That’s what people are expressing when they call these TSA agents perverts. It’s not normal or correct to grope strangers, or to look at naked children.

not sure what the deal is in USA, but honestly i would have no issue with the officers looking at naked children as part of the job. That is, as long as they do not get a boner doing so.

Sometimes i wonder if not we have been so underexposed that we no longer know when something is done non-sexually. At least let us assume that unless expressly told, there is nothing overtly sexual going on. Right now it seems that much of the problems with rape and such is that one is supposed to invite sexual activity without saying so to ones desired partner. As such, we end up creating a whole lot of confusion about the signals being real or not.

So i guess one could borrow a term from the TI world, specifically related to firewall configuration, “default deny”. Assume something is denied, unless it is specifically allowed.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional

Being a true union involves more than just looking after your own members. It also includes the concept of solidarity – supporting other workers in their struggle as well as fighting against oppression in general. Police unions all over the world have been used as strike breakers in the most brutal sense. I’ll be happy to be corrected if someone can provide me an example of where a police union is regarded as being part of the wider union movement.

what will they do when some terrorist doesn’t wait to get on the airplane?

Fuck those guys. I am pissed enough ass it is how much of my tax money is going to pay for the jobs of these assholes. The thought of shelling out another tax payer dime for this worthless security theater makes me sick. Wasting billions and billions of dollars on security theater against absurdly small threats is stupid. We don’t need to compound stupid.

If you are an American, you are going to die of something boring. Your heart is going to give out because of the crap you eat or cancer is going to kill because you lived too damn long. The most exciting way you are going to die is maybe in a car or bike accident. Fucking terrorist are not going to kill you. Get this through your thick skulls. TERRORIST WILL NOT KILL YOU. YOU WILL DIE A BORING, COMMON, AND MUNDANE DEATH. STOP WASTING MONEY ON STUPID SHIT THAT ISN’T GOING TO KILL YOU!

So no. Screw these guys. No unions, shitty pay, and less training. It isn’t like these jerks are doing anything useful anyways other than pissing away tax payer money to defend against one of the most absurdly rare ways to die. Investing in lightening rods would be more productive than the radioactive porno scanners and hiring jerks to do a thorough crotch grope. The only good reason to have these jerk unionized is maybe because they might go on strike and we could have the double bonus of not paying them and not having them come to work.

Really, Boing Boing?

Just as Obama and Bush are not Hitler, the guy who wasn’t skilled enough, or recieved such a poor education that he couldn’t become an accountant, who isn’t physically disposed to do construction, found a job which, in the beginning at least, seemed to a perfectly reasonable position out of the weather with at least a coating of respectability. It might not be the best job, but hey, it was providing a roof over a families’ heads and food in the fridge.

Now, suddenly, he’s been asked to do something he finds offensive. But odds are, he’s not a lawyer, he’s not a constitutional scholar, he’s had no real law enforcement training. He’s been taught to do a procedure. Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. If someone interrupts you, get the supervisor.

Given this economy, asking them all to walk off the job is smug, entitled, and horrifically classist. Especially given that roughly half of the congress that created the agency made it EXPLICITLY ILLEGAL for these workers to argue with management with any sort of collective voice. Those demanding they quit are asking each and every individual to take a stand for YOUR rights/comfort/convenience while simultaneously depriving them of any formal system that creates a collective buffer that would make such an action possible without risking their own economic devastation.

Once again, I’ll state: Americans are demanding skilled job performance from people being compensated at unskilled labor salaries, and then telling those same people they have no right to demand the training required to do the job.

We get the service we pay for.

So – you have a problem with government workers getting paid decent wages (because it comes out of your taxes) but have no problem with paying for private corporations charging what they like so they can line the wallets of their executives ? Why ? Are the corporates more accountable ? Do they behave better ?

You’d be better off complaining that your tax dollars are going to corporations which give nothing back, but no, it’s easier to pick on a minimum wage earner who’s been rendered powerless to respond to their employer. Go on – why don’t you go out and spit on a McDonalds employee while you’re at it.

I keep hearing, “Don’t fly if you aren’t willing to submit to the ‘security’ measures.” So to these poor, put-upon TSA agents, I say, “Quit if you find your job reprehensible.”

Oh, you need a paycheck to pay your bills and you wish it wasn’t necessary to do the pat downs to get one? Yeah, I want to fly without being photographed naked or groped. Neither one of us is getting what we want, are we?

You name a disgusting, society/planet/dignity destroying job, and somebody is doing it to feed their kids. I fail to see how this is an argument for anything.

If I’d been running IE on Windows I’d be owned now… damn.

Israel and Las Vegas have the best security in the world – those are the models we need to use … and they are both using profiling. Most people think of racial profiling and let out a liberal cry – that’s not the case, we are talking behavior profiling. It can and will work in the US if security is truly our goal, however, the overall goal is, like Nazi Germany, to totally erode our rights and the eventual toppling of our government and way of life. Do not be deceived, it’s been grass roots for year.

The most dangerous part of an airport is the security checkpoint. That’s where a terrorist would blow himself up and take out hundreds of bottlenecked passengers, resulting in the shutting down of airports all across the country. Terrorists don’t need to get on board planes. There are plenty of malls, sports stadiums, movie theaters, trains, opera houses, cruise ships…

I’m not sure if I’d rather have a stranger who groped me be disgusted or aroused, but either one is pretty distressing.

And… yeah, I can’t feel too much sympathy, even in this economy. People who need to fly for work are being told not to if they don’t like the new policies – that they can just change their jobs.

I have a tiny amount of sympathy for underpaid, undertrained people without a collective voice, but put against the fact that they’re intimately fondling rape survivors and children… well. It’s kind of losing.

Nuremberg Defense

Yes, unemployment is high, and you can’t snag a job immediately upon leaving your current one. Is this to imply that I would be offered any amount of understanding if I started holding people up at gunpoint to pay my bills?

If the choice is between sexually assaulting people and paying my rent, I’m just going to have to go with the homeless shelter, thanks.

If you want to be angry at someone, why not WRITE A LETTER to the people in your democratically-elected government who are enabling the TSA to implement these policies

Because your letter goes right into the trash can. Unless you have enough money to influence your representative, you don’t have a voice.

Right. Sorry, kids, Christmas is going to be little meager this year. Daddy doesn’t like what he has to do at work anymore. No unemployment compensation because he quit. If he doesn’t find another job right away we’ll find a way to get by. Maybe we’ll eat cheaper food or maybe we’ll sell the house and find a nice apartment to rent.

You must not be American.

Here in the USA, you don’t quit because you don’t like groping people, you just stop groping people. Then you get fired, then you sue, then you get a settlement and your status changed to “laid off” so you can get unemployment benefits. If you have a buddy with web skills, you also set up a paypal donations page for satisfying your primitive desert religion’s yearly potlatch.

Seriously, are you advocating wage slavery here? It sure sounds like it. You’re saying you think morality has a price, and that price is written on a check every payday. Americans don’t like that sort of idea, or at least Milgram’s ethical 35% don’t like it.

And by the way, I personally have two kids, and I have quit two jobs for moral reasons in the past. We’re also going to have a rather anemic solstice celebration this year, because my kid ran afoul of a school’s “zero tolerance” policy so I had to spend all the holiday money on lawyers. Cry me a goddamn river, Mitch.

These are the same people telling us that flying is a privilege. Well, so is having a job. So is sleeping indoors. On the other hand not committing sexual assault, not conducting unreasonable and warrantless searches and not violating your fellow Americans’ rights is a DUTY. I don’t mind one bit that their following of illegal orders makes them uncomfortable. It should.

Be a real freedom fighter – talk trash to the working class people who screen you!

http://www.tsa.gov/join/benefits/career_benefits.shtm

Now consider that someone like me pays 12.5% FICA, doesn’t get weeks of vacation/sick leave/paid holidays, has no employer retirement plan and is paying $6K annually for insurance. That’s 50% added value.

Who do you think is filling up the seats on the airplanes? The Howells? TSA employees are middle class Americans, just like the people whose crotches they’re poking.

Shouldn’t people be making more of an effort to treat them like human beings instead of being verbally abusive to them for doing their jobs?