Because Blogger is seemingly always on the blink these days and hasn't allowed me to update the Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses since January 2015, I'm starting a Page 2 of that list, in the hopes that this will work. So this is a continuation, picking up from where I had to leave off in January 2015. (Check out Page 1 at the link.) As with the original list, sorry for any spacing/font problems in this doc:
We've only been saying it for years. The bigger threat at airports, inasmuch as there is one, comes from the employees, not the passengers. Employees at all levels have unfettered access to airports and airplanes. They roam freely behind the scenes, from the so-called "sterile" area, beloved of TSA bureaucrats, to the planes themselves. Mechanics, baggage handlers, restaurant workers, service employees, you name it -- while we're standing in line and getting harassed, bullied, stripped, and groped, everyone else is getting a pass . . . .
I may never fly again and I am serious thank you TSA. I was TSA prechecked but my hands got wanded and supposedly something showed up. My carryons were totally dumped out including my wallet I was taken to a room for full pat down..breast, groin they reached inside my pants...degrading, humiliating and frightening..I am a 63 year old woman with high blood pressure they are lucky I didn't stroke out! As I tried o repack my carryons and tuck in my shirt I heard the agents state that I was the fifth false positive that morning and they knew the wand was defective. Not going back to RSA Fort Meyers!
Samuel Bryant, 40, lives just outside Baltimore and worked -- until now -- at BWI -- Baltimore-Washington International -- Airport. He was arrested on charges of sexual abuse of a minor, second-degree assault, and a fourth-degree sex offense. From the Baltimore Sun:
Bryant is accused of inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl on three occasions at his Brooklyn Park home on Jan. 5. The girl told a sibling about the alleged abuse on Feb. 4,and the sibling told their mother, according to charging documents.
He had been working for the TSA since 2004 . . . .
Everyone's been sending me the article from First Look/The Intercept about the latest "confidential" TSA document. Though I'm a huge supporter of Glenn Greenwald and his journalistic endeavors -- and have written so here -- and am glad for any light that is shed on the TSA's myriad abuses, I have to say this latest article is a bit on the day-late-dollar-short side . . . .
From a thread started at Reddit by someone who is just now discovering that the TSA is abusive. Duh. Sorry, patience is admittedly not one of my virtues, but I really can't take it anymore -- not only the surprise exhibited by people who seem to have been living under a rock for the past, oh, six years, but worse, those who deny, deny, deny what's right in front of their faces. Read the whole Reddit thread to see what I'm talking about . . . .
Violated At The Airport by TSA Thug Sharonda Juana Walker (not sure on spelling of “Sharonda”)
By Amy Alkon April 8, 2015
I’m calling on everyone to name the name of the TSA thug who violates your body and right to probable cause (as a reason for search). There’s not an ounce of probable cause to search me at the airport — as I was today at LAX. To violate my body. To touch my breasts. To grope my hair. To have the blue latex-gloved hand of Sharonda Juana Walker feel inside my turtleneck.
Who do I complain to? My son and I put my purse and our carry ons through the scanner. The people at SFO told me to wait for a wheelchair check. We waited approximately 30 minutes before I was taken through. I stopped three people that worked there as they were coming through the area I was parked at. 1st guy said "I just had to wait". The second guy said, "This is not my area." The third guy said, "Just wait". When I asked about my purse and carry-ons that were on the other side of the security check, I was told "it should be alright." I said should was not good enough and I wanted to have someone get my stuff or let me through the check point ~ the guy walked away. Thankfully my mother was at the other end to retrieve our stuff, but the guy I talked to did not know this. When someone came to take me through, she told my son to leave; she was very rude. He did not know where to go and I stopped her. I asked if he was coming with me or if he needed to go back through the line. She kept pushing me until I became upset and called for my son. She only stopped when I got emotional and loudly expressed concern for my son. My mother hearing me came over asking what was going on and what had taken so long. The lady agent told my mother not to touch me; she then told my mother to get away from me. My mother then asked what was going on and was told that she needed get back and not touch me. There was no explanation given as to what was going on. The agent wiped by hands with something that slightly burned, asked me to move forward and wiped the back of my wheelchair. My mother said that this is no way to treat someone, and the agent said, "I already warned you to stay back."
My mother had asked more than one person what was taking so long and was told "to go find an officer." There was no way for her to carry all our belongings to do so.
I was in a car accident a few months ago and am temporarily in a wheelchair. I rely on someone to push my chair. This is abuse to treat people like this...I am sure I am not the first to experience this.
Any direction would be appreciated.
Yet another report of TSA incompetence, Carraway re-assigned
In another repetitive story about the TSA’s failings, a “confidential” DHS report shows what many previous DHS and GAO reports have already shown, have been showing for years: the TSA misses prohibited items all the time. As a matter of course. From the Chicago Tribune:
ABC News first reported Monday that undercover agents were able to smuggle prohibited items, such as mock explosives or weapons, through TSA checkpoints in 67 out of 70 attempts. ABC cited anonymous officials who had been briefed on the inspector general’s report.
This story is nothing new. We’ve publicized the earlier DHS and GAO reports many times. This latest report is noteworthy merely for the percentage — 67 out of 70 — which is slightly higher than what the Red Teams have been finding all along. More important than the farce of airport security, however, is another familiar story: knives, razor blades, inert grenades, knitting needles, hockey sticks, scissors, lighters, sunscreen, shampoo — none of these things are going to bring down a plane. . . . .http://tsanewsblog.com/16001/news/yet-another-report-of-tsa-incompetence-carraway-re-assigned/
Groped again, this time by TSA thug Jacqueline Tirre
At LAX on my way to the Evolutionary Psychology conference in Missouri, I was groped by TSA clerk Jacqueline Tirre (per her nametag). This was after she deliberately left my computer and possessions to sit there on the x-ray off-ramp, claiming the TSA didn’t have the personnel to get it.
TSA thug Jacqueline Tirre was manning the gate to the metal detector (which, by the way, the morons didn’t send me through), and was the one to search me — after standing there and ignoring my calls for a supervisor.
Other TSA thugs similarly ignored my calls for a supervisor and for someone to watch my possessions. So my stuff was just sitting out there, where it could’ve been stolen or, say, my computer knocked off the belt by all the travelers coming through. I was told to stand to the side waiting for Queen Thug to decide she’d take a grope break and feel me up.
This is a standard intimidation move for anyone who opts out of the scanner. We’ve had plenty of testimony by other travelers of the same thing, and yet more testimony, even going back years, before the gropes were implemented. It’s one of the many ways the TSA tries to punish people who opt out or who are perceived as not being deferential enough . . . .
I received this email the other day from a woman named Bonnie Rain. It’s a letter she sent to the White House. She gave me permission to post it at TSA News:
Dear President Obama,
I just went on a trip with my boyfriend and had to go through the humiliating experience of passing through the TSA checkpoints.
Almost every day I receive emails from people telling me about their TSA experiences. They often wonder if they could have prevented the abuse meted out to them by dressing differently, talking differently, acting differently, flying out of a different airport, you name it. As I always tell them, no. You have no power over how the TSA treats you. The TSA has absolute power. Whether a TSA agent woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning or is simply being sadistic, it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with them.
Yesterday I received an email from a man who, with his 17-year-old son, was harassed in Buffalo. He thought it had something to do with the location, since he said he hadn't been bothered in Reno. Again, no. He just happened to be the victim of TSA whim, which rules everything when you fly. Don't look for logic, I told him; there is none. There isn't meant to be.
What the TSA did to him and his son -- which, I might add, was illegal, but as I've written hundreds of times, the TSA does illegal stuff all the time -- what the TSA did was to compel obedience. It was power for the sake of exercising power. It was to put him in his place, to show him who's in charge. And as long as people keep choosing to fly, they are putting themselves at the mercy of this power. They are tacitly agreeing that the TSA should be in charge.
Here is his email to me, in its entirety, with slight editing for punctuation:
British indie rock musician Stephen Patrick Morrissey -- better known simply as Morrissey -- became well known in the 1980s with his band The Smiths. He's now 56 years old. And yesterday he filed a complaint against the TSA for sexual assault.
A TSA agent at LaGuardia Airport in New York has been arrested for sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman. The only reason he was arrested was because he molested her in a bathroom. If he had followed standard operating procedure, he would've molested her at the checkpoint, where it's usually done . . . Maxie Oquendo, of Manhattan, is charged with forcible touching, official misconduct, and unlawful imprisonment . . . .
Another elderly woman abused by the TSA by Lisa Simeone, TSA News, October 27, 2015
In Portland, Oregon, at the same airport where John Brennan was arrested, the TSA has abused yet another elderly woman.
Harriette Charney, age 90, was “asked” to go into a private room with the blue shirts, where they then “asked” her to take off her blouse and her bra. She complied. According to her son Alan Charney as quoted in this report by KATU:
“They wanted her to take, I guess, take all of her clothes off from her waist up,” says Charney, “and so she took off that and took off her bra … and I’m like ‘what??!!”
TSA blows it again, terrorizes passengers in Miami
by Lisa Simeone, TSA News, November 15, 2015
On Monday, November 9, 2015 — in other words, well before the attacks in Paris — the TSA, combined with the paramilitary forces of its parent agency DHS (Department of Homeland Security) did again what it does best: overreact, in an almost certifiably insane way, to a security “breach” at an airport, and then terrorize scores of ordinary passengers just trying to go about their business:
TSA fails to spot loaded gun, it and owner sail through security
by Lisa Simeone, TSA News, November 18, 2015
Anybody who thinks the TSA is doing anything to prevent an attack needs his head examined (but hey, that’s only about half the population of the U.S.). While they’re confiscating breast milk, peanut butter, perfume, and cupcakes, strip-searching Granny, and sticking their hands down your pants, they’re letting loaded weapons on planes. This isn’t the first time, and it sure as hell won’t be the last:
Security officials are frantically trying to discover how a retired long distance trucker accidentally managed to take a fully loaded semi-automatic handgun on to a crowded flight from America’s busiest airport.
Blake Alford didn’t realize what he had done until he got to his hotel room after his flight from Atlanta to Chicago, but now wants to know how Transportation Security Agency staff let him through security and on to the Southwest Airlines plane.
The incident occurred less than a week after a Russian plane flying out of Egypt was blown out of the sky, killing all 224 people on board. The terrorist group ISIS has claimed responsibility for that attack.
‘How could the TSA not have spotted it?’ Alford, 67, said in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online. ‘Especially as it was just a few days after the Russian plane blew up.’
In the never-ending saga of TSA theft and stupidity — and did I say theft? — we have the latest episode (that we know of): at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the goons spied yet another tasty treat they wanted to sample. So they pretended that said items were dangerous and confiscated them — er, sorry, encouraged the passenger to give them up. (As we know, since they tell us all the time, especially at their main propaganda organ, they don’t confiscate anything.) From the story in the Baltimore Sun:
The shoes, which had stiletto heels in the shape of handgun barrels and also featured what looked like bullets, were in the woman’s carry-on luggage, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.
Temporarily suspended, only because I've run out of energy. I've been at this since 2009 and nothing has changed. I just end up reporting variations of the same stories anyway. Abuse on top of abuse. But apparently Americans are okay with being abused because they keep putting up with it and they keep flying. So be it.
