Media DADT on opposite-sex airport scans?

Media DADT on opposite-sex airport scanning -- the epitome of "unreasonable search -- the biggest unscooped scoop? Poll the public anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpOcEtsElI&feature=player_embedded
This company demo shows a male remote viewer examining both naked men and women and a 4 1/2 foot tall pubescent girl! Two other demos show young females examining naked males. All the better to promote sales in places without room or resources for two scanners -- or who wont go to the bother of separating the sexes? But an underage teen "sexting" another underage teen can get both arrested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKnY8-G26Ww&feature=related
This video shows both female/male and male/female TSA viewing. The remote viewers seem only separated from each other (and who knows who else might be roaming past) by short eye shields. But if they cannot see us directly it's all right. Just don't sneak a strip searcher into a school or a womens' club or it's 10 years.

Don't like scanning/groping, don't fly?:
Constitutionally that is amounts to saying if you don't want your house searched don't buy a house. You may go about your daily business without being strip searched (by the opposite sex?) or private area touched (opposite sex frisk stories pop up -- in this AP story what looks like a TV monitor sits next to the scan monitor) -- even could prevent a 1 in 20 million chance that a terrorist may blow up your flight. Clearly does not fit "administrative search" first-principles which requires low invasiveness and high need. Listen to America's top young constitutional scholar Jeffery Rosen: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112404510.html.

Eighth grade math debunks the need:
According to Dana Milbank in the Washington Post it would cost $50* more per ticket to achieve Israeli level security that could actually catch (and therefore deter) a terrorist. How many are ready to fork over? Must not be a very material threat, then.

Common sense says scanning/groping wont even work:
Current scanning and groping wont stop drug-trafficking: they'll go in to deeper cavities or us fatter mules. A homegrown terrorist who can't figure that out can always buy an overseas round-trip ticket. Meantime, millions of the billion who fly domestic every year are on the highway -- getting killed in highway accidents -- to avoid intimate privacy violation they (and their children) just cannot stomach.

Courthouse (unnamed) video clearly shows men and women strip-scanned by same machine

www.gigisup.net

Courthouse (unnamed -- in Colorado) video surreptitiously taken by a lawyer clearly shows men and women (and presumably would include children) processed through the same full-body scanner. The lawyer also complains to guards that he was groin touched the last time.

Who could possibly trust perfect back and forth switch between male and female images? (Do they use separate male and female scanners at airports -- all of them?

Note: Cook County courthouse reportedly uses full body scanners (Daly control-freak city -- well that's why I came here, to get away from the chaos that was once New York City).
Does Cook use separate male and female scanners.
Does it opposite sex frisk (possible long running practice* at Castle Rock, Co courthouse where this lawyer likely took video).
Does Cook genital touch?
*Now widely distributed AP story: "Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ..." My widely distributed comment:

My first-draft explaining (should be so plain I wont use the word "arguing") that current administrative search precedents are not applicable to naked body scanning which seems to automatically bring with it a much touchier frisk on the same whatever rationale: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-meaningful-precedent-for-tsas-so.html .

Any actual-genuine-real danger of airline bombers (that sexual invasion can do anything about): ask very real TSA "molestee" victims

Any actual-genuine-real danger of airline bombers (that sexual invasion can do anything about): ask very real TSA "molestee" victims. Example: http://www.prisonplanet.com/sanitary-towel-prompts-tsa-to-grope-sexual-assault-victim.html

Will add to the above: ask women who feel like they are being molested by (female) agents "enhanced" frisking them if they are concerned about airliners blowing up. They are not. Terror is a purely theoretical fear concerning only those who are not repulsed by the sneaky-peak scanners or the terrorizing frisks. Some say there is only one terror incident per 20 million airline flights.

Sales approach-wise you can try to make your point with eighth-grade math (e.g., will kill more driving) but the simple image of planes blowing up makes people feel like paratroopers who must be brave about lowering risks when there is no real danger at all -- and the sexual violations wouldn't stop a home-grown with an IQ of 100 anyway. But, sales-wise, putting the trade off in the context of the real fears of women and children and women-children can trump the brave paratrooper willingness thing.

"Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ,,," AP

Quotes from the following AP story on Castle Rock, Co courthouse: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101124/ap_on_re_us/us_courthouse_scanners#mwpphu-post-form

"Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ,,,"

Does anybody notice that Angela -- A FEMALE -- seems by this story to have been patted down closely enough to find the paper backing of a sticker in her pocket by Mike -- A MALE!

"A guard [presumably of the same sex -- though the story does not mention two guards; can they afford two?] in a separate room monitors the gray images with pixelated faces and genital areas ..." -- but a guard of the opposite sex may do the frisking?

No meaningful precedent for TSA's so-called "administrative searches

Quick note on Thanksgiving -- still re-writing this:
A quick check of the net tells me there is no actual "administrative search" precedent for the level of intrusion on sexual privacy in the new TSA policy. Just about all you need can be found here: http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/eamc_01/eamc_01_00050.html.

The so-called precedent for consent or not concerned a bulge in the pocket of person who wanted to leave the airport without any more search (he got 70 months for possession of a couple of ounces of cocaine!) under the old, non-sexual privacy invading methods.

When I was a kid reading comic books, they had a novelty advertisement page that always featured special glasses you could look through womens' clothes with (I don't know if they worked with men :-]). Today Hollywood war movies feature infrared scanners you can see watch figures through walls with. The reality now is a technology that can literally see through your clothing.

Virtual strip search and private part groping require thinking through from scratch how the doctrine of "administrative search" applies -- just as sobriety stops did. Seemingly for opponents examination from first principles puts them in pretty good shape.

The article linked to above quotes CAMARA V. MUNICIPAL COURT:
"First, [area inspections] have a long history of judicial and public acceptance."
"Second, the public interest demands that all dangerous conditions be prevented or abated, yet it is doubtful that any other canvassing technique would achieve acceptable results."
"Finally, because the inspections are neither personal in nature nor aimed at the discovery of evidence of crime, they involve a relatively limited invasion of the urban citizen's privacy."

First, I have been on 150 prison visits where if you had tiny brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames (late '70s) or brass lace eyelets in your shoes you had to take them off and go through the metal detector again. It has always been the norm that nobody but incarcerated prisoners are subject to private area touching -- least of all across the board females and (especially female) children.
Second, essentially no canvasing technique other than the Israelies use to protect their tiny handful of planes can stop a terrorist with any initiative at all. You check shoes they switch to underwear. You check underwear ... if a domestic flight goes down with all this screening the very first thing investigators will look for is the presence of an obese Islamic passenger who could hide a turkey drumstick between their cheeks, wires and switch up nearby orifice, battery in their LCD flashlight. A homegrown terrorist can go to the extra expense of a round trip to Ireland (Canada?, Mexico?).
Third, the inspections could not be more personal in nature nor a less limited intrusion of a person's privacy. Your female children would much rather an unlimited search of their bedroom or entire house than to be touched on what one little girl called (her grandmother's) "special girl parts." That goes for lots of grannies too.

What we are looking at is a potential sea change in our expectations personal privacy. If the TSA can do it, soon everybody else will by setting up scanners to -- and cops on the street (nightclub bouncers too?) may begin to touch special parts only because they want to be as good as TSA (human nature?).

Case closed: you cannot subject a billion Americans a year to what feels like to the most vulnerable like virtual strip search (if confined strictly to airports I could endure that) and 100,000 male and female adults and children to public groping for what amounts to no reason at all -- unless you want to kill many more than one plane load of people every year in traffic accidents involving folks who drove to avoid unbearable loss of privacy (Osama can add the 1,000 extra killed in the three months after 9/11 to his score -- maybe the shoe and underwear bombers can start adding up their score as the stats come in following 20,000,000 violations every week.)

(Am I wrong? Are the figures only 1% opt out but 3 1/2% are enhanced-patted down? If you are willing to do the scan but much fear the grope like me that permanently threatens my greatest need for that kind of privacy -- only a matter of time)
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Will add to the above: ask women who feel like they are being molested by (female) agents "enhanced" frisking them if they are concerned about airliners blowing up. They are not. Terror is a purely theoretical fear concerning only those who are not repulsed by the sneaky-peak scanners or the terrorizing frisks. Some say there is only one terror incident per 20 million airline flights.

Sales approach-wise you can try to make your point with eighth-grade math (e.g., will kill more driving) but the simple image of planes blowing up makes people feel like paratroopers who must be brave about lowering risks when there is no real danger at all -- and the sexual violations wouldn't stop a home-grown with an IQ of 100 anyway. But, sales-wise, putting the trade off in the context of the real fears of women and children and women-children can trump the brave paratrooper willingness thing.

Stripping our most compelling 4th and 14th Amendment rights -- all for nothing

The curtain between government and our most private privacy has been raised from ocean to ocean: 3 million men and women everyday exposed naked to the eye of an unseen stranger (maybe even sneaky peeks in those back rooms) and 100,000 more men and women have their most-privates groped by a stranger in view of strangers (family and friends could feel worse). All for nothing.

Well; not for absolutely nothing: it will make it a bit less likely any home-grown shoe or underwear bomber will take down a domestic flight -- and more likely they will destroy a flight originating in Europe or Africa or Asia or South America (the only attempts so far). Or a home-grown will need a "martyr" big or obese enough to tape plastique comfortably inside their butt-cheeks with whatever little wires and switch hidden from a metal detector in an adjacent cavity; batteries not included, can be carried in a little flashlight. Or buy a round-trip ticket. All for nothing.

If an eccentric millionaire offered $50,000 rewards to all who could cross screening with equivalent size devices he might go broke in a month. Anybody see how the New York Detective smuggled a pistol (what we Bronx kids would have called a "zip gun" in the '50s in Russia in the "Gorky Park" movie. All for nothing.

Personal privacy doesn't worry you personally? Being regularly frisked by police without probable cause might not irk many people. In our worst neighborhoods such frisking of young males could bring an end to gang violence and the worst crime; freeing residents to roam outside their homes again -- to me that would be something worth considering. In the three months after 9/11, 1,000 more Americans died in traffic accidents avoiding air travel. How many "hidden" airline crash equivalents (if we count 200 extra highway deaths as one domestic airliner load) will sacrificing our most fundamental 4th and 14th Amendment rights -- the latter would invoke Roe v. Wade's compelling interest test? -- cost every year. All our privacy gone (police would never think of going so far) -- all for nothing.

Suppose Osama blackmailed us with...

I have a right to be in public anywhere (EVEN AT THE AIRPORT!) without being stripped or intimately groped without probable cause. What are airports some kind of normal-human-emotions-don't-exist zone?

... even if there were the the most compelling of practical reasons ...

There is an extremely practical reason to allow police to randomly frisk any young male (especially) they wish to. This would end all gang violence in the poorest neighborhoods and make Americans who live there feel much less like they are permanent prisoners in their own homes (I fully understand; I'm originally from the Bronx). But the Constitution has some very pointed things to say about it because we don't want to live in a police state.

Imagine if Osama threatened America with an airliner brought down if we did not electronically strip search 3 million men and women every day all over the country and have strangers aggressively grope all the private areas of 100,000 men and WOMEN in public. Would you give in to that threat? Imagine after we gave in to such mass ugliness an airliner went down anyway -- and Obama laughed and said I fooled you; I sent that bomber in from outside the country just like the last two -- foolish Americans! (Or maybe he really found a 300 "martyr" -- have to investigate if there were any obese Islamic passengers on the downed plane.)

My candidate for #1 TSA shock story on the internet: rape victim intimately groped by male agent

Why all the fuss on the internet over a little boy whose father actually took his shirt off for him or over males who were intimately touched inside the clothing or females horrified to be enhance-frisked by female agents ...

... when the numero uno internet shocker should be http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down ...

This happened in Chicago -- second city -- where you would think personnel density would present no shortage of female agents. If this can in Chicago it can happen anywhere -- and from other reports it seems to be considered routine by TSA agents.

Are these stories left behind for lack of video? If so I plead with anti-groping activists to prepare their own videos ranging from at least a person talking about what they read or (probably the most effective) visual recreations of the worst media reports.

Related issue: if male TSA agents feel free to routinely grope females (which should be recognized as a violent felony by the Obama administration from now on -- immediately! -- some journalist ask Obama please) when there are supposedly too few females on hand (pun intended) how much more free do non-TSA, private contractor X-ray viewers -- who we cannot view in return -- feel to view naked images of the opposite sex??

http://wewontfly.com/judy-in-denver-several-agents-stood-in-a-group-laughing-at-us Third paragraph down: “The person viewing you is in another room. You won’t know if it’s a man or woman”?

If these stories don't move to number one concern why should anyone care about anything?

PS. wewontfly.com has 16,483 Facebook fans. Opps; make that 16,495 -- I just took another look. Opps; make that 16,499.

May TSA frisks you to deter others? -- female rape victim intimately frisked by MALE agent in Chicago -- what the Constitution says about it all

May TSA force you -- via $11,000 fine -- to submit to an admittedly no probable cause frisk to deter others from shopping airport checkpoints? May the Chicago police randomly frisk you in the neighborhood to deter others from carrying guns? The latter at least would yield a gigantic benefit – but the Constitution has some pointed things to say about both.

Rape survivor devastated by enhanced pat down by a male TSA agent at a Chicago airport. 30 years ago Chicago women drivers feared being taken to police stations for strip searching (were men watching?) for minor traffic violations. $50,000 settlements put an end to those violations. Every male/female TSA grope victim should be entitled to more.

http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down/

This rape survivor deserves justice – civil or even criminal. While law enforcement across the country hasn’t gotten around to recognizing non-emergency male/female frisking (genital groping probably uniquely in the TSA case) as a violent sexual felony (same sex frisk “only” policy) -- the FBI should at least investigate if there was any (recognizable felony?) collusion at the Chicago airport and every other place this sickness has happened (there are several news reports).

TSA chief John Pistole must be loudly asked if there is an absolute rule against cross sex frisking – as the only way to make sure there is an absolute rule at this stage of general law enforcement misjudgment.

If non-genital groping isn’t allowed (if a tempting thought) to make the most dangerous neighborhoods how can video strip searching (male/female impossible?) and genital groping be justified across the board even if it saves 200 lives a year.

It is actually possible that some half-hearted home-grown terrorist might not try to bring down a plane he would have because not organized enough to stuff his or her bomb where the sun don’t shine – or to recruit a 300 pound accomplice to tape same between the cheeks – or just fly out of country to fly back in (wonder if Al-Qaeda is organized enough to do that). You can argue about the practicality of extreme searching a billion people a year preventing that, but I think the Constitution has some pointed things to say about it.

PS. Passengers who opt out of flying to drive are getting killed at 10X the rate by drunken drivers.

Give your ticket back -- so little probable cause it fails the rational test -- attack of the 300 pound woman

Give your ticket back -- get your rights back. :-)

There is so little probable cause to hold a person for questioning because they refused to be electronically ogled or personally pawed at the airport (the $11,000 thing) that it probably violates the rational test. If you could not hold them without the rule -- because the Fourth Amendment says you could not. For the same reason you cannot make the rule to hold everybody for questioning to catch the one in a million bomber (who will never decide to leave because of privacy concerns -- who is leaving in any case; no imminent danger -- ergo, not even a rational relationship to a valid state objective: Fourteenth Amendment violation).

Which brings us to the partially depersonalized strip search or too private groping (most in public view! -- I've been on 150 prison visits with no aversion whatsoever to the most serious but normal, private parts free, frisking). You could not make such an invasive rule under the same one-in-a-million type risk situation anywhere else in life.

Don't like it, don't fly? Too easy; this is not 1950. Flying is as much a part of everyday 2010 American life (3 million passengers a day -- a billion passengers a year) as anything else. And what does it take to outflank the TSA's Fourth Amendment free 3,000 mile wide Maginot Line: one 300 pound women with enough room between her cheeks to hide a Thanksgiving dinner. :-)

Case closed: I think most people would take the risk level of driving (10X the danger of flying) if all other things could somehow be held equal (convenience, price) over living in the condition of perpetual prison convict humiliation.

Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping

Case closed: people who would rather drive -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping. Question: how many would rather risk driving -- if all other things (e.g., time and expense) could be equal -- to avoid intimate peeking or touching by strangers?

$11,000 fine for opting out of both and leaving the airport without waiting (who knows how long -- you are not missing a plane anymore) to be questioned (not that you have to answer questions :-]): way, way over the probable cause line (if they had probable cause they could hold you rule or no rule); imagine the same law in any other setting. Not like terrorists will not expect to be body searched.

Additionally the fine pressures (I believe the constitutional law phrase is "chills") Fourth Amendment rights to opt out of both experiences if you did not expect to be body searched -- or to be to repulsed by it.

Wonder how many cases -- more like what percentage -- of temporary sexual dysfunction are caused by too personal groping of women especially in public view, even because in view of family or friends?

The attraction of child molestation may be molestation itself

FWIW, it has finally occurred to me (not trained in psychology -- I don't even know if they even know this) that the attraction of molestation is molestation itself; exactly as rape is about power not sex. Always wondered why all these priests were molesting boys when the gay priests and the gay alter boys (one out of ten, believe me -- and that doesn't even count AC/DCs for what ever the latter is worth; the latter mostly not interested, even fear, sex with adults in my observations) are always going to know who each other are.

Michael Jackson didn't need to force himself on anybody. If 3000 boys were going though "Neverland" every year, 150-300 were gay and heavily in the closet. The real problem with gay priests is probably that both they and the gay alter boys are going to be right back in irresistible temptation-land like the seminary,

Got this idea after reading (about half of) Scout's Honor by Patrick Boyle (http://www.amazon.com/Scouts-Honor-Americas-Trusted-Institution/dp/0761500243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290278076&sr=8-1). It appears that the majority of offenses are by failed heterosexuals many of whom have even been married. Why boys instead of girls? My guess, it may be just logistics. Easier to hang around with lots of boys without too many questions. Maybe if they were with girls they would do it to them.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor. NOT!

I went on hundreds of prison visits in New York State in the late '70's (Rikers Island, Elmira, Fishkill, Coxsaki, Camp Monterey and Hudson) and the metal detectors were set so sensitively the brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames would make them go off (take them off and go through again) -- but the frisks never touched anyone's genitals, male or female.
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"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.
You cannot give up your First Amendment rights by buying a ticket -- nor your right to due process; going to jail without trial. You cannot give up your rights not to have the private areas of your body groped. The latter becomes especially egregious when the TSA, according to some stories, presents a male agent to intimately frisk a female flyer on the excuse of no female agent available (one of the first stories on Drudge I believe) for a RANDOM AIRPORT (as in on the ground) check -- not a bomb threat at 35,000 feet.
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I just finished reading about prosecution for leaving the pat-down area without permission: once you enter the pat down area you have to allow it (unless you get "permission" ???). NO RATIONAL RELATIONSHIP TO A VALID STATE INTEREST -- shamelessly violates 14th amendment RATIONAL TEST." You are forced to allow someone to grope your private parts because a terrorist might want to look at the no-tech, empty room (and leave unfrisked?). Even if it were high-tech, pat-down room what difference could being padded-down or not make? Someone at TSA has a serious skull full of mush.

The supposed letter of the law (check out the way law enforcement sees the strict legality of men frisking women as opposed to mere, if almost universal outside TSA stories, policy prohibitions) means that even if only a man is available a woman has to submit.
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Touching private parts could be considered a felony criminal law violation if used as part of random checks before entering a disco. You cannot agree to allow yourself to be assaulted.

When the government is the main -- only -- actor setting policy the Fourth Amendment may be invoked under the same kind of rationale that finds some so-called private contractors (e.g., leasing limo drivers) to be employees because all their job activities are governed by management.
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For the last word on pointless passenger over-focus check out: http://www.bnet.com/blog/travel-detective/why-not-pat-down-the-cargo-that-8217s-the-real-security-threat/101?promo=661&tag=nl.e661
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For the very last word (mine in this case) read: Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping at http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/case-closed-people-who-would-rather.html