The poor guy can barely make it on the plane and into his seat, how on earth is he a threat to ANYONE??? No common sense whatsoever. I am so ashamed of our country. Edited to add - this fellow just flew from Central America to Atlanta, his home - this is the crap he had to go through to leave the airport! Even more insane...
I didn't watch this because I can't stand to see this thing. I'll take the word of those who can still stand it. Well, here it is. America, land of the cowards. Another victory for Osama bin Laden, courtesy of his stand-ins, the TSA. But TSA doesn't act in a vacuum. This is what the American people want. If they didn't want it, Congress would yank the funding.
What better person to use to smuggle drugs? </sarcasm> I'm sure that's what the search was all about.
I wish people would stop consenting to this asinine exit search. If enough people refused, they'd have to work out a solution for getting arriving passengers through the area. ETA: Doober, you're probably right. These things are so goofy they almost must be that way by design.
The titles at the beginning of the video say September 7, 2011, but the time stamp on the video itself says October 3, 2007. Outrageous as the search may be, it isn't clear that this is a recent event.
Is this some idiot airport where the international arrivals have to pass through the domestic secure area on the way OUT of the airport?
It's been done. They will try very hard to badger you into submission, but if you hold your ground, they will escort you all the way out to the lobby. You're actually doing others a favor by doing that, in the the staff available to harass others is reduced while they travel half a mile out with you & then back. The international customs area in ATL is the only place we've had a TSO literally yelling at us (two 50-something Americans) to hurry up -- that was one of the turning points in our "relationship" with TSA.
According to the TSA web site the blue uniforms were introduced in July 2007 so the video could be from October 2007, but I'll defer to Cartoon Peril's greater familiarity with the search technique.
I'm only guessing by what appear to be hands moving around the waistband and the general level of invasiveness. Video not good, jerky and moves away a lot from the passenger. We do have some experts here however ...
It's ATL. Any international arrivals have been screened by the TSA before entering their so-called "sterile area" for as long as I was traveling through there - even if ATL is your destination. Several folks have refused the screening and been escorted out of the airport, but it's the way things are configured there. Sheer stupidity.
At ATL you've had to reclear security since my first international arrival there circa 1994. Of course, it wasn't the TSA circus at that point, but that's how the terminal is designed. FWIW, they are correcting this problem at ATL.