Posted on 04/24/2012 6:28:42 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
Of all the many complaints about airport security and the TSA, one of the most common is that they make little distinction between plausible security threats and passengers unlikely to be doing anything wrong.
And a recent incident in Wichita, Kansas has reinforced that argument, as a four-year-old girl was apparently subjected to a humiliating ordeal after she hugged her grandmother while she was waiting in line.
The girl was accused of having a gun and declared a 'high security threat', while agents threatened to shut down the whole airport if she could not be calmed down.
When asked about the overbearing treatment the girl received, a TSA spokesman did not apologise and insisted that correct procedures had been followed.
Four-year-old Isabella's horrific experience in Wichita earlier this month was recounted on Facebook by her furious mother Michelle Brademeyer.
The family was in Kansas for a wedding, and was travelling home to Montana with Ms Brademeyer's mother.
Ms Brademeyer and her two children had passed through security when the grandmother was detained after triggering an alarm on the scanners.
Isabella then, according to her mother, 'excitedly ran over to give her a hug, as children often do. They made very brief contact, no longer than a few seconds.'
The young girl was immediately detained by security agents, who apparently shouted at her that she would have to be frisked too, and refused to let her mother explain what has happening.
Ms Brademeyer wrote: 'It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Actually it is a right. Your rights and liberties are expansive. The government's powers few and enumerated. I suggest that we shut down the TSA and stop being such a nation of pu*sies.
Some airports are privately owned businesses.
But, how many hi-jackings have we had in the past 10 years?
Before 9/11, how many hi-jackings of planes did we (the U.S.) have in the previous 10 years?
The answer is: one. A Fedex Plane was hijacked in 1994 by a disgruntled employee as it took off in Memphis.
The time before that was in 1978 when a teenage girl hijacked a plane leaving out of Kansas City.
So in the 16 years between 1978 and 1994, we had no TSA and no hijackings.
All too often when caught doing something irrational or plain stupid, TSA falls back on "following procedures" without us citizens ever know what those procedures are.
Having seen too many “affirmative action positions” filled with uneducated and uncouth persons who know very little about security, I conclude that TSA is a quazi-reparations operation with only secondary emphasis on preventing terrorism.
If we do not find a better way, this will only worsen.
I live in a country where a Federal security apparatus, run by Napolitano/Pistole, 'Peter Principled' incompetents, believes 4 year old girls are a threat to national security.
I wasn't born in this country. I was born in the United States of America. Unfortunately, that country is long gone.
You are pathetic. You make me sick. I am sorry I share a country with your kind.
The key thing to remember is that any part of the US within the land and coastal border, every airport, and the vicinity of every government building is currently a de facto police state.
The TSA VIPR program will shortly expand the police state to encompass rail and bus stations and major highways.
In a police state, the citizen must obey police authority or face the consequences like this little girl did. It is all to keep you safe, citizen.
Oh yeah, by the way, they are rolling this stuff out onto roads, buses, trains and everywhere else.
????? WTF You consider this normal? Just SOP? You consider it normal to be patted down for wearing underwear? Oy vey.
The war is over...they can go home now. Their job is done.
As long as my tax dollars pay for the upkeep and construction of airports etc, I will NOT take a bus or drive...and I will NOT be happy with their gropes and arbitrary rules.
Enough is e-dam-nuff. We are AMERICANS...that USED to mean something.
Wow Hodar, are you sure you are posting at the right place? Nice to know that the TSA can count on sheep like you to grease the skids for their patently illegal activities. Then again, maybe you like to have your johnson fondled.
Ah, weeelll, ah, up to the point where the hijacker didn't mind going down with the aircraft, that is.
I suppose that when they are running roadblocks you'll say that as long as you stay at home in your bedroom, your 4th amendment rights are still intact.
The level of support of the ever expandnig police state on this furum has always bothered me.
They will panic if someone carries a butter knife through security but then, once inside the “secure” area, the passenger goes to TGIF and orders a steak and gets a REAL knife and with a little switch can carry it on-board.
Even better. . .if in First Class they GIVE you a steel knife and steel fork when serving your meal.
So much for vigilant TSA keeping us safe.
Oh, and who can forget the dozens of TSA dolt's that are child predators and thief's.
Look, I fly over 150K a year and most of it is international. No one in the WORLD is as incompetent as TSA. No. One.
TSA is NOTHING MORE than security kabuki theater for the ignorant and the sheep of society. . .you know, the ones that think “Oh, boy, look at this. . .we are sooooooo safe because TSA is groping a 4-yr old and an 89-yr old Swedish grandmother using a walker." And, TSA gropes and puts through extra “security” wounded veterans with prosthetics that set the alarm off. Yeah!! I am so happy to see a wounded hero getting groped and given the evil-eye by some criminal TSA goon that can't get hired to hand out towels at a San Fransisco bathhouse.
Best thing is, TSA hires are given a once-over background check when hired. . .and that background check is no more than what someone working at 7-11 gets.
Makes me feel oh so safe.
Fact.
Clear liquids can't be seen by the scanners.
That is why they tell you to take it out of your bag and put in the container.
So, honest people (again) do the honest thing and the criminal terrorist will ignore and get away with anything and everything.
I have.
Many times.
TSA is the most incompetent of the bunch. . .and I include Egypt in that comparison.
The rest of the world PROFILES, and until we do too (young muslime males), then we are doing nothing to stop the threat.
TSA, as it appears, attracts the lowest form of government dolt there ever was. . .ALL are ignorant and ALL are inflated with a petty sense of POWER (you will respect my authority!”).
I don't respect them. No one else does.
Intelligence agencies around the world laugh at them—and this includes our allies as well as China and Russia.
“Yet, people don’t mind that at all.”
You make an assumption that everyone doesn’t mind the searches at all. I think more likely that they do care but feel they don’t have any choice in the matter. And choice is the very foundation of freedom and liberty, the basic tenants of America.
You have lost a sense of what this country is all about. Just because you’re willing to give up your freedoms to fly doesn’t mean everyone agrees with that approach. I haven’t flown, by CHOICE, since Homeland Security instituted this massive invasion of peoples’ privacies. Besides, the terrorists are looking to other means to attack us now. Just as our president leads from behind, so does his agency, the TSA, instituting more and more invasive procedures all the time. And they staff it with people who have no business performing in a security capacity.
It is a sad day in America when we have to accept these overbearing intrusions to our freedoms and accept them as okay. It is a slippery slope that will result in many other areas of our lives to be restricted. Little by little, like the frog boiling in the water, one day we will wake up and find we aren’t free anymore.
At what point Hoder will it be too much “security” for you? And for you to admit that it is finally too much?
You hit it exactly, with this statement. I wonder - this is just speculation - if the TSA is the lightning rod, and the real enforcement goes on behind the scenes. For instance, I was in Heathrow (OK, not the US, but still germaine to the topic) and I watched Brit security pick out three middle eastern-looking gentlemen, and quietly escort them out a nearby side door.
Had I not been standing right next to them, and watching and listening, there's no way I'd have known anything happened. So, I think that all of the obtrusive security is little more than a smokescreen for the real work.
I've never had a problem with TSA; the few times that I've flown in the past 10 or so years they've been professional. However, I specifically avoid flying as much as possible because of them, and further incursions (Highway stops? I've heard about these on FR!) are a horrific abuse of power.
Thanks for the advice, comrade.
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