Reason No. 10,393 Not to Fly the Airlines-- Getting Groped by the TSA

You will now be groped by the TSA. This is not a joke, folks.

Airline passengers nationwide will be subjected to new aggressive and controversial body searches likened to “foreplay” pat-downs under the expansion of a program tested at Logan International Airport.

Beginning [last] Friday, the Transportation Security Administration will start using the new front-of-the-hand, slide-down screening technique for passengers at all 450 of the nation’s commercial airports.

So you can either get a whole-body X-ray by the TSA or you can get groped by one of their goons and, if you are really unlucky, you will get both.

The last time I flew commercial, it was on two flights that were a commuter hop to a larger airport and then on a transcontinental flight. There was a blonde woman on both flights. She was, as some would say, easy on the eyes. She had long hair and she was wearing a black leather skirt suit. The TSA clowns "randomly selected" her for extra screening at the gate for both flights (I overheard one of them tell her that) and each time, the screener was male.

She was screened three times and all three came up dry. It was pretty clear then, and it is clearer now, that the TSA's job is purely theatrical.

Meanwhile, the pilots and the flight attendants are not at all happy about having to undergo trial by X-ray several times a duty day, and I cannot blame them for that. The TSA says those scanners are safe, but really, does anybody trust for a picosecond anything that the TSA says? It's already come out that the assurance of the TSA that the scanners don't store the images is a lie.

The part about screening the pilots is especially inane. In the cockpit of airliners is a crash ax which, if my recollection is correct, has on its head one really pointy end and one very sharp end. So the TSA makes sure that the pilots don't have a little bitty knife, they feel all happy of their screening the pilots, and then the pilots get to sit in a itty bitty room with the modern equivalent of a war axe. And that doesn't even get into the point that a determined pilot could just crash the airplane and kill all aboard if that was his goal.

Of course, if you go look at the TSA's pitiful excuse for a blog, it is all "security is good" and similar self-serving rationalizations. And don't forget, the TSA want to have their own armed SWAT teams.

And now, apparently, the TSA is showing up at bus terminals and railroad stations in order to bring their brand of security theater to surface travelers (to prevent somebody from hijacking a train with a boxcutter and driving it into the Chrysler Building, I guess.)

This is how I feel: If you want me to fly commercial to some location, you had better pay me a significant amount of money. Otherwise, if I can't drive there, I'm not going.

(H/T)