WE'RE THE TSA. MAY WE BANG YOU?
Nov. 24th, 2010 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogI’ve already blogged the whole TSA Intimacy fiasco, and I can’t add much more without repeating myself – in fact, Bruce Schneier probably has the most comprehensive collecion of links on the web in this one post here (to include explanations of why the nude scanning/patdown procedures will only keep you safe from underwear bombers whose underwear bombs don’t even work).
But I do find it grimly amusing that the TSA seems surprised that people would object to being given the choices of (1) being seen nude (albeit virtually), (2) being felt up in a way that most people generally don’t expect on a first date or (3) taking the bus. Or, of course, (4) being killed by terrorists.
It’s been particularly fun watching TSA chief John Pistole deploy both the “this is for yr own safety” meme and the “if you resist, you’ll inconvenience everybody else” meme.
Even better was the TSA doing a pat-down demo in the House to show them it’s not all that bad – and basically embarrassing everyone in the room:
With all the bad publicity the TSA has gotten, it’s hard to imagine them keeping these policies in place for long – or at least until the airlines start filing for Chapter 11 from all the lost business.
Or maybe not. A Washington Post poll claims that 2/3 of Americans support Nudity Scanners, and half support support the enhanced pat-downs. I’m going to assume that the ones who support them are people who rarely or never take planes anywhere, or people who have sufficiently terrified into accepting whatever privacy invasions the govt proposes to keep them safe from Muslims. Or maybe they’re the sort of people who are exempt from screening.
Some are even suggesting you might as well have some fun and dress inappropriately for it (NSFW). I don’t particularly endorse this, although my highly active imagination wonders if maybe the silver lining here is that we’ll all learn to be a lot more comfortable with our bodies in public and with sex in general if enough security people see us naked.
Ha ha. We won’t, of course And it’s not a recommended way to achieve that goal anyway.
Either way, it all comes back to what I said before: the US govt is basically saying, “This is what you have to go through to get on an airplane and you’ll like it.” It’s up to the public to decide if they’re cool with the idea of living in a country that requires that level of intimacy to travel by air, because as things stand, that’s the country they’re living in now.
Getting to know you,
This is dF
But I do find it grimly amusing that the TSA seems surprised that people would object to being given the choices of (1) being seen nude (albeit virtually), (2) being felt up in a way that most people generally don’t expect on a first date or (3) taking the bus. Or, of course, (4) being killed by terrorists.
It’s been particularly fun watching TSA chief John Pistole deploy both the “this is for yr own safety” meme and the “if you resist, you’ll inconvenience everybody else” meme.
Even better was the TSA doing a pat-down demo in the House to show them it’s not all that bad – and basically embarrassing everyone in the room:
“The dumbest part: they did two pat-down demonstrations – male on male, and female on female,” the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer “and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes.”
With all the bad publicity the TSA has gotten, it’s hard to imagine them keeping these policies in place for long – or at least until the airlines start filing for Chapter 11 from all the lost business.
Or maybe not. A Washington Post poll claims that 2/3 of Americans support Nudity Scanners, and half support support the enhanced pat-downs. I’m going to assume that the ones who support them are people who rarely or never take planes anywhere, or people who have sufficiently terrified into accepting whatever privacy invasions the govt proposes to keep them safe from Muslims. Or maybe they’re the sort of people who are exempt from screening.
Some are even suggesting you might as well have some fun and dress inappropriately for it (NSFW). I don’t particularly endorse this, although my highly active imagination wonders if maybe the silver lining here is that we’ll all learn to be a lot more comfortable with our bodies in public and with sex in general if enough security people see us naked.
Ha ha. We won’t, of course And it’s not a recommended way to achieve that goal anyway.
Either way, it all comes back to what I said before: the US govt is basically saying, “This is what you have to go through to get on an airplane and you’ll like it.” It’s up to the public to decide if they’re cool with the idea of living in a country that requires that level of intimacy to travel by air, because as things stand, that’s the country they’re living in now.
Getting to know you,
This is dF
