Airports brace for 'don't touch my junk' protests

[teko]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40351426/ns/travel/


11/24/10


National Opt-Out Day organizers hope to highlight controversial security screenings



CHICAGO — Travelers dismayed by airport body scans are headed to airports Wednesday with the makings of any good protest: handmade fliers, eye-catching placards, slogan-bearing T-shirts — and Scottish kilts.

The loosely organized effort dubbed National Opt-Out Day hopes to highlight what some call unnecessarily intrusive security screenings. Others fear it will merely snarl pre-Thanksgiving airline operations on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Robert Shofkom wasn't worried about delayed flights, maybe just strong breezes.

The 43-year-old from Georgetown, Texas, said he planned for weeks to wear a traditional kilt — sans skivvies — to display his outrage over body scanners and aggressive pat-downs while catching his Wednesday flight out of Austin.

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.."If you give them an inch, they won't just take in inch. Pretty soon you're getting scanned to get into a football game," the IT specialist said.

Shofkom was momentarily disheartened when his wife informed him Tuesday that the Austin airport doesn't yet have body scans. But he decided to wear the kilt anyway, a show of solidarity with fellow protesters who have taken to Facebook and other websites to tout plans for similarly revealing travel outfits.

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One Internet-based protest group called We Won't Fly said hundreds of activists would go to 27 U.S. airports Wednesday to pass out fliers with messages such as "You have the right to say, 'No radiation strip search! No groping of genitals!' Say, 'I opt out.'"

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."If 99 percent of people normally agree to go through scanners, we hope that falls to 95 percent," said one organizer, George Donnelly, 39. "That would make it a success."

If enough people opt for a pat-down rather than a body scan, security-line delays could quickly cascade .

More than 40 million people plan to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA, with just more than 1.6 million flying — a 3.5 percent increase from last year. Body scans for passengers chosen at random take as little as 10 seconds. New pat-down procedures, which involve a security worker touching travelers' crotch and chest areas, can take 4 minutes or longer.

Several travel companies, including Travelocity, planned on-site monitoring at airports Wednesday to try to gauge where and why delays happen. But with a vicious storm already hindering travel in Western states Tuesday , determining if weather or protests are behind delays across the vastly interconnected air travel system could be nearly impossible.

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The full-body scanners show a traveler's physical contours on a computer in a private room removed from security checkpoints. But critics say they amount to virtual strip searches.

About 70 airports nationwide have more than 400 of the refrigerator-sized imaging units. Only around 20 percent of travelers are asked to go through them, but passengers cannot opt out of both the scan and the pat-down once they have been randomly selected for the enhanced searches.

Officials say the procedures are necessary to ward off terror attacks like the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas by a Nigerian man who stashed explosives in his underwear.

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..At a main checkpoint in Atlanta on Tuesday, a few passengers asked to step through a scanner grimaced before walking through, while others seemed more bemused than annoyed.

Out of 30 asked to go through during a half-hour period, just two opted for a pat-down. Karen Keebler, 54, of Atlanta said later that her main concern was the low-level radiation. The TSA says the scans emit very low radiation and aren't a health risk.

"I just think the less radiation the better, and if you can opt out, you need to," she said.

Wednesday's planned protest is the brainchild of Brian Sodergren of Ashburn, Va., who constructed a one-page website early this month urging people to decline scans.

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But public interest boomed after an Oceanside, Calif., man named John Tyner resisted a scan and groin check at the San Diego airport with the words, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested." A cell-phone video of the incident went viral.

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.Tyner's words became famous, spawning online sales of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even underwear emblazoned with the words, "Don't Touch My Junk!" A Google search of the phrase on Tuesday registered 4.2 million hits.

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..Saturday Night Live jumped on the controversy last weekend, with a minute-long skit equating the TSA with a dating service. The skit ends: "It's our business to touch yours."

Pilots and flight attendants also had complained about being subject to body scans and pat-downs. On Friday, the TSA said pilots could avoid the more intense screening. TSA spokesman Nick Kimball confirmed the same for flight attendants Tuesday.

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Both groups must show photo ID and go through metal detectors. If that sets off an alarm, they may still get a pat-down in some cases, he said.

Publicity or no, some predicted little fallout from the planned protest, with many travelers at airports Tuesday deriding the effort and saying the stepped-up security measures made them feel safer.

"I think there ought to be two flights," said Jacksonville, Fla., native Marc Gruber, 53, who was at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport. "One for people who want to be scanned and one for people who don't want to be scanned."

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

[ILADVOCATE]

  Yes some people had legitimate concerns but they were in favor of setting up appropriate accommodations not boycotting it. I did think some of what was posted here was important because some of the issues noted as stated were the exception not the rule and against the protocol of what is expected to be done and against guidelines should they occur.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131559483
  For Disabled, Airport Security Hassles Are Old Hat
by The Associated Press
A woman is helped in a wheelchair at a security screening area at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
Associated Press A woman is helped in a wheelchair at a security screening area at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
A man is helped as he walks with a cane near a security screening area at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
  Associated Press A man is helped as he walks with a cane near a security screening area at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
  Marguerite Aswad, of Naples, Fla., is pushed in a wheelchair by her grandson Stephen Aswad, of Westfield, N.J., after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J., for a holiday visit. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
  Associated Press Marguerite Aswad, of Naples, Fla., is pushed in a wheelchair by her grandson Stephen Aswad, of Westfield, N.J., after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010, in Newark, N.J., for a holiday visit. Advocates for the disabled say that the new intensive and obtrusive security measures at U.S. airports that are new for most passengers, are old hat for travelers with disabilities.
     NEWARK, N.J. November 24, 2010, 09:28 am ET For air passengers already fed up with being hauled off to the side of the security line for a pat-down or facing aggressive questions about bulky clothing or odd items in their luggage, advocates for the disabled have this to say: Welcome to our lives.
For the disabled and infirmed — many forced to go through security lines in wheelchairs with ample hiding places for contraband, wearing prosthetic limbs that could harbor drugs or explosives or lugging oxygen tanks that could really contain god-knows-what — the added discomfort and inconvenience that many travelers are now experiencing is something they've put up with for years.
  "I didn't mind; it wasn't really that bad," 89-year-old Marquerite Aswad, who uses a wheelchair, said Tuesday after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport from Fort Myers, Fla. "It was a lady, and she didn't pat me very hard. She said, 'You look like a nice woman; I don't think you're hiding anything in there.'"
Since the new airport security screening procedures began Nov. 1, stories of travelers with disabilities or medical conditions being humiliated, perhaps inadvertently, by Transportation Security Administration agents have made headlines: A bladder cancer survivor from Michigan had to board a plane covered in urine after agents tore open his urostomy bag during a pat-down; a flight attendant and breast cancer survivor in North Carolina said she was ordered to expose her prosthetic breast to two TSA staffers.
  Those highly publicized confrontations appear to be the exception, not the rule, and advocates say they have not heard an outcry from disabled travelers, who are used to intrusions and in fact view the new rules as a teachable moment.
  "It's just one more thing for people with disabilities to think about when they're flying," said Phyllis Guinivan, of Wilmington, Del., whose 23-year-old son has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. "The fact that the general public is going through this may help their understanding of the kind of barriers people with disabilities face every day."
  Matthew Albuquerque, vice president of Next Step Orthotics and Prosthetics in Manchester, N.H., said that even before the new procedures, his clients often were asked to remove their prosthetic limbs. He said he has been hearing horror stories since security was increased after the Sept. 11 attacks.
  "Imagine being forced to take part of your body off and put it off to the side and hop over to someone to be patted down. This has been going on in the disabled community for a long time," he said. "If there's anything I'm glad about with the current circumstances, it's that it's brought a light and awareness to the whole thing."
  Screeners have never been told to ask travelers to remove a prosthesis, but travelers sometimes do so without being asked because they think it's required, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said.
  According to security protocols listed on its website, the TSA assures travelers its agents "will not ask nor require you to remove your prosthetic device, cast, or support brace."
  Screeners are authorized to conduct an explosive trace sampling on a prosthesis that could require a traveler to lift or raise some clothing; travelers can request a private screening, which TSA says it "will make every effort" to have conducted by two agents of the same sex as the traveler.
  For Guinivan, speaking to The Associated Press by phone from her home, the concern for her son goes beyond pat-downs to worries that his wheelchair may get damaged or that he will have trouble sitting between two passengers on the flight.
  "Our expectation when we fly is to be prepared for uncomfortable situations," she said. "A lot of the things people with disabilities experience every day, the general public is now having to deal with."
  Eric Lipp, a partial paraplegic, said he had no problems when he recently took four flights over two days, though he definitely noticed the pat-down he received was more aggressive.
  Lipp, executive director of the Open Doors Organization, a Chicago-based nonprofit group that focuses on accessibility in travel and tourism, said that TSA agents should get more training in how to treat people with disabilities in a respectful manner, but that he does not object to the new policies.
"It might be a little more intrusive now," Lipp said, "but it's expected."
Associated Press writer Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

[teko]

LOL, Brice! Too Funny!

I look at it this way. I can get scanned or patted down, No matter to me! I would much rather do that then have my private parts blown to kingdom come and scattered all over gods green acre. Small price to pay and is a sign of the times we live in. I would hope that further procedures are implemented at some point but for now, pat me down, scan me, just dont let me get blown up! I am such an infrequent flier that this is a no brainer for me personally. And if you want to opt out, go for it, but get another line going for those of us who got somewhere to be.

[brice1967]

Here's another waste of time and energy.  Why cant we get this many people involved about more serious issues?  I've decided to take my own personal stand against the scanning and "enhanced pat-downs".

When they start the pat down, I am going to moan in ecstacy and girate slightly and purr, "ooohhhh yeah, thats nice...right there baby..." then when they are done, tip the guy a $1.00.  (I bet I can arrested or beat up.... but I bet I do it)