
In horrific detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches - HoppedUpMenace
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-customs-officers-invasive-body-searches-20180819-story.html
======
glangdale
Grotesque. Something I noticed several years ago (with the second Iraq War)
was the mainstreaming of behavior that previous seemed to stay hidden in the
prison system among prison guards and the worst level of corrupt cops. If you
were surprised by Abu Gharaib then you clearly weren't paying attention to
exactly the same sort of thing happening in prisons in the South.

We seem to be progressively empowering more and more fearless bullies in all
walks of life; even mall cops and campus cops now act like they are cleaning
up a riot in a Supermax.

~~~
jancsika
> If you were surprised by Abu Gharaib then you clearly weren't paying
> attention to exactly the same sort of thing happening in prisons in the
> South.

Prison guards in the South in the early 2000s were making the equivalent of
photographic "trading cards" glorifying their torture, rape, and humiliation
of inmates[1]? I'll admit I've never read anything about that.

Can you give some links to stories that covered this at the time?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse#Prisoner_abuse)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You seem to think that glangdale is trying to play down Abu Ghraib. I think
they're acknowledging the horror there while also trying to draw attention to
other atrocities.

~~~
jancsika
Again-- what are some links to investigative reports of these atrocities that
were happening in prisons of the South around the early 2000s (or 1990s) in
the U.S. which are "exactly the same sort of thing" as Abu Graib?

~~~
Kim_Bruning
Here's a memorandum opinion somewhere in the middle.
[https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/FSupp2/...](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/FSupp2/37/855/2415783/)

If (like me) you're mostly interested in substantiation of the claim, the
summary of the situation seems useful already. There are also plenty of
references and keywords to be found in this document.

For instance, many news reports and court documents seem to refer back to a
quote from section XI-A; searching for "culture of sadistic and malicious
violence" yielded a large number of relevant hits.

Apparently this has been a well known issue, and all 3 branches have been
working on improvement.

~~~
jancsika
Thanks, that is helpful and I'll have a look.

Even so, I still don't understand the phrase "mainstreaming of behavior" and
the connection to Abu Graib.

If I take that phrase seriously, I would imagine it means some process similar
the militarization of the U.S. police force after the Iraq war. There,
dehumanizing types of "occupation" tactics came from a place hidden to most
Americans (Iraq) to American towns and cities themselves. Combined with the
anti-terrorism federal grant money, there is a clear cause and effect that
I've seen reported in various mainstream investigative reports over the past
decade. (I don't have footnotes atm but happy to provide them if anyone really
hasn't heard about this connection.)

So in my example, you have systems, tactics, defense contractors, and in some
cases the soldiers themselves coming back to militarize the U.S. police force.
So something hidden-- troop behavior abroad-- went mainstream-- local and
regional police in U.S.

What's the meaning of "mainstreaming of behavior" in the GP's example? How did
guard's prisoner abuse in the U.S. South turn into broader atrocities like Abu
Graib?

I'm not saying there's not a connection there, and I'd certainly like to learn
about it if it exists.

But if I seem snide, it's because I don't think there is any good reason an
educated American citizen should have any foreknowledge of the connection the
GP seems to be making between Abu Graib and prisoner abuse in the U.S. South.
Don't tell people they weren't "paying attention" when you can cite high
quality investigative journalism. And if there's no high quality investigative
journalism, don't make the remark.

~~~
Kim_Bruning
I realize not everyone gets the same google results back, so this is not
deterministic, but the first most naive search I could come up with based on
the information available to both of us was:

culture of sadistic and malicious violence abu graib

and my first hit was
[https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0520/p02s01-usju.html](https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0520/p02s01-usju.html)
.

Can you tell me what your first hit was? Where are you having trouble?

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> In 2000, the Government Accountability Office found that two years earlier,
black American women were nine times more likely than white counterparts to be
X-rayed by customs officers after airport frisking, although they were less
than half as likely to be found with contraband compared with white women also
X-rayed.

Which I guess, tells us two things:

    
    
      a) Law enforcement agents never learn
      b) Smugglers do learn

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Yes, but you're missing the bigger point.

Law enforcement will abuse the most vulnerable.

------
dudul
Don't we read the same stories about CBP and TSA every 2 or 3 weeks? Does
anybody know if this happens so frequently in other democratic countries?

I can't imagine that a story like that would surface in Finland, Spain or
Canada without shocking the entire population, who would immediately demand
that the problem be addressed.

Assuming I'm correct, what is so different about the US that we can't seem to
be able to fix this?

~~~
Gustomaximus
> what is so different about the US that we can't seem to be able to fix this?

While this is massively oversimplified in something that has many variables,
as an outsider, I see a significant variable as a preoccupation with money in
the US. We all love money no doubt, but US seems to have turned it into a
quasi religion.

This behaviour would much less likely happen to rich people because the person
doing it doesnt want to loose their job and get sued (so money). And poor
people struggle to get justice because they cant afford it, money again.

Further I think the bad actors in this space behave this way because money is
so important e.g I was only following orders is classic thinking of people
that want to keep jobs over their morals.

My other view is that the world is being increasingly run by what I call 'one
step thinkers'. They are people that can be smart but tend to see the world
around them in singular cause/effect only. In this articles case all they can
see is their job to stop drug transport.. Meanwhile if you step back and
consider you have to shove your fingers up a bunch of innocent womens vaginas
against their will, so essentially rape women, to find the occasional drug
mule, you'd probably reconsider how important it is to catch that drug mule in
this method.

~~~
wmeredith
Critical thinking is what your "one step thinkers" are missing. It's an
academic tangent to the grotesque topic at hand, but I think there's a dearth
of critical thinking in modern society because all our brains are being DDOS'd
with smartphones, social media, 24 hour news, etc...

~~~
kungtotte
Critical thinking was never common. Smartphones might exacerbate the issues
but the core problem exists independent of smartphones and social media.

We don't have a culture of teaching and promoting critical thinking, and I
don't think we've ever had that.

------
walrus01
I see a number of people conflating the TSA and CBP/ICE. Just so we're clear:
TSA is a makework security theater program of a bunch of $15/hour people
standing around doing not very much. TSA is not a "real" federal law
enforcement agency. CBP/ICE, on the other hand, will definitely fuck you up if
you anger them while crossing the border. CBP has access to a whole bunch of
federal databases and ways to profile and track people that TSA doesn't. 4th
amendment rights pretty much don't exist at the border.

------
dsfyu404ed
My tinfoil hat theory is that the people up top know if they allow stuff like
this to happen just frequently enough that the people who care about civil
liberties are well aware of it and the general public isn't that that will
keep the civil liberties crowd from standing up for their rights and getting
the general public to do the same but not so frequently that politicians get
interested in cleaning them up. It's like the ATF, they just keep the
terribleness at a low simmer and nobody cares.

------
LeoNatan25
Apparently, Israel is part of the EU and so, I cannot access this moronic
website.

~~~
GiuseppaAcciaio
Well, they _do_ compete in Eurovision, I guess that's kinda the same thing?

------
likeclockwork
I'd rather have more drugs in the country than people being invaded and
subjected to these sorts of indignities out of hand.

------
chuckgreenman
It seems like once a month we get a report about the TSA or Homeland Security
falling down on the job. Is there a school for TSA or DHS? Can it be
overhauled? It seems like an external government agency needs to be brought in
to evaluate pretty much every agent they have on payroll and classify them
into "OK", "Retrain", and "Dismiss" groups.

The problem is their might be too many in the "Dismiss" group for it to work
without sacrificing screening capacity and efficacy.

------
captain_perl
The news article only got half of the story.

The other half is that when they don't get an arrest, they break into your
phone or car looking for evidence since they have the contents of your pockets
or purse. And sometimes planting it.

------
mLuby
Wonder if TSA/CBP has to submit to one of these searches themselves before
they're allowed to perform one? Kind of like with Tasers or tear gas.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Kind of like with Tasers

Well that doesn't exactly stop the cops from abusing them. It's lot different
when it's someone on your side, maybe someone you know, doing it because they
have to and you can be basically assured they won't go out of their way to
harm you or be sadistic. It's like the mythbusters water torture episode where
Adam just sits there because without all the situational stuff it's not really
that bad.

People who are actually on the receiving end of people abusing their power
have no such luxury.

------
coss
Jesus, four fingers!?

------
AnnoyingSwede
Yet another article not available in countries subject to GDPR, would be great
to headline [US ONLY] for media not prepared to serve content to EU, much like
the paywalled mentions.

------
g5095
Why can't we call this what it is, govt sanctioned rape of minors.

------
dotancohen
This is the whole article for me:

    
    
        Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.
    

Thank you GRPR for preventing this website from invading my privacy! I prefer
the polite notice to intrusion. To those users in the target locale, beware
this website's practices.

~~~
blub
The article can be summarised as "don't visit the US".

According to a plaintiff, they did a cavity search on three women with the
same glove. They performed searches on minors, menstruating women and old
women.

In one case they forcibly took someone to a hospital where they gave her IV
drugs, undressed her and examined her.

~~~
dotancohen
Cavity search? Was this a medical professional who performed the search?

It seems like either:

1\. There does not exist a medical professional on site, so they cannot
perform cavity searches, OR

2\. There is a medical professional on site, so it would be expensive to have
him there and _not_ perform constant cavity searches, OR

3\. An untrained agent is performing cavity searches.

Does this person know how to deal with diseases, aberrations, birth defects,
etc? Cavity search is very invasive.

~~~
freeone3000
It was (3), as is the norm in the US.

------
patrickg_zill
Perhaps this sounds snarky but as a not-buff roughly middle-aged male, I have
never had to deal with this....

I do think that there are far better ways to do screening. I haven't been
subject to such searches while overseas, that I can recall.

Which clearly puts it in the category of security theater vs. actual security.

