More Abuse

          If you grumble about the full body scanner and that naked picture it takes of you or you complain when the agent “touches your junk,” the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has decreed you might be a danger to the flying public.  The agency now uses “behavioral indicators” including expressions of “contempt against airport passenger procedures to identify potentially “high risk” passengers.  Well, if all it takes is contempt for their procedures, put me at the top of the list.

          When the students run out on the last day of school at the rural Alaskan village where I teach, I’ll climb aboard a bush plane with absolutely no security and fly to Bethel.  In this region, where roads do not exist, I’ve flown dozens of bush planes to many towns and villages.  There are no metal detectors or pat downs.  If the plane is going in your direction, get on.  However, when I reach Bethel, on my way home, I become a suspect.  A burly agent with a badge orders me to, “Take off your shoes.  Have your travel documents ready.  One at a time through the metal detector.”  Thankfully, they have not installed the full body scanners at Bethel, but they are more than willing to grope and feel your groin.  Now the TSA seems to be saying, “We don’t want to hear any grumbling about it either.”

         Just a few days ago, it was reported that a TSA agent frisked a six-year-old girl and now comes news that they frisked an eight-year-old boy from Oregon.  These tactics do not make us safer.  In the blogpost titled A Better Solution, I wrote about how we could improve security while at the same time end the molesting of nuns and children. 

          As I completed the research on this blogpost I came upon the report of TSA Officer Bob Seashols posting hardcore porn on a Christian ministry website.  When asked why he blitzed the site with obscene text and graphically profane images, he replied, “Because I can. . . . I can say whatever the h— I want to say about anyone I want to. . . .”

          Bob Seashols attitude speaks volumes about the mentality at the TSA.  They don’t want to listen they just want to do whatever they decide is needed.  Declare that the procedure is necessary for security and civil rights fall by the wayside.  Proclaim that pat-downs are necessary and children can be groped and abused.  These abuses of authority are not required for safety.  There are better ways to provide for aircraft security that will not abuse children or the rights of citizens, but the TSA is not interested and our elected leaders are too cowardly to implement them.   

Update on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 8:58PM by Kyle Pratt

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