While TSA has finally given into complaints about its staff groping children, it appears undeterred with geriatrics. A family was horrified last week when TSA subjected Lena Reppert, 95, to a 45 minute search and forced her to remove her adult diaper. Reppert is in the late-stages of leukemia and was traveling to her native Michigan to say goodbye.
She was singled out by TSA because she was in a wheelchair. When they found the adult diaper, she and her daughter were given the choice of either not flying or flying without the adult diaper.
The daughter has now filed a complaint.
Source: Telegraph
2manyusernames,
Yeah, I do have a solution. Do away with the TSA altogether and repeal the Patriot Act. As a logistical matter it is impossible to secure an airport – too many people coming and going simply to make things work at all to make them perfectly secure. In fact, airport employees pose the greatest risk to airline security as not only are they coming and going all day, they have access to sensitive areas that passengers do not. We should go back to using metal detectors, x-rays and mechanical sniffers/dogs for baggage. Combine this with a system of spotters in airport common areas like the Israelis use. It’s cheaper, just as effective, far less intrusive and not an open violation of your Constitutional rights to be free from search and seizure absent a warrant unlike the current grope down and strip system.
On a personal note, if you don’t like what I have to say? Don’t read the posts. The TSA behaves like a bunch of mouth breathing morons as evidenced by stories just like this one. I’ll say it again: forcing a sick old woman to humiliate herself because of irrational paranoia is callously stupid. If you have a problem with that? That’s your problem. Security theater is immature and small minded and if you take this personally because you happen to work for the TSA? Good. You should. You’re part of the problem with our ever eroding civil liberties in this country, not the solution. The TSA is an intrusive and abusive organization that does nothing to add real additional security to airports. It simply takes your rights, abuses people needlessly and randomly, and gives the illusion of doing something that more passive – yet equally effective – security measures could actually accomplish.
As an engineer, I was taught that people often try to solve political problems with technology, and that is often (if not usually) futile. The political problems remain.
Still what do you do once it’s been shown how trivial it is to take down an aircraft and how much bang there is for the buck?
Other solutions: bags fly on a completely separate aircraft, people get used to wearing “airplane clothes”, tyvek disposable washable x-ray friendly clothing and booties. (somethink like what this pan am stewardess was sporting back in 2001: http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2001glossy3.jpg)
Questions to ask of anyone on these issues:
1) Where are your boundaries in this? What sort of search would you finally say is too much? If it could be shown that the body scanner XRay machines cause x cases of cancer per year, how high would x have to be before you said they should be stopped?
2) What would your response be should a plane be hijacked/crashed/blown up and it was shown that the event could have been prevented had the search equipment not been removed? What would the rest of the American Public say?
3) Given 1 & 2 above, exactly where do you think searches are going to stop?
—–
The problem is framed incorrectly.
We frame it as a cost benefit analysis trading off costs of the search versus costs of the hijacking, but that’s unfair because, as humans, we naturally place the cost of the hijacking/death/9/11 as infinitely high. (And yet, what other value can we give it?)
But when placed against an infinitely pricey risk, what cost can be considered too great?
And so the result is a race to the bottom. Spend everything. Give up all freedoms. Must stop plane hijackings.
There is some “the only way to win is not to play” way of avoiding the Kobayashi Maru, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t even know how to cheat.
“callous stupidity” ?
Really, what makes you say that? What sort of “smarts” does it take for the TSA agent to know who is and isn’t carrying contraband, chemicals, explosives, etc?
The fact that a person is ‘x’ years old doesn’t preclude them from trying to commit a terrorist act willingly or not.
Is the system we’re using good? No, it isn’t. It has a lot of flaws, flaws that are mostly based on the fact that people demand security but aren’t willing to pay the price. They understandably don’t want to be searched, groped, molested, or even inconvenienced. They demand that we ignore profiling, something that has proven effective for decades. Something that is rewarded when it comes to serial killers and common criminals but not when they profile shows a preponderance of non-whites. What does that leaves us with? Random searches ignoring anything like age, gender, clothing, destination, behavior, etc, etc or strip searching everyone. Neither one is very good.
Do you have a better idea for security? One that isn’t “callous and stupid.” While Tony C’s idea has flaws it is at least an idea. Combining his idea with profiling would probably be a benefit but nothing is 100% effective.
Insulting the individuals doing their job as directed is immature and small minded.
Stupidity in the name of security politic is no virtue. However, those “evil doers” as Bush called them will stop at nothing, even blowing up Grandma.
The solution is simple. Everyone coming to the checkpoint should strip naked and be prepared for cavity searches. Oh…..wait. Can you swallow C4 with a small timer attached? Lets add full body X Rays to the mix.
I read they were considering putting these draconian measures in place for train travelers. Maybe the geniuses who thought of this ought to read up on the actions of the French Resistance during WW-II. Resistance fighters did not need to board no stinking train to blow it up. 🙄
I think I found a job for that former client of mine with the 44 IQ. She can go to work for the TSA.
Apparently there is not only a maximum IQ requirement for being hired by TSA, but a requirement for callous stupidity as well. To paraphrase Lewis Black, “The enemy may be ruthless, but they are not masters of disguise.”
My wife and I were in the airport a couple of years ago and saw the TSA insist that an elderly woman with a prosthetic hand remove the hand so that they could inspect it. We stood by and guarded her possessions at the end of the inspection ramp since they just grabbed her and “escorted” her to an inspection room. Who trains these people? Sick.
This treatment is not new and has been going on for several years. Five years ago we traveled with my 75 year-old mother-in-law, a polio survivor, from Salt Lake to Ontario, CA. Due to her post-polio syndrome condition she wears leg braces and uses a walker and was using one of the airport provided wheelchairs for transport to the boarding gate.
When we got to the TSA line, you would think she was Osama Bin Laden himself. She was asked to get out of the wheelchair (theirs, remember), stand, take off her leg braces and go back through the scanning contraption – alone, and without the walker or anyone assisting her. Mind you, if she takes off her leg braces she cannot stand upright, either with or without any assistance, and she certainly cannot walk. Their solution to achieve airline security was to create a physically impossible situation for the passenger to comply with. Total idiots with no idea of physical limitations of individuals in her situation and the daily trials they endure.
Fortunately, a TSA supervisor with an ounce of common sense was finally summoned to the scene. He closely inspected the removed braces, questioned her for several minutes, and had a TSA agent push her again through the scanner.
The lights still flashed and the alarms rang, but I think they finally became frustrated with the situation (now going on for nearly 20 minutes) and could see that she really didn’t pose any threat. Her leg braces were apparently not of the explosive variety they feared and we were finally allowed to pass.
Maybe the TSA of five years ago was the kinder, gentler, variety, as we did find someone who could think through a situation and not insist on blindly following a set of rules for which there is often no reasonable solution. Except to not board the flight.
Sounds like it is worse today.
@Frank: I am pretty sure C4 is detectable; dogs can sniff it and I have read about material scientists developing a mechanical scanner for it.
But the bigger answer is, you cannot prevent an attack. Period. The terrorists have millions of dollars. Plastic explosive and liquid combinatorial explosives are very well known and understood by chemists throughout the world. You can make them look like soap, or hard candy, or the handle of your carry on, or your comb, or the case on your laptop, or the battery within your laptop (and still a working battery), or your watch, or whatever else you want. I’ve even heard of them being woven like polyester into fabrics.
Barring weapons on the plane is a good idea, but with about five years training in Kung Fu (and I have known people that have it) a plane could be taken over and passengers killed and taken hostage with literally bare hands. The 9/11 hijackers used box cutters because they could and it was convenient, not because they were absolutely necessary to the operation. Without any intent to denigrate Martial Artists, intensive martial arts training (which I dabbled in, once upon a time) does not even require that students be able to read.
The even bigger picture is that our rights come before our safety. You have the 14th amendment right to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure and detention, and your desire to travel is not sufficient “reason” to believe you are a terrorist. Nor is your race, or religion.
So if flying is dangerous, we should do what we can within people’s rights to alleviate that danger. A dog that sniffs an explosive is a valid reason (IMO) for somebody to be searched to determine whether the dog made a mistake. The dog is a sensing device, like a metal detector. If the dog or the metal detector raises an alert, that is, IMO, sufficient reason within the 14th amendment to conduct a search for a substance that would trigger the alert.
Beyond what we can do within people’s Constitutional rights, I think the people have to accept the risks, or change the Constitution. Our government is not supposed to just change the Constitution because they want to do something, which is what has been happening, wholesale, in the name of “safety,” for the last ten years or so.
This is the final proof that the terrorists already have won. A sad day indeed. 🙁
Tony – If I had a pound of C4 in my adult diaper how would armed air marshals prevent me from going into the head & blowing a very large hole in the plane?
You are right about nothing guaranteeing your safety though. The question that needs to be asked is exactly what are we trying to prevent & what is the best way to do that. The reason the 9/11 guys had success was because we were only trying to stop someone from blowing up a plane or taking it hostage. Competent terrorists are looking for new ways to leverage their skills in the blind spots & voids. We have plenty of those already.
A lot of the security theater being played out today is just political cover so that after the next event elected officials will pretend nobody could have guessed or pin the blame on some functionary.
I, for one, feel much safer now with the TSA in charge, what with their efficient use of resources and deftly-handled public relations.
I think the real solution is cost-free, and still provides safety. There are about 29,000 commercial flights in the USA daily. The answer is COPS.
Hire about 80,000 trained Air Marshals, armed and armored, and put two (or more) of them on every flight. Their average salary will be about $45K per year (Air Marshals starting salary is $40K).
That is a cost of $3.6B per year: But Americans spend about $42B annually on airfare, so this could be paid for with a simple 8.6% security tax on airline tickets. In fact, the TSA annual budget is already $7B: My approach might not require any new taxes at all, but if it does I think it is fair for the passengers to pay for the security with a ticket tax.
I for one would be happy to pay 10% more to stop this charade, and have the certainty of security of armed and trained law enforcement on the plane. I think we should provide the air marshals, and use the armored cabin door and lock the pilot and co-pilot in for the duration of the flight. It would let us return to the days of simple walk-through metal detectors and luggage scans.
As a person that has flown up to eight times in a year, including internationally, under the conditions I have outlined I will take my chances. Nothing they can do will guarantee safety on a frikkin’ plane, just as nothing they can do will guarantee safety on the road, in the mall, in the hospital, in the grade school or in the nursery.
In a way this inordinate focus on airline security actually smacks of self-interest: 9/11 proved to politicians that this was a way terrorists could get TO THEM, by crashing a plane into Congress or the White House or the Pentagon.
You have to be F))^)*^)*{) Kidding me right?
I saw this story yesterday. Reading it again today does not diminish the outrage. This kind of thing is going to continue until the TSA puts an adult in charge.
Home of the brave…yessirree
We should do it the way Israel does, profiling. Watching people in the airport. Having moles chat people up.
We should also have a frequent flyer program, a safe flyer program so people who fly all the time get a fast lane.
None of this makes people happy, it is a really bad show.
sorry I messed up the ““
Here is the problem. If you really want some assurance that there is no bomb aboard you have to put up with this for everyone. By admitting you will give kids a pass you have already given a bad guy an opening he could easily drive a pound of C4 through. Skip granny in her wheel chair and you could go much bigger. If you want less risk of a bomb on board you just have to accept more police-state like control.
Of course, like generals who are always fighting the last war, we are trying to prevent the last attack. Its more costly and less effective but it makes people happy. It is security theater.