I went through the body scan at San Diego and was told I had to go through a second private room screening. I was dressed for business and am middle aged, so no red flags. They wanted to know what else I had in my pants, which I had nothing. They they asked if I had any surgery and I said yes, a vasectomy. The scar tissue was seen and that was an issue???? In the meantime, I saw a number of Muslim men and Women who passed through without any further scrutiny. The 2 guys were total smart asses about holding me until did their debrief. I even asked that if it would help matters I would drop my shorts for them to look. I was actually threatened to have the police called if I did. So it is OK for TSA to harass you, do excessive searches, threaten to make you miss your flight and want to touch my junk. I am getting more and more tired of the entire process. How about doing terrorist profiling. Not racial, but terrorist profiling like Israel does. If you have passports from certain countries, have traveled to and from them and are even slightly suspected of being a problem, they will check you out very thoroughly. The 95 yr old woman in the wheel chair that they required to check her adult diaper was way over the edge.
I don't understand why it's ok for them to paw at your private parts, but not ok for your private parts to be seen. I think pawing is a lot more intimate than simply seeing. Hysterical threats to call the police if you show them what they insist on pawing hardly make sense.
The LEOs have generally proven complicit in this abuse and I have never heard of an instance where the LEO aided the passenger. It has severely diminished my opinion of police.
This might actually be the most significant part of the post. If the Nude-O-Scopes can show vasectomy scars, they are showing a lot more detail than TSA has claimed they are capable of showing.
I've also never heard of such an instance. And given how much the police despise the TSA, it's surprising. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
Where to begin. The actual resolution is less that o.5 mm or 0.02 inches (numbers are approx). Worked through the numbers once and was rather surprised. With signal processing the resolution might even be better than that. With resolution like that is a blurry picture. No doubt they are working on improving it. No one listened then to the numbers because numbers are boring. Pick up your .5mm mechanical pencil. Grab a piece of paper and make a dot with your pencil. That is around the size of the smallest thing they can image on your body.
So now we know the travelers who have lint in their pockets: they are the ones being pulled over for pat downs after going through the strip search machines. Is the ATR going to be able to recognize something that small? Has TSA determined that it's now a waste of time to search for items that small?
Nothing is too small for TSA's hyper-vigilance. Those eagle eyes never miss a thing. You get 5 grains of sand per passenger an put them in a corner pretty soon you have a sand dune. In reality something that small is probably around 1 pixel in size and if the software is any good it would ignore it.
In my view, the TSA "security" screening has nothing to do with our safety, but is another step by the government to bring down the emotional defenses of the public. By "submitting" to their demeaning policies, the public is proving they will tolerate even more indignities and losses of personal freedoms. I fully expect to see security checks at state borders in the future! America has lost the sweet freedom I grew up with.
Of course they are!! We are lied to daily. Why should we ever believe them over something that outrages many of us? Naturally they will lie to minimize any negative reactions to the real truth.
