Elderly woman asked to remove adult diaper during TSA search

And unlike that other place, if someone suddenly shows up here with a substantial history elsewhere on the internet, it's ok to dig into it. Understanding what a person's background and motivations are can be far more revealing than what he/she actually says.

 

Quite true, but I would qualify this with a warning to never let it become personal. Avoid any contact or communications outside of this forum.

 

As long as you're happy with it, well and good. Just promise me to quit the moment it ceases to amuse. I hate to see good people unhappy.

 

Very true. Was researching some stuff several years back, woke up one day and had to say no more. It warped my mindset. Scary.

 

I'm an old lady, Elizabeth, who has seen enough in this lifetime to not take anyone very seriously at all.

 

TSA's chief propagandist has replied on the blog:

Lies are in red. Let me know if I missed any.

 

"after a security concern was identified..." A lump on a 95 year old lady's thigh is not a security concern. It's a private matter between her and her doctor.

"While everybody does have to be screened..." Everybody does not have to be screened, particularly when "screened" is a euphemism for abused.

" all protocols for resolving security concerns..." Again we encounter that term "security concerns." The TSA rarely encounters anything that would constitute a security concern a rational person would take seriously. Even their junk-science toys "alarming" hardly rises to the level of a genuine security concern. An anomalous or blurry scan certainly doesn't qualify either. The irradiation scammers have been rejected as worse than useless by the previous organizations that briefly experimented with them.

The TSA's worst lies are their central arguments, the premises their detractors never should have ceded them.

 

Not everyone is screened. That is the biggest TSA lie going. Now if they said all passengers are screened that would be almost true except for armed passengers.

 

I will only add this thought - not everybody is screened.

Thousands of Somali immigrants with known ties to piracy are provided daily, unchecked access to aircraft and airport facilities at MSP with no security check whatsoever. They also do not show a badge of any kind to access the airfields, it only must be displayed. Since the women are all covered, as is their custom, it is not possible to positively determine their identity in this fashion.

Tens of thousands of DL flight attendants, pilots and rampers are driven, by the busload, directly onto the tarmac and deposited at 2 different places at ATL. The only restriction to their access is the flash of a badge to an underpaid contract bus driver employed by neither Delta Air Lines, nor the ATL airport authority.

Thousands of airline and airport employees access DFW's interconnected terminals through an unmanned door and are never screened, nor their identities verified. Ever.

And so TSA insists that, therefore, a dying 95-year-old woman must be stripped of her dignity, a 6-year-old girl must be molested, and that it is appropriate to fondle anyone's genitals, at any time, and it is appropriate because consent was obtained by stepping onto airport property.

Excuse me while I

 

TSA has no idea what "respectful" or "sensitive" means; they just parrot this phrase as if it excuses anything they are caught doing. I honestly believe that if TSA goons actually raped someone in a private room, and then beat them to a bloody pulp, BB would claim that they had raped and beaten the passenger "in a respectful and sensitive manner."

 

According to the daughter, as quoted by CNN, below is the list of "various options to proceed through the checkpoint":

Meaning, TSA A.S.S. were aware that the only available replacement Depends was in checked luggage. I know most of them are dumber than rocks, but surely they understand that such a feat is not possible and that an individual could fly that day. Oh, wait, they don't care. Riiight, with dignity and respect my (expletive deleted).

 

I'm under the distinct impression that once the TSOs removed this lady to the private area, they realized they were stuck with no more options. Either hold her forever, or throw her and her daughter out of the airport because they could no longer move forward with a search they were begning to realize was erroneous in the first place. At which point they allowed the daughter to come up with a "solution". Unfortuantely, the "solution" IS against the SOP as far as I understand it. My understanding is that you can't leave the secured area until you are clear. They knew she was clear either shortly before or just after they took her to the private screening area. They should have stopped the theater there but didn't. At that point, they just turned into a bumbling mess of dolts who had NO clue what the next step should be. That's bad training and bad process.

They broke procedure by allowing her to go to the bathroom! Presumably she disposed of the offending garment there. If the undergarment was SO suspicious warranting a private search, she should NEVER have been allowed to leave the area. I mean, this is STUPIDITY at it's finest.

TSO's are drones, who don't think beyond the moment. They don't question broken processes, obviously, and they dont' ask for guidance. They really aren't qualified to be carrying out these kinds of sensitive searches. I think if I'd been the daughter... about the time it became obvious that there was no way to be "cleared" once in the private room; I probably would have demanded local law enforcement be called to impose some direction on the TSOs. They clearly lacked any idea of what to do once they had painted themselves into a corner.

A good security process always leaves you an out if you're the gatekeeper. There's ALWAYS a next step and you can't paint yourself into a corner. But only security professional know this. And this leads me to think that no one in the TSA has any real security process modeling experience. They're flying by the seat of their pants. Which is a recipe for disaster--and we're seeing the results of this over and over again.

If she were my mother, I might have spent an extra evening with her at home before coming back the next day to resume the flight. And knowing me, it would be with a nice big media escort.

 

By the way,

apparently the thugs removed the victim's pants in that private room. They had already partially disrobed their victim when they began fussing about the diaper. The details of this incident are actually worse than the sparse facts the general public has been given.

You're dead right about this. No way was that "proper procedure!"

 

Thanks, Elizabeth Conley, for the added piece of info.

In response, I submitted my first comment to Bloviating Bob's Glorious Blog:

 

What happened here really is that the TSOs painted themselves into a corner because the process forced them to do just that. They were following a broken process. And when the break appeared, they were STUCK. Can't go left or right. They MUST follow the process, but that is impossible.

If the process weren't so horribly horribly broken, and they were allowed to use their judgement, she would have NEVER been taken to a level that required her to remove her undergarment.

Don't get me wrong, I think any TSO willing to comply with the job description as it stands today has negated any sense of morals they may have had. BUT on the other hand, their agency has put them in a position to fail as well.

I want secure airports. There's no question there. I was annoyed by airport and security process prior to Oct 2010, however, it WORKED and the process wasn't as broken as it is now. The previous process needed some refining, but someone over at the TSA fell asleep at the wheel and now this bus is crashing and the victim count rises every day.

 

I could never post on PV.

I'd likely get put on a list or arrested.

 

No Mikemey, I've posted a lot over there. They've only retaliated against me at the airport Checkpoint Charlie. Called for TSORon being investigated and fired. Called for Blogdag Bob to be fired. Needless to say those posts never saw the light of day. Post, the worse they can do is to not publish it.

 

It's like watching a couple of 4-year-olds pretend to bake something in a toy kitchen. At that age, they can mimic a lot of the actions and concepts (mixing things in bowls, putting it in the oven) but they don't understand the finer points that make the real process work (accurate measurements, timing) or what to do when something out of the ordinary happens (substituting one ingredient for another). Nor do they have to take responsibility for the results. 4-yr-olds aren't responsible for feeding anyone, and they'll grow up in time and learn to do it properly.

Too much of the TSA looks like it's playing at security. "Oooh, look at me, I've got an x-ray machine and some blue gloves. The man at the training session showed me how to use all this stuff. I'm ready!" They're just mimicking what they've seen, rather than (being able to) think through the process logically.

4-yr-olds are cute. TSA, not so much.

 

Wasting your time asking for Ronnie to be investigated - he's not a screener, of that I am quite certain.

 

That's a very elegant analogy!

As much as I have a TON of contempt for TSOs, there's this logical, nagging part of me that knows their employer is failing them BIG TIME. But even that being said, they need to take a stand with their employers and push back when the system isn't working. I have no doubt that their "bosses" will not listen or hear them though. They will merely be told to shut up or get out. And as any good security analyst knows, a disaffected workforce who is tasked with guarding the front door, is a security risk in and of itself. Perhaps the biggest risk.