Introducing Trauma Search, for Your Flying Pleasure
cross-posted to my fan lj
By now most of you may know that the Transportation Safety Authority has instituted new procedures that pretend to keep Americans safe during air travel. In certain airports around the country they have installed "back scatter screens" which show as clear an image of a person who is being scanned as if that person were naked. If flyers are unwilling to have their naked images shown to anyone in the area (it ain't private, folks), they have the "right" to "Opt Put," which means, be patted down, thoroughly. Ideally, this is done by a person of the opposite sex, but airports have been known to tell people there's a fifteen-minute wait for a female screener. You can request a private pat-down, but be warned: you may be asked to remove your clothing. And this is not the mild sides, arms, legs pat-down of the past. This is a genitals and breast search pat-down. This is a full body handling. And only very recently did the TSA say children under 12 will not be patted down, which won't help this kid, or this kid. They've already been handled intimately by strangers after a lifetime of being told "no bad touches" by their parents.
Others weren't so young. Those with metal implants are looking at a lifetime of this. One airline hostess was actually made to remove her prosthetic breast to show it to screeners. And others are simply forced back into the kind of memory that keeps on giving: survivors of sexual assault. On this Shakesville thread Melissa and her responders explain why being scanned or groped triggers PTSD for someone who has been sexually assaulted. And on this site, a number of survivors have weighed in.
And let's face it, TSA has not proved to be the best at choices in personnel:
According to Peter Bacqué of WSLS 10 News in Roanoke, VA, TSA ordered Richmond airport to give the highest level of security clearance to a convicted felon even after he was cited for falsifying his employment application. What kind of security screening do these people get, and do they face penalties for slamming someone in the balls or shoving their hands inside someone's underwear? More importantly, after an afternoon of reading these articles and more, it seems as if no two screeners have read the same rules, and certainly more than a few of them possess commonsense. Who is instructing these people?
I ran across a sentence that makes my blood run cold. The kindly folks in WashingToon are talking abolishment of the TSA and giving those contracts to private security firms first. Can you say "we take in your violent, your thieving, your rapist masses" Halliburton?
I'm not responding to this mess because with the complaints of Mr. "Don't Touch My Junk" and the $5 a Day Gourmet. A friend of mine, a sexual abuse survivor, asked me to in the hope that we might get the word out to more people and get them to protesting. Will you do that? For the abuse survivors, the autistic and Aspbergers folks? The Israelis don't do anything like this, and yet they're regarded as the best at terrorism control. I wonder what they're doing different? (Oh, everything . . .)
By now most of you may know that the Transportation Safety Authority has instituted new procedures that pretend to keep Americans safe during air travel. In certain airports around the country they have installed "back scatter screens" which show as clear an image of a person who is being scanned as if that person were naked. If flyers are unwilling to have their naked images shown to anyone in the area (it ain't private, folks), they have the "right" to "Opt Put," which means, be patted down, thoroughly. Ideally, this is done by a person of the opposite sex, but airports have been known to tell people there's a fifteen-minute wait for a female screener. You can request a private pat-down, but be warned: you may be asked to remove your clothing. And this is not the mild sides, arms, legs pat-down of the past. This is a genitals and breast search pat-down. This is a full body handling. And only very recently did the TSA say children under 12 will not be patted down, which won't help this kid, or this kid. They've already been handled intimately by strangers after a lifetime of being told "no bad touches" by their parents.
Others weren't so young. Those with metal implants are looking at a lifetime of this. One airline hostess was actually made to remove her prosthetic breast to show it to screeners. And others are simply forced back into the kind of memory that keeps on giving: survivors of sexual assault. On this Shakesville thread Melissa and her responders explain why being scanned or groped triggers PTSD for someone who has been sexually assaulted. And on this site, a number of survivors have weighed in.
And let's face it, TSA has not proved to be the best at choices in personnel:
According to Peter Bacqué of WSLS 10 News in Roanoke, VA, TSA ordered Richmond airport to give the highest level of security clearance to a convicted felon even after he was cited for falsifying his employment application. What kind of security screening do these people get, and do they face penalties for slamming someone in the balls or shoving their hands inside someone's underwear? More importantly, after an afternoon of reading these articles and more, it seems as if no two screeners have read the same rules, and certainly more than a few of them possess commonsense. Who is instructing these people?
I ran across a sentence that makes my blood run cold. The kindly folks in WashingToon are talking abolishment of the TSA and giving those contracts to private security firms first. Can you say "we take in your violent, your thieving, your rapist masses" Halliburton?
I'm not responding to this mess because with the complaints of Mr. "Don't Touch My Junk" and the $5 a Day Gourmet. A friend of mine, a sexual abuse survivor, asked me to in the hope that we might get the word out to more people and get them to protesting. Will you do that? For the abuse survivors, the autistic and Aspbergers folks? The Israelis don't do anything like this, and yet they're regarded as the best at terrorism control. I wonder what they're doing different? (Oh, everything . . .)
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