November 10, 2010 - When I recently wrote about opting out of the TSA's naked body scanners and then being patted down by a TSA agent, that pat down was conducted by the agent using the back of his hand. As of today, that technique is no longer in place. The TSA's new guidelines call for agents to use their "palms and fingers" to "probe" your body for hidden weapons. This means TSA agents will now be feeling up your crotch, palming your breasts and fingering your testicles as part of their increasingly humiliating "X-rated pat down" technique.
This new "palms and fingers" pat down technique (also known as "groping" passengers) was announced by the TSA last week alongside an ambitious new plan to roll out 1,000 new naker body scanners by 2011. Any air traveler who opts out of the naked body scanner, of course, gets groped by a TSA agent using the new "palms and fingers" pat down technique.
The upshot is that the TSA either wants to SEE your naked body or FEEL it with their hands.
This new rule also affects pilots, by the way. Just yesterday, ABC News carried a report about a U.S. pilot who said was so upset by the enhanced pat down technique that he called it sexual molestation and found that afterwards, he could not safely operate the airplane.
So now we have the TSA actually terorizing pilots and turning them into angry, abused victims of sexual molestation who must then fly our airplanes. How's that for TSA safety?
All this is a gross violation of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights, of course. It's also demeaning and (intentionally) humiliating to air travelers. In addition, the use of naked body scanners on children violates child porn laws.
The TSA, through its groping of passengers and the capturing of their naked body images, is guilty of committing numerous felony crimes. If a security guard at a grocery store, for example, groped little children with his fingers and took "naked body scanner" pictures of customers, he would be arrested as a sex crime offender. So why are we letting our own federal government commit sex crimes against us when we'd be thrown in prison for the same lewd behavior?
There are actually registered sex offenders on the books who have done far less than what the TSA is doing to air travelers right now.