Blogging

[teddywolf]

Last night at a large dinner out I was chatting with a number of people. The lady across the table from me mentioned recently returning from vacation overseas, in Germany. I has started the opening part of some news about cargo not being well-inspected, asking, "You know how the airlines keep losing checked luggage, so people keep bringing carry-ons? You know how we have to get inspected?"

She shuddered. "I had to get inspected on my way back from Germany. The security person grabbed my genitalia."

To sum up what she had to experience, the person grabbed her breasts and her crotch while performing the fairly invasive fully-clothed personal search. When she protested the rough handling she was receiving she was prevented from setting foot on her return flight.
The next day she got a manager at the airline, who went with her and ensured that she wouldn't be treated so roughly. The second time she wasn't. The security people apparently said that this kind of treatment was required for anybody travelling to the USA.

The airline charged her $200 to reschedule her flight but did give her travel vouchers to cover that cost. They mentioned her rough treatment wasn't their fault (well, it actually wasn't) but they had certain restrictions on what they could do.

To top it all off, the airline lost her luggage.

A couple of months ago there was a link from riba_rambles pointing to some imaging technology that would be a fine substitute for a pat-down. The level of detail it shows is a grayscale nude with no color differentiation. Some people have balked at putting in those scanners because they feel they'd be invasive.

So I have a question for the public: which is more invasive, a grayscale medical-quality picture of your nekkid body being looked at by somebody you don't know or having your crotch grabbed in a way you probably won't like by somebody you don't know?

Comments

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

Embrace the power of 'And'. They're BOTH unacceptably invasive, IMO.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that either one of them isn't annoyingly invasive - I was wondering which one is less harmful.

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

I think the only answer to that is 'it depends'.

Personally, I'd refuse to fly if I knew the imaging machines were in place and would be used to scan every passenger as a routine part of security, which is how most of the descriptions of it that I've heard have presented it. I won't refuse to fly because there's a *chance* I'll be pulled aside for a special search, and a *chance* that a security person will grope me inappropriately during that search. I have a chance to follow up on the inappropriate groping, and to have the issue addressed by the company responsible. There would be no such chance if the imagine machines were used as a routine part of security checkpoints. If the imaging machines were used ONLY in cases where the metal detectors had pinged, then I probably wouldn't refuse to fly either, though I'd find the imaging of my nude body more invasive than a *properly conducted* patdown of my clothed body.

All of this is, of course, intensely personal, and based on my own set of foibles about privacy, etc.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Just as a heads up, I haven't heard that everybody in the US gets personhandled that way getting on any old plane. However, the person who was coming back from Germany said quite definitely that everybody getting on the plane heading to the US from Germany *was* touch-searched.

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity, do you have another suggestion to screen passengers who set off the metal detector, or do you think the second layer unnecessary?