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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDear America, I Saw You Naked - And yes, we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent.
On Jan. 4, 2010, when my boss saw my letter to the editor in the New York Times, we had a little chat.
It was rare for the federal security director at Chicago OHare to sit down with her floor-level Transportation Security Administration officersit usually presaged a terminationand so I was nervous as I settled in across the desk from her. She was a woman in her forties with sharp blue eyes that seemed to size you up for placement in a spreadsheet. She held up a copy of the newspaper, open to the letters page. My contribution, under the headline To Stop a Terrorist: No Lack of Ideas, was circled in blue pen.
One week earlier, on Christmas Day 2009, a man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had tried to detonate 80 grams of a highly explosive powder while on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. He had smuggled the bomb aboard the plane in a pouch sewn into his underwear. It was a masterpiece of post-9/11 tragicomedy: Passengers tackled and restrained Abdulmutallab for the remainder of the flight, and he succeeded in burning nothing besides his own genitals.
The TSA saw the near-miss as proof that aviation security could not be ensured without the installation of full-body scanners in every U.S. airport. But the agencys many critics called its decision just another knee-jerk response to an attempted terrorist attack. I agreed, and wrote to the Times saying as much. My boss wasnt happy about it.
The problem we have here is that you identified yourself as a TSA employee, she said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912.html#ixzz2rzbNRkQY
hlthe2b
(102,228 posts)Kudos to him for telling us what most already knew, but needed confirmed..
arikara
(5,562 posts)Are they still using the naked body scanners anywhere? They have one in the airport here, but every time I've been they aren't using it.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)They quietly got rid of those naked scanners which caused so much anger. But far too many Americans are willing to be demeaned and treated like criminals. They PTBs must love those who run out to defend every money making racket they come up and use 'terror' to justify.
I am sure they laugh harder at their supporters than at those who see through them.
reddread
(6,896 posts)"Syria, Algeria, Afghanistan
Iraq, Iran, Yemen
and Cuba,
Lebanon-Libya, Somalia-Sudan
Peoples Republic of North Korea.
People holding passports from the selectee countries were automatically pulled aside for full-body pat-downs and had their luggage examined with a fine-toothed comb. The selectee list was purely political, of course, with diplomacy playing its role as always: There was no Saudi Arabia or Pakistan on a list of states historically known to harbor, aid and abet terrorists."
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)All the authoritarians said "Don't worry, the TSA agents are professionals!" "Nobody's going to jack off to your ugly body!" "The machines don't make pictures that reveal anything." "You've got to sacrifice a little dignity for security." and the all-time favorite "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about."
Well, to all the people who over the years kept making this site look like Republican Underground, I have one thing to say.
I told you so.
I told you the pornoscanners would be abused.
Now this story confirms that the abuse was systemic, and that the TSA agents were snickering at overweight people, ogling women, pointing at women with mastectomies, watching penis sizes and bra sizes, doing about everything, EXCEPT making even one single confirmed catch of an actual terrorist who was set on killing people on airliners.
Damned right I'm going to rub some people's faces in it!