Oh, and what I would love to see is a whole mob of people – fat, doughy people, all stripping down to their tighty-whities at the airport. THAT, sir, would be a more effective form of protest. Or publicity stunt. Whatever.

The TSA staff in the airports are tasked with ensuring the safety of passengers. Part of that task is evaluating behaviour which seems unusual. Going to an airport to take pictures of security checkpoints is bound to attract attention – especially when you try to avoid security when they approach you.

I watched your video clip. The guard politely asked you why you were taking pictures of their work area, and you said, “I don’t discuss my personal business with strangers.” If someone ever told me their ‘personal business’ was recording me while I worked, I’d certainly be suspicious! But from your own description, they didn’t arrest or detain you: they asked a couple questions, then let you go.

In other words, they did their job by investigating someone acting shifty.

But if you want to quibble about consent, we’ll have to talk about duress.

Duress or coercion can also be raised in an allegation of rape or sexual assault to negate a defense of consent on the part of the person making the allegation.”

—http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Duress

When anyone wields a disproportionate amount of power over anyone else, they have the ability to compel consent under duress. That’s not free will, that’s consent that has been forced.

Maybe by a knife at your throat

Maybe by the threat of arrest.

For other people there may be little choice about flying.

• Giving up flying might cut you off from your family.

• Or giving up flying might lose you your job.

• If you’ve paid a considerable about of money for your annual vacation you might be unwilling to forfeit it.

• American citizens abroad who are unwilling to undergo such ordeals might be forced to decide if it is worth being assaulted by the TSA to come home.

• Foreign nationals living in the United States may have a similar dilemma.

• Many people have been bullied into it, threatened with the law, or even shamed into it. That too is duress.

• Most people try to co-operate with authority. So when officials tell them to do something they do it, even if they are uncomfortable. People try to do their bit, be a good citizen.

• And you know what? A lot of people just kept doing what they were doing until they suddenly found themselves faced with this. They hadn’t thought about it, but, how bad could it be? So they go along with it.

But when you feel violated afterward, you have been violated.

The rules have been changed without citizen consultation.

When you buy a ticket to fly, do they tell you you are paying to have your human rights stripped away? Who voted for that?

By way of illustration, here are some things a terrorist could theoretically do with photos from security checkpoints:
– Identify which areas are using the new scanners;
– Identify TSA staff and target them or their families;
– Identify which lines have the most passengers and detonate a device in the line.

None of these is particularly likely; but security staff have a responsibility to evaluate even unlikely risks. Whether or not you posed a potential danger was something they had no way to evaluate without approaching you. They approached you, evaluated you, and let you go.

@Laurel L. Russwurm made an excellent point: we have both a right and a responsibility to hold the people in power accountable, and to ensure they don’t abuse their power. Part of that is recognizing when an action *is* a valid use of that power.

http://bringoutthegimp.com/

Oh wait, it’s not that debate. It’s something else… oh yeah, it’s about redefining the term “sexual assault” (Hey, shouldn’t a sexual assault, y’know, be at the very least intentional? Can someone sexually assault someone else accidentally? Looks like in the USA they can!)

Third time’s the charm. Having say over who touches me and who doesn’t is kosher. So is obeying the law. If the law changed, I’ll try to abide by the law (say, if a policeman can pull me over and search me) then if I feel the law representative’s behavior was out of line, I will complain. If the entire law feels wrong to me, I can either vote with my feet (no fly), vote with my ballot (no reps), or grind my teeth and wait for it to blow over (and meanwhile talk my throat sore against it). Breaking the law is usually not an option. Funny thing, breaking it might get me arrested and – you guessed it – strip-searched in the police station. A world of Fail.

Best part: the woman in the background saying “… Can see right through her underwear. It’s indecent!” I just wish someone had followed up with “So is an invasive body search.”

Lost opportunity…

btw- I’ve several vids now of people leaving their cameras on as they go through the xray machine. In each instance, there are little white dots on the black video field when (I presume) the xrays are turned on. Anyone have any insight on what, exactly, we’re seeing there?

fat, doughy people, all stripping down to their tighty-whities at the airport.

Gotta agree with that. Furrygirl happens to be generically attractive in a conventional-American-2010 kind of way, and she also possesses the self-confidence and cheekiness (as it were) to strip down like this in public at an airport security queue. Though she may have been a bit nervous about, I don’t know, tweaking the nose of Authority or whatever, her relative lack of discomfort (which may well have been supported by her fairly justifiable lack of shame about the condition of her body) kinda waters this down a bit. Sure, the goal is to transfer the discomfort onto the TSA agents, but I suspect that may have been accomplished more effectively by someone who is not in possession of a figure that would stereotypically be envied and/or desired. You know: like me.

Then again, rather than playing off my own lack of shame against the general public’s aversion to seeing me naked, I guess it could be that Furrygirl’s desirability might make it that much more uncomfortable for the TSA screeners. After all, they have to feel up every kind of person under the sun, and most airport gropees are reluctant and not all that stereotypically hot. I guess there may be some TSA screeners who would greet Furrygirl’s performance with “this-is-my-lucky-day” enthusiasm, but I imagine it’s possible that most of them would probably be made proportionally more uncomfortable the more desirable they found her.

Well, anyway… I’m glad somebody’s doing it. But I certainly think it’s a testament to the insanity of our culture that a TSA agent, who is tasked with either looking at everyone naked or feeling up their bodies in search of contraband, feels that a woman who is dressed to make his or her job as easy as possible must needs don a jacket in the name of common decency.

I personally would be perfectly content to stroll through the checkpoint bare-assed naked, displaying my explosive-free taint to whomever needs a glimpse, rather than being scanned and/or photographed, or felt up by strangers, in pursuit of the same goal.

Apparently the new scanners at Seatac spent some time offline today, perhaps because of similar pressures?

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/11/21/porno-scanners-idle-at-sea-tac