My first public governmentally sanctioned groping

[thewronghands]

SeaTac has the backscatter machines now. I picked a metal detector line, with the slight cowardice I've felt when doing the same through BWI. There was a TSA guy helping folks load the baggage. He went through his spiel of "no liquids, no gels, no laptops in cases..." at each person. Apparently every other traveler besides me today needed to be

Comments

[shadesong]

It is totally a chilling-effects experience, the instant you say "I'm opting out". Someone in a uniform gets on the radio and calls in to headquarters, audibly informing them and everyone that they have an opt-out.

Yes! My heart pounded like whoa when I said "I'm opting out." And the death glare you get...

[thewronghands]

Yeah. Instantaneous hostility. What the FUCK. No, I do not really want you to feel me up. No, this does not make me a terrorist or a bad person.

[perspicuity]

i'd probably be a jerk and call for a supervisor and say "this one just gave me some lip, please give me their name and number direct me to complaints" :)

and i'll always be repeating the mantra to myself: they're just security agents, they have no police powers, they are supposed to be professional so i will be too, or else...

exercising your rights shouldn't be humiliating.

#

[ostraya]

Wow. I've opted out a couple of times prior to the enhanced pat downs, and while they did basically sigh and act all put-upon, they definitely didn't make a fuss that anyone else would notice. I've been psyching myself for the more intrusive pat-down, and I hadn't even though about the fact that they might make a giant public fuss over the whole thing. How obnoxious. I don't particularly mind inconveniencing the agents, but I'm not happy about the fact that they'll use me to terrify innocent people. Must remember to wear pigtails and look cute and friendly and utterly non-threatening and friendly to try to counteract that. Maybe if I look harmless enough, I can make them look like the bad guys? Time to put my small asian girl skills to the test! ;)

[spider88]

Ugh. I'm sorry.

For whatever reason, I magically was able to avoid the backscatter/pat-down mayhem both flying out of Seattle and out of San Jose.

[thewronghands]

I'm glad you were able to avoid it. I wish everyone could.

[stolen_tea]

They were turned off when I went through, late on a Friday night in December. And they didn't have 'em in Roanoke.

[caladri]

I'm sorry. Go you for writing about it and writing them!

[thewronghands]

Public post, even. Apparently I can be angry enough to want things indexed.

I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't try to raise some hell over this. It's just so obviously fucked up. I don't expect that I'll get a lot of traction, but I'm going to try. Perhaps if enough people complain loudly the powers that be will realize that this is not acceptable. (Or, the airlines will get sick of losing the thousands of dollars in revenue I've been bringing them every year for the last five or so, and will no longer be. Me and everyone like me.)

[bkdelong]

Theatre. All of it theatre too. Ah, security. Don't we all feel more safe if not less free?

[thewronghands]

I know! As a security professional, this is totally lose-lose. They end up making travel so unpleasant that people don't want to do it, they have an immense number of false positives, the airline industry loses a fuckton of money, and it doesn't actually stop a determined attacker. Way to go, guys.

[bkdelong]

People are still the weakest link. Anomaly-based detection & behavioral analysis (careful profiling) and not wrote-based signatures (take off your shoes, get out our laptop, go through the vuln scanner whose latest version is rife with false positives), blacklists (fingernail clippers, certain amount of liquids) are clearly the way to go. Gee, why does this sound way too familiar. I wonder what else we can use lessons learned from (that still aren't being properly applied in the Enterprise) that would also work for air travel security.

[attutle]

This is one of the wondrous things about government. There is no requirement or incentive to perform any cost/benefit analysis or to consider and minimize negative externalities. Ineffective and harmful policies can be implemented immediately, without any need for a pilot phase or proof of concept.

Once a law is in place, the government is required to implement and defend it, and if the program isn't based on a law the government will still defend it because of the political cost of acknowledging a mistake.

[girlvinyl]

Ugh. Eventhough the public outcry has subsided, it is still a HUGE issue and needs to be addressed immediately. They're like our own version of the f'ing stazi. It needs to be handled and soon.

Sorry you had to get groped.

[thewronghands]

Thanks. As much as I travel, I guess I was lucky to make it this long without it... but we shouldn't even have this problem, yeah.

At least Mocek won.