northwest Florida Regional Airport near Pensacola, Fla., while Jean Weber of Destin, Fla., escorted her mother, who suffers from leukemia, to Michigan to live with family members before moving into an assisted living facility, CNN reports.

"She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel," Weber told CNN.

Weber didn't identify her mother to the cable news network.

While going through the airport's security checkpoint, a TSA officer performed a pat down on Weber's mother, Weber told CNN. After an officer felt something "suspicious" on her leg, Weber's mother was taken into a private room for further inspection. The officer then told Weber that her mother's Depend undergarment was soiled and prevented a complete pat down from being done. The officer asked for it to be removed, which Weber did in a restroom.

"It's something I couldn't imagine happening on American soil," Weber told the Panama City News-Herald Friday. "Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this."

Weber told CNN her mother worked as a nurse for 65 years and "was very calm" during the inspection.

Weber told the News-Herald that she filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security soon after the incident. She talked with a department employee June 22, who told her that the security officers followed their procedures during the search. The TSA released a statement Sunday to CNN:

"While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner," the federal agency said. "We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure."

Earlier, Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, told the News-Herald there was a reason why security procedures were the same for everyone.

"TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability," Koshetz told the newspaper.
 
The TSA is just following orders. It's up to us, the reasonable American travelers to demand that this is enough and it's not making us any safer. I don't blame TSA employees for this stuff. I blame reactionary Americans who are too paranoid and too insecure themselves.

Terrorists will kill people. It will happen. It will probably happen on an American flight again at some point. We need to start to accept that death is a possibility in our everyday lives, by accident or on purpose. Bush (and I think Clinton, too) did an injustice to Americans by setting this "zero tolerance for terrorism deaths" standard. If you try to guaranty that no American dies by a terrorist's hand, 6-year-olds and 95-year-olds will be suspects in that kind of police state. I wish we were more mature as a country to accept some death.

Heaven help the first politician who tries to tell America some hard facts.
 
TSA employees are in the same bucket as all common law enforcement officers: dumb, hired help.
 
Meanwhile



"Raising Hope" star Garret Dillahunt has managed to walk through security at a local airport with a small knife. On Monday, June 27, the actor playing Burt Chance on the FOX sitcom posted a photo of the knife on Twitter and wrote, "Oops. Walked right through airport security with this little number."

Garret was not arrested for bringing the banned item into the airport, but fellow actor Rainn Wilson thought otherwise. In his response to Garret's tweet, Rainn wrote on his own page, "Arrest this tweeter!" In return, Garret explained, "If I ever get outta this there will be a reckoning. It was a misTAKE, all right? I'm a whittler, plain and simple."

raising-hope-star-tweets-airport-security-knife01.jpg


A couple of comments on that story

A close family member of mine actually got a taser gun onto an airplane. And a friend of mine at work got a knife that looks just like the one in this picture on 2 flights within a week. In both cases they didn't realize they had the weapons in their carry-on luggage. But if it's this easy to accidentally get a weapon onto a plane, how easy do you think it must be to smuggle a weapon onto a plane when you're actually trying?

I was on a flight where someone had a small knife with them on the plane, and security never caught it. This was the same security that I went though where they had me step to the side and pat me down...touching my boobs and my front below my waist IN PUBLIC!!!

I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me.
 
The tsa has prevented further terrorist attacks on US soil. :wink:

I wonder why fox news types aren't touting that old song and dance anymore?
 
The tsa has prevented further terrorist attacks on US soil. :wink:

I wish they'd stop filling the cargo holds with US soil. My bags get dirtier and dirtier each time I fly. I think everyone's bags eventually turn black from the dirty, greasy shit that's in each plane (and luggage truck and luggage belt).


Half a :wink:
 
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is warning airlines that some terrorists are considering surgically implanting explosives into humans to carry out attacks.

There is no intelligence pointing to a specific plot, but the U.S. has shared this information with executives at domestic and international carriers.

The Transportation Security Administration says that people traveling to the U.S. from overseas may experience additional screening at airports.

Placing explosives and explosive components inside humans is not a new idea. But a U.S. security official says there is new intelligence pointing to a fresh interest in using this tactic.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security information.
 
that should be outsource, at least to the private sector,
I am sure they could find people that would do it for 99 cents an hour, or even no pay at all.
 
9/11 flight: Housewife handcuffed, strip-searched - US news - Security - msnbc.com

By Elizabeth Chuck
msnbc.com

110913-Shoshana-Hebshi-vmed-12p.grid-4x2.jpg



Shoshana Hebshi will never forget where she was on the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11.

She and two other airline passengers were handcuffed and strip-searched after flying into Detroit on Sunday.

No charges were filed against Hebshi, a self-described "half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio," or the two men sitting next to her, who were flying in from Denver when the crew of Frontier Airlines Flight 623 alerted authorities that they were reportedly behaving suspiciously.

In a blog post titled "Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit," Hebshi, an American citizen, told her tale of temporary detainment, which she had begun to share with Twitter followers in real-time — until handcuffs were placed on her wrists.

Hebshi, a writer and editor and mother of twin sons, didn't know the other two passengers in Row 12. They were Indian men, she wrote. And they didn't know each other. But they got a lot closer when they were all crammed into the back of a squad car.

What happened, according to Frontier spokesman Peter Kowalchuk, begins with a bathroom.

"One of the males, who was not feeling well, got up to use the restroom during the flight. The other male got up at approximately the same time to use the restroom. The female remained seated in her row," the FBI said in a statement.


Crews reported the men sitting next to Hebshi were spending "an extraordinarily long time" in the plane's lavatory, Kowalchuk said.

Amid heightened security fears on the tenth anniversary of the 2001 attacks, no one was taking chances.

Authorities were notified, Kowalchuk told msnbc.com, and F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane as it landed in Detroit. The plane landed on a remote tarmac and waited for backup.

Hebshi did not return emails from msnbc.com, and had taken down contact information on her blog Tuesday. The names of the other passengers detained on Sunday have not been released. But Hebshi recalled the incident in great detail on her blog; the FBI did not comment on the specifics of the detainment.

After the plane landed, far from any terminals, the captain told everyone to remain in their seats or "there would be consequences," Hebshi wrote. A group of officers had gathered outside.

Hebshi tweeted from the plane before officers arrested her, instructing her to not bring her phone.

"A little concerned about this situation. Plane moved away from terminal surrounded by cops. Crew is mum. Passengers can't get up," she tweeted at the time.
Still unaware that she and her seatmates were the ones police were coming for, Hebshi's concerns at that point were more mundane. "We had been waiting on the plane for a half hour. I had to pee. I wanted to get home and see my family. And I wanted someone to tell us what was going on," she wrote.
"Before I knew it, about 10 cops, some in what looked like military fatigues, were running toward the plane carrying the biggest machine guns I have ever seen."

Plane is stormed

Hebshi sent one more tweet about armed officers as they stormed the plane.

They stopped at Hebshi's row, yelling at the three passengers to get up. Hebshi asked if she could bring her phone; one of the officers told her she couldn't as he yanked her out of her seat.

"What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers!" she quipped in her blog post.

The three were asked if they had any explosives on them, and then put in the back of a squad car next to the plane.

"The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on," Hebshi wrote. "I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away."

Locked up and strip-searched

Meanwhile, the other 113 passengers on board were bused from the tarmac, some to nearby police headquarters for questioning, and bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in to inspect luggage from the plane, a passenger told The Associated Press. Nothing suspicious was found.

Hebshi and her seatmates' next stop would be holding cells at the airport police station. Police interviewed them one at a time, according to her post.

"I heard the officers discuss my impending strip search. They needed to bring in a female officer. At least they were following protocol, or something to that nature. Still, could this really be happening?" she wrote.

Muslim American travelers say they are still carrying 9-11 baggage

Hours later, after being strip-searched and interrogated by the FBI and Homeland Security, Hebshi was allowed to leave.

An agent thanked her for being cooperative, she wrote. "'It's 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren't there.' He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like. He said there had been 50 other similar incidents across the country that day."

Among the other incidents: An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles also reported a security threat Sunday, and was shadowed by F-16s "out of an abundance of caution," the FBI said in a statement; and in Dallas, a rented moving truck parked at a curb at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport driven by a crew member of the Discovery Channel show "Sons of Guns" also caused a scare. Investigators were suspicious because the driver said, "I got a couple of guns," but FBI said he was just waiting for a co-worker.

As for Hebshi, she wrote that she won't be flying again on Sept. 11.

"I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance," she wrote. "I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice. I believe in tolerance, acceptance and trying — as hard as it may be — not to judge a person by the color of their skin or the way they dress."

According to a Washington Post interview, Hebshi said she's been overwhelmed by the response to her blog, and that despite what happened, she's glad the incident has started a conversation.

Frontier spokesman Kowalchuk told msnbc.com that heightened security concerns on the Sept. 11 anniversary could have played a part in the way Hebshi and the two others were treated once they were detained.

"The heightened security of the day and the fact that there had been at least one other similar event on Sunday could have been factors in the way authorities responded. It was not a factor in the way the Frontier crew responded," he said. "They saw behavior that concerned them and acted appropriately. What happened after that was determined by the responding authorities. Our duty and that of our flight crews is to ensure the safety of our passengers and we would never interfere with the authorities as they work to do the same."

Calls from msnbc.com to the FBI in Detroit were not returned.

Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit | Stories from the Heartland
 
Man, can't an Indian guy get a blow job from another Indian guy in an airplane bathroom these days? Sheesh.
 
Just in time for breast cancer awareness month TSA :up:

(CBS/AP)

NEW YORK - A breast cancer survivor said she was subjected to a humiliating public patdown at New York's Kennedy Airport even though she offered to produce documentation about her medical implants.

Business consultant Lori Dorn said on her website that the Transportation Security Administration patdown added insult to injury and humiliated her.

She was heading to San Francisco last week when a full-body scanner detected her prostheses.

She says the TSA agent refused to let her retrieve her medical documentation, and called over a female supervisor who told her the exam had to take place. "I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared," Dorn wrote.

"She then said, 'And if we don't clear you, you don't fly' loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor. ...

"I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer. The way I was treated by these TSA agents added a shitload of insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.

"At what point does the need for security eclipse human dignity and compassion?" Dorn wrote. "I can only comfort myself with the fact that Karma is always circular."

After posting the account on her web page, Dorn announced on her Twitter account that the general manager of Kennedy Airport had called her to apologize.

Bob Burns, a Social Media Analyst with the Transportation Security Administration, apologized for the TSA on the agency's blog. "We do our best to treat passengers with the dignity and respect they deserve, but in Lori Dorn's case, it looks like we missed our mark," he wrote. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the experience Mrs. Dorn had at JFK.

"The Federal Security Director for JFK has personally reached out to learn more about what happened so he can help ensure that she and others will have better travel experiences in the future. While security is our primary mission, he apologized to Mrs. Dorn for not delivering the customer respect he wants all passengers flying through JFK to experience and offered to meet her the next time she flies through this airport."

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that Dorn's medical documentation wouldn't have spared her a patdown, but that it would have been done privately.
 
these humiliating pat downs will keep happening time and time again. the tsa was just supposed to be in place for a short time after 9/11 until a permanent solution was established. considering the jobs of these agents, they clearly need to be more educated in regards to training on the job and past experience. though i guess if i was only making $8.20 an hour i wouldn't care too much about being sensitive towards passengers' conditions either.
 
SAN DIEGO -- A Muslim-American woman is suing Southwest Airlines for discrimination because she was removed from a plane by federal security agents.

Irum Abbasi of San Diego plans to announce the lawsuit Thursday.

Abbasi is a Pakistani immigrant who's lived in the U.S. for a decade. She was on a flight from San Diego to San Jose in March when she says a flight attendant became concerned.

Abbasi, who was wearing a head scarf, told someone on her cell phone, "I have to go" because the plane was about to depart. But Abbasi says the attendant thought she said, "It's a go."

The mother of three was taken off the plane and briefly examined by TSA agents. She was placed on the next flight.

The airline later apologized. Abbasi has said she wants the crew disciplined.
 
I blame Steve Earle

I'm just an American boy raised on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him
 
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