The noted right-wing front organization the ACLU has gathered some 900 tales of encounters with the TSA's elite selection of professionals:
Recurring themes in these reports include:
• The searches are extremely invasive
• Many travelers are reporting intense feelings of violation and humiliation
• Some report being physically hurt by the searches
• Some feel their searches are punitive
• Reports of gawking by agents
• Reports of seemingly unnecessary repeated touching of intimate areas
• Many vow not to fly any more
• Any traveler may be forced to undergo one of these searches
Read on and judge for yourself.
While TSA under pressure turned off an unknown but substantial number of nude imaging machines, and backed off the groping, the reports are starting to come in about the full nature of what has been going on.
Don't believe any builshit about this is being a "pat-down". From some of the reports gathered by the ACLU:
I was with two strangers, one of whom now had both of her open palms moving slowly across virtually every part of my body. She barely moved them as she groped both of my breasts. And most disturbingly, her hands karate-chopped their way a full two inches up into my vagina through my slacks. She performed this maneuver not once, but twice: once from behind me, and then once again, standing/bending in front of me
The pat down was so invasive that the woman doing it stuck her thumb through my jeans into my vagina, significantly more than simple resistance. She cupped each of my breasts, and ran her hand inside the waistband of my jeans.... I am upset, humilated, degraded and feel abused and criminal, when I am guilty of nothing.
In the 4 times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through 2 layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused.... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules.
This was, by far, the second most humiliating, and personally violating event in my life - the first being a date-rape in college
I was the only female in a crowd of men. Even though I was not next in line, I was called over to the body scanner. As I got closer to the scanner, I could clearly hear him say "got a cute one, some DD's." ... I was appalled and decided at that point to "opt out" of the scanner.... I was then put through the pat down procedure which I only can only describe as sexual assault.
In my other diaries on this topic, I have seen these atrocities belittled as "reichwing" bellyaching, etc. Oh, sure some rightist have tried to use it as an excuse to abolish TSA, etc. I don't know or care about any of their motives.
Various Oh So Important lickspittles (for example WaPO's astounding ignorant Ruth Marcus and TSA's own Baghdad Bob) have claimed that only Luddites, libertarians, prudes and puritans who opt out of the nude scan will be groped.
Don't believe them. Many people were groped despite going through the scan (there are at least two reports of menstruating women being groped up because they were wearing a "foreign object".). Other people asked to use the scan but were refused. People have been assaulted when there was no goddamn machine in place to "opt out" of:
[T]he Dayton airport does not have the new body scanners. I was not given any other search options. It was enhanced patdown, or nothing. (And I would have opted for the body scanner, if I were going to be subject to a sexual assault.)
Here's one of many reports showing that the AIT nude imaging machines were used as well as the grope on numerous passengers
(Flight on 11/18/10) At ELP, one AIT and one WTMD were in operation fed by two long lines that merged into one after passengers put their carryons, shoes, coats/jackets/sweaters/vests, belts, watches and wallets thru the two X-ray machines. MOST (well over 50%) passengers were then directed to the AIT. Aside from those who selected to "opt out" of the AIT, passengers were only allowed to use the WTMD when the back-up of waiting passenger threatened to spill over onto the operating escalators and cause injuries. ... MOST passengers (about 2/3 to 3/4) of those sent thru the AIT were ALSO subjected to a patdown. The two patdown locations at the exit of the AIT were kept full pretty much continuously. Passengers selected for these follow-on patdowns did NOT have line of sight to their belongings. There were frequent stoppages while waiting for these follow-on patdowns to be cleared so that the next passenger could enter the AIT. ...
The most disgusting examples involve children.
Here's a video of three year old Al Qaeda operative.. The officer rubs his hand over the boy's penis, then looks down the front of his pants, then looks down the back. The mother sits there nervously. The boy doesn't have a clue, they've made it into a game.
Look at 0:32. The TSA fingers fold around the boy's penis.
Oh yes, the pat your willy game.
Here's another video of TSA pawing at a three year old. The child screams:
STOP TOUCHING ME!!!
Yet the TSA perpetrator keeps grabbing at her, apparently trying to touch the child's buttocks. The child continues to scream:
STOP TOUCHING ME!!!
This barbarism is not isolated. From Reuters:
Some travelers are also livid about how children are being screened. During a trip last Sunday by a father and son through Orlando airport in Florida, the 8-year-old boy was selected for extra screening by TSA after going through the metal detector.
The father said the officer described the procedure before conducting it. Then he patted down the boy in the open security area, using the backside of his hands to check his genital area, he said.
"I didn't think it was going to be as horrible as he was describing," said the boy's father, Bill, who works as a lobbyist in Washington and did not want his full name used.
"We spend my child's whole life telling him that only mom, dad and a doctor can touch you in your private area, and now we have to add TSA agent and that's just wrong," he told Reuters. "At some point the terrorists have won."
And the people laying hands on these children are part-timers hired off of an ad on the back of a pizza box which promises
A career where X-ray vision and federal benefits come standard.