This is it. The Transportation Security Agency is an idea whose time is gone.
You have all read of its many outrages, from the botched No-Fly ("enemies") list to mistreatment of wheel-chair-bound passengers to searches of random people on city buses.
No more of this.
Evidence is clear: This is a rogue agency. It needs to be dismantled, its managers fired, its functions pruned and parcelled out. Now.
If you have the stomach for a revolting little tale that might be straight out of Kafka, then read all about it below.
LOS ANGELES - A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplanecalled Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation....
Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.
The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.
Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The women then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.
Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.
She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.
"Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney...
Hamlin said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.
Creepy, creepy. The lady later complained,
but the TSA's customer service manager at the Lubbock airport concluded the screening was handled properly, [her attorney Gloria] Allred said.
The national office, of course, washes its hands.
...TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird said he was unaware of the incident. There is no specific TSA policy on dealing with body piercings, he said, "as long as it doesn't sound the alarms."
If an alarm does sound, "until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it."
Now personally, in similar circumstances, I would like to think that I woudn't go that far just to get on a plane at any time, but we don't know what pressure the lady was under. And I think we have to allow something for the effects of shock and awe in simply having such an irrational, sadistic, nightmarish demand made, where clearly there is no threat of any kind posed by such "personal hardware."
As part of the grandiose new Homeland Security Agency, the TSA was on the wrong track from almost Day One, a toxic mess of incomptence, opportunism and dreams of grandeur.
HSA was supposed to coordinate anti-terrorist activities, and instead, it is terrorizing YOU AND ME. The best way to deal with an organizational error of this magnitude is to undo it. Now.
We have learned. Simply centralizing federal security functions has not solved our security or intelligence problems. But is has given our "security community" the mindset of an occupying force -- right in their own country. The HSA -- as such -- should go, and the TSA with it.
And meanwhile, fire the creeps that mistreated this lady. We, the citizens, have a right to expect nothing less.
(Thanks to Buzzflash and Feminist Peace Network, where I saw this.)