

Want to Know Why The TSA Needs to “Touch Your Junk?” Sorry, That’s Classified - tsaoutourpants
http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/want-to-know-why-the-tsa-needs-to-touch-your-junk-sorry-thats-classified/

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dmix
Is it me or has there been a big increase in the amount of things that are
"secret" from public eyes?

I understand things like intelligence about locations of military personnel
being sensitive. But policies for domestic security agencies, I don't get it.
Why?

There always seems to be a strong correlation between immoral acts and
secrecy. I'm curious if questionable morality is a greater influence these
days for the application of state secret laws than actual security.

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tsaoutourpants
The reason why, as far as the TSA goes, is that the data for the efficacy of
their systems is abysmal. Rep. John Mica was quoted as saying, "The failure
rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock
your socks off."

In other words, if the public (and most of Congress -- Mica only knows because
he's on the right committee) knew that the TSA misses somewhere in the range
of 25% - 75%, depending on the test, of threat items brought through by covert
inspectors, it would be obvious (well, more obvious than it already is) that
this huge expenditure is an utter waste.

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trippy_biscuits
I will not fly as long as they can look at or touch my genitals. Why do flyers
tolerate such an invasion? I'd like to travel but I refuse to put myself or my
family through this kind of treatment. Are there private flight services that
allow me to skirt the TSA gestapo? Can they get me from the middle of the USA
to Hawaii and Japan and back again without any invasions of privacy?

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ozi
Sure, if you're willing to pay for it. For intercontinental flights you'd need
to charter something like a Gulfstream IV which runs about $6,000 per flight
hour.

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Glyptodon
My guess is that they're too embarrassed to just say "we think a terrorist
might sew a grenade inside his scrotum."

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btilly
My guess is that some administrator somewhere thought that this would force
compliance with the scanning machines.

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Osiris
That's what happened to me. When they first came out I always looked for a
line without the scanner, or when I wasn't able to, I'd opt-out of the
scanner. At least, that was until I got one of the new intrusive pat downs. I
know go through the scanner because I'd rather someone _look_ at my naked than
_touch_ me.

My wife recently had a walking cast on and wasn't able to go through the
scanner so they gave her a pat down. She told me it felt humiliating.

Why do we let out government touch our private parts without probably cause?
It's insanity.

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daniel_reetz
In all honesty, I prefer the pat-down. Better to be a brief and unpleasant
memory in the mind of some TSA agent than to be a permanent body scan stored
in a database somewhere.

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vinautomatic
Maybe ask that guy in New Mexico...

