[eXpat]

Read on
TSA Seeks Ban On International Packages Over 1lb.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'V')ia Doug Garrett comes word that the TSA requested that international carriers ban airmail packages headed to the U.S. which weigh over one pound. Garrett links to this report in the Japan Times:

Japan Post Services Co. said it will stop accepting airmail packages bound for the United States weighing 453 grams (1 pound) or more starting Wednesday because airlines will stop such delivery at the request of U.S. aviation authorities as part of antiterrorism measures.

The postal services arm of Japan Post Holdings Co. handles 16 million letters and packages by air and sea to the U.S. annually, and "15 percent of that will be affected," a Japan Post spokesman said. That means about 200,000 packages a month will be affected.

The company said it will accept packages from senders that use a service enabling them to pay after delivery instead of beforehand, a service designated for regular customers, even if a package weighs 453 grams or more. The company will notify the public of any changes in the situation, the spokesman said.

The Transportation Security Administration of the U.S. has informed air carriers of the 453-gram rule, and carriers notified Japan Post Services, the spokesman said. The rule applies not only to packages from Japan but from other countries.

According to the report, Fedex, UPS and DHL do not plan to comply, yet. James Fallows at The Atlantic has other links as well.

[eXpat]

Airport staff 'exposed woman's breasts, laughed'
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') WOMAN is suing over an incident where airport staff allegedly pulled down her top and joked about her breasts in public view.

The 23-year-old traveller, from Amarillo, US, is suing the US Government for the emotional distressed she says the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents caused.

The woman says she was singled out for "extended search procedures" while preparing to board a plane to Amarillo in May 2008.

“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,” the lawsuit said.
“As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated.”

The lawsuit claims that other employees laughed and made jokes about the incident "for an extended period of time".

The distraught woman left the screening area to be consoled but when she re-entered the boarding area employees allegedly started joking about the matter.

"One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that 'he would just have to watch the video,'" the suit said.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.
Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”

[mattduke]

Congressgoons are exempt from the TSA security "adult theatre".

http://www.americablog.com/2010/11/boeh ... m-tsa.html

[mattduke]

Don't Touch My Junk, the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEMRSp7vaY

[mattduke]

The fine people at the TSA would like to extend a special holiday message to all would-be travelers: $11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/sf ... 4032.story

[Keith_McClary]

Security guru Bruce Schneier

has an extensive blog post:
TSA Backscatter X-ray Backlash

[mattduke]

"My First Cavity Search" seen at a TSA checkpoint.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', '[')img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3584/3304306634_0a9e51503c_b.jpg[/img]
"My First Cavity Search" seen at a TSA checkpoint.

[mattduke]

SNL Imagines TSA Agents as Sex Workers

http://tv.gawker.com/5695349/snl-imagin ... ex-workers

Pretty funny.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his time the defendant, Sam Wolanyk says he was asked to pass through the 3-D x-ray machine. When Wolanyk refused, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel told him he would have to be patted down before he could pass through and board his airplane.

Wolanyk said he knew what was coming and took off his pants and shirt, leaving him in Calvin Klein bike undergarments.

“It was obvious that my underwear left nothing to the imagination,” he explained. “But that wasn’t enough for the TSA supervisor who was called to the scene and asked me to put my clothes on so I could be properly patted down.”

[Serial_Worrier]

Once again I ask the uncomfortable questions:

- what do we do when the first anal bomber goes off?
- how do we protect buses, trains, malls, anywhere there is a large gathering of people?

Israel has been dealing with this for 60 years, let's see what they do.

[Keith_McClary]

Juan Cole has a PO angle:
Looking for PETN, Scanning Grandma at the Airport, and the Future of Air Travel
(If link is still broken, http://www.juancole.com Nov. 12 blog)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut if al-Qaeda and its sympathizers could manage to blow up only a few airliners with PETN, they could have a significant negative effect on the economy and could very possibly drive some American airlines into bankruptcy.
...
Since the Bush administration hyped the ‘war on terror’ trope half to death, many in the American public no longer want to hear about this danger.
...
it would only take a few small teams making a concerted effort at bombing airliners, to spook travelers and consumers. With the US at risk of a double dip recession, this moment might appeal to al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda wannabes to strike.
...
And, you have to wonder whether air travel was not anyway a bubble. It depends on inexpensive fuel, which probably won’t be with us for long. It has a very big carbon imprint, which may soon be illegal. And it is vulnerable to low-tech chemical sabotage. Our generation perhaps, and the next one almost certainly, will have the unprecedented experience of having their world become larger and less accessible, after two centuries during which it shrank and seemed conquerable.

[eXpat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '
')- what do we do when the first anal bomber goes off?

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?

That's the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8.

She says she was heading to Charlotte, N.C., for work that Sunday night - she's a business support manager for a large bank - and was selected for a more in-depth search after she passed through the metal detectors at Gate B around 5:15 p.m.

A female Transportation Security Administration officer wanded her and patted her down, she says. Then she was walked over to where other TSA officers were searching her bags.

"Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, 'Hey, I've always been curious about these. Do they work?'

"I was just so taken aback, I said, 'Yeah.' "

What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.

That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said.

"I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl's or Wal-Mart," she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.

She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, "Razor blades." She wondered, "Wouldn't that have shown up on the metal detector?"

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.

Her thought: "Oh, my God, this is none of his business."

Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

"It's an indication you've embezzled these checks," she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn't before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."

At this point she told the officers that she had a good explanation for the checks, but questioned whether she had to tell them.

"The police officer said if you don't tell me, you can tell the D.A."

[mattduke]

Does Tom Tomorrow read peakoil.com TSA threads?

[mattduke]

http://mytsahorrorstory.com

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') TSA employee is accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman in his Hogansville home.

[Sixstrings]

Funny article, TSA workers strike back:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]'We hate obese passengers and people with personal hygiene issues:' Now 'abused' TSA staff vent their anger at patdown searches
...
'It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh,' one told the BoardingArea blog.
'Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332307/Now-abused-TSA-staff-vent-anger-security-patdown-searches.html

[mattduke]

The gropers are going to be everywhere soon. What, you thought they would stay in the airports?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4G-0g9PRrE