HunterByrd

An Anecdote concerning Security within the Homeland

Harrassment

The Transportation Safety Authority has an awful responsibility. The TSA must stop hijackings and terrorist bombers. They have their collective self between a rock and a hard place. Everyone knows what the rock is. The hard place is the 99.999% of innocent travellers who fill the planes.

Readers will know I recently left the ‘Lower 48' for holiday in the Yucatan Peninsula. Being a generally unobservant person, I missed out upon confirmation of what we have all heard the past three years concerning airport security. It was right under my nose, within my senses, and I let the moment pass...until today.

The ACLU is concerned that women, more than men, are targeted for pat-downs. If so, that raises questions whether the Transportation Security Administration is discriminating on the basis of gender, said Barry Steinhardt, of the ACLU's New York office. ''What they're doing is subjecting women to very aggressive, intrusive searches,'' he said. ''We're worried that this is, in fact, sexual harassment.''

David Beecroft, federal aviation director for the Nashville International Airport, said the searches were ''absolutely necessary'' and said few people had complained. ''We have 2 million passengers who pass through our airports a day, and only 266 have filed complaints since August.''

My mother (who probably filed the 267th such report) and father were with me and my wife on this trip. Mother is a world traveler, having moved extensively across the globe for the better part of 20 years. She is no stranger to airport security, including the beefed-up, federally-implemented measures within the last three years. She complained of her status before we ever left. "What do you mean?" I asked. "So, they have to pass a wand across your knees," I said, not waiting for her reply. My mother has prosthetic, titanium knees. "They single me out," she said. "They single me out for the treatment."

I first saw security work her over in Nashville International Airport, on our way out of the country. They did single her out. Made her move to a ‘special area’, replete with those painted footprints where you stand. Most people with athletic shoes were excepted from the requirement to remove one’s footgear. Not my 68-year old mother. She had to take them off. Oh well, no big deal.

Upon our return the states in the port of Atlanta, Ga., my mother got it good. Even after she removed her tennis shoes and her loose-knit sweater, after she removed every other loose item on her person, she was subjected to the routine. Only this time, the responsible Federal security ‘expert’ must have taken this grandmother for a major terrorist threat, because that female agent in Atlanta Hartsfield subjected my mother to a full-body pat-down. Legs, mid-section, crotch, buttocks, and breast areas! Hats off to the TSA. So meticulous are they to search out crotch, butt, and boob bombs. Can’t be too careful (only that, since she was first wanded). To be fair, the two Russian airliners recently brought down were at the hands (or boobs) of Chechen women who had attached explovise beneath their undergarments.

Today, weeks later, my mother is traumatized. A veteran of countless long-distance, inter-continental flights, she has told my father they will drive to Albuquerque, NM, this spring rather than fly. She does not want to be felt up again. She is no fragile flower, so I suspect a lot of it may have been to do with the way in which the search was conducted...

If we were all subjected to this treatment, there can be no room to complain. Thoroughness is self-contained, as they say. On the trip, it did not happen once to me, my wife, or my father...the only other people (very few) I witnessed who received this level of security were...profile-types...I saw several other individuals escape scrutiny that I would have checked had I been a TSA authority. Then again, I am no expert. For all I know, grandmothers are, in fact, included on some generic, meticulously researched list of potential terrorists.

In any event, my mother now has ‘issues’ which may require professional help. She is an innocent traveler, far from the profile, who has been repeatedly traumatized by the cloak of authority (she has made an official complaint -- about a dozen are now filed each week).

My mother isn’t alone. As stated, there are loads of anecdotes floating around out there. I recently heard a Sean Hannity diatribe on the subject, which included one airline stewardess grown tired of the routine.

Being felt up by total strangers on a regular basis probably gets worse, not easier. Folks, this has to be thought through. It is human instinct to take the path of least resistance in any given task, and that includes the work of security personnel, but grandmother-searches are a security cop-out.