Okay, a couple of things re: the TSA controversy.
#1, I feel really awful for the front-line TSA staff at the airport. They are bearing the brunt of crappy policy.
"Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country." See a ton more like this here: http://boardingarea.com/...
#2 I just read what I consider to be far and away the best article to date on the current TSA controversy. The upshot is this: A couple of weeks ago, TSA brass gathered the workers bees and laid it out: We've got new "dick measuring machines" (TSA staff words, not baikal's). You are to see that every passenger gets their dick and/or birth canal electronically measured. These machines only work if we funnel every passenger through. If they ask for the pat down
....well.....just make it so that no one asks for the pat-down.....
Here's an excerpt to see if it merits your further attention:
"Are any parts of your body sore?" he asks.
"No," I say, instantly regretting that I didn't say, "Yes. My groin. Very sore." Next time.
He feels me up. "Could you widen your stance, please?" he asks.
"Hey, I'm not in the United States Senate!" I say, widening my stance.
His search is fairly half-hearted. He spends more time stroking the back of my tie than he spends between my legs.
I ask, "Do a lot of people opt-out?"
"No, not many."
"People are cows," I say.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean they'll do whatever the federal government tells them to do," I say.
"How come you don't go through the machine?" he asks me.
I give him several more answers than he expected:
- I prefer to limit my exposure to radiation, which the back-scatter imager produces;
- I don't think this new technology will stop terrorism;
- I find the idea of the government taking pictures of my genitalia a discomfiting invasion of privacy;
- I find the specific pose a person is forced to take inside the machine -- hands up, as in a mugging -- particularly debasing.
"Okay," he says, "have a nice flight."
MORE here http://www.theatlantic.com/...