Breast Groping at Airport Security;

What Smart Women Can Do

by Diana Fairechild
 

What should you do if an airport security person insists on feeling your breasts.  Is this is joke?  Or do passengers actually have to go along with this intrusion?

Women's breasts are sensitive and women are sensitive about their breasts. And we certainly don't want our breasts examined at airports, and especially not out in the open giving male screeners and male passengers an opportunity to enjoy the show.

Last month, a female screener told a young mother: "I'm going to feel your breasts now." The mother begged, bawled, balked, and was finally denied boarding.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said its screener did nothing wrong and that touching breasts became a security priority in September 2004 after two Russian jetliners exploded, possibly from bombs smuggled in clothing of two women of Cechnya origin.

After she was denied boarding, Ava Kingsford stuck by her personal principles and decided to drive a rental car from Denver Airport to her home in San Diego. It took 16 hours including too many stops with her little baby.

In addition, Ava's luggage (with diapers, clothes, etc.) had not been retrieved by the airline (against FAA regulations, by the way), though she had waited at the airport several hours for it.

In a phone interview, Ava told me that two female airport screeners had taken her to a back room to touch her breasts. To avoid being touched, Ava pulled down her tank top and bra-less said: "See, I'm not hiding anything."

But, incredibly, the screener replied: "That's it. You just flashed us and you're not boarding your plane."

This was obviously less about passengers terrorizing airplanes, and more about screeners intimidating passengers. For what it's worth, I believe TSA's boob groping policy is a ploy to intimidate passengers into accepting full-body-scan machines at all U.S. airports.

At Orlando Airport, a technician on a prototype body-scan machine can examine breast and genital size and shape of naked passengers; even penile implants and other prostheses, and colostomy devices.

Yikes! Of all places, one should expect privacy under their clothing.

Body scans also irradiate us.

I'd rather have a TSA screener touch my breasts than be irradiated. Some choice!

Ava told me she'd rather have the X-ray and "The way I was treated at Denver Airport was like a criminal."

In the U.S., passengers foot the bill for airport security with a $2.50 surcharge per flight, not to mention bailing out the airlines with our taxes. So why don't we get security screeners who are accountable to the flying public?

If the presence of airport security screeners is inevitable, and it appears to be, the demeaning of passengers does not have to be inevitable. And here are five things you can do to make a difference.

1) If you believe you have been treated in a discriminatory manner, don't bother reporting it to airport authorities -- report it to the media. The TSA's so-called "resolution line" (866-289-9673) is just a recording that sends you to a website.

2) Make sure your bags are always in your sight. If a screener wants to move you to a side area or a private room and separate you from your hand luggage, politely insist that your handcarries must go where you go. They will comply.

3) Be polite. No matter how a screener behaves, control yourself and do not raise your voice as this could send you straight to jail.

4) If you feel tense at security, say to the screener: I appreciate that you are checking all the passengers thoroughly because I am also very concerned with safety.

5) For updates on this ongoing campaign for dignity at airport security, see http://www.Flyana.com/newsletter.html.

Diana Fairechild is an aviation health and safety author, and an expert witness in legal cases involving the death and injury of airline passengers. Diana has been seen on Dateline, Extra, Hard Copy, CNN, ABC and NBC. She runs the Flyana.com web site.

Copyright © 2004 by Diana Fairechild. First Published in The Jet Smart Newsletter, 11/15/04.

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Airport pat-downs trigger alarm

 

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/201123_airport25.html
 

They may be all in the interests of travelers' safety, but personal searches have some people up in arms

Thursday, November 25, 2004

By VANESSA HO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

It was one thing for Caroline Snipes to slip off her high-wedged sandals and heavy-knit sweater before walking through a metal detector. It was another thing to stand with her feet apart and arms out and have a stranger touch her breasts.

"She basically felt me up. I'm not a real squeamish person, but I just felt violated," said Snipes, a 25-year-old Alaska law enforcement officer, as she waited for her flight to Montana at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport yesterday.

As the airport braced for the busiest travel day of the year, many passengers complained bitterly about the new pat-down searches the federal government instituted this fall, in which airport screeners are now directed to pat the bodies of certain passengers.

The increased security measure, which is supposed to help find explosives, targets all passengers, but has particularly incensed women. Around the country, women have threatened lawsuits, shed underwire bras, and, at times, ditched flying. When they have refused to submit to the searches, they have been barred from flights.

"I couldn't work the next day," said Lisa Lynch, a 44-year-old doctoral student from Edmonds, after a recent pat-down. On a round trip from Denver, she endured two such searches, including one in which a female screener ran two fingers under each breast and a hand up the insides of both thighs.

"It was awful. What if I was a rape victim, or had a history of sexual abuse?" she said. Lynch, who flies nearly once a week, said she has filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union and contacted Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said the pat-downs, which began in September, are a response to the 9/11 commission's recommendation of increased screening for explosives. They are also a reaction to the explosion of two jetliners in Russia, in which two Chechen women are suspected of sneaking aboard non-metallic explosives, possibly strapped to their chests, killing 90 people.

"I think we understand the feelings of privacy and being uncomfortable. I think also our screeners understand that, and the process is certainly not one they necessarily enjoy, either," said Jennifer Peppin, a spokeswoman for the TSA's Northwest region.

"But it's a very important mission that they're assigned to, and that is to keep us safe and keep things off the planes that do harm."

Screeners are supposed to pat down passengers if a metal detector goes off or if a passenger is wearing something bulky or baggy and the contours of the body are not visible. Also, some passengers are randomly selected for a "secondary" search, which includes a scan with a hand wand, a bag search and a pat-down. About 10 percent of all passengers are selected, Peppin said.

Screeners doing pat-downs are supposed to be the same gender as the passenger. They are instructed to explain what they're doing and to use the backs of hands for "sensitive" areas, including genitals, buttocks and women's breasts. Passengers can request a private room for a pat-down.

"They're looking for something that is concealed on the body that may not have been detected by the metal detector," said Peppin.

Yesterday, she said a screener in Atlantic City, N.J., found, through a pat-down, a knife disguised as a pen in a woman's bra.

But many passengers have found the searches intrusive and unnecessary. Others said screeners used the front or side of their hands, and not the back of the hand.

"Look at what I'm wearing," said Snipes, as she stood up and showed off a thin, tight, stretchy, short-sleeved shirt that revealed every curve of her chest and torso. "Does it look like I'm hiding anything?"

An 83-year-old woman, whose pacemaker had apparently triggered the metal detector, said she was embarrassed when a stranger singled her out and ran her hands up and down her body.

"I'm an old lady," said the California woman, who didn't want to be named. "I thought, 'For God's sake, what are you looking for?' I've never had anyone do that to me before."

In New York, a woman is considering filing a lawsuit after a pat-down in Florida, the Dallas Morning News reported. A Colorado woman complained to the TSA after a screener asked her to lift her shirt and expose her stomach in front of several men, while her toddler cried, the paper said.

A woman in Florida was recently asked to strip off her belt, shoes and leather jacket -- and then her shirt. After much protest, she took off her shirt to reveal a thin, see-through camisole, which didn't stop a screener from touching her breast and groin area, The New York Times reported.

Doug Honig, a spokesman for the ACLU in Washington state, said the agency has gotten several complaints and plans to discuss them with the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.

"Everybody wants to be safe when we travel, but we don't see groping women in airports as a way to make us safer," Honig said.

He said the agency doesn't object to the searches if triggered by a metal detector or suspicious behavior, but he was concerned that screeners now seem to have more discretion and less guidance. And such searches must be done with dignity, he said.

Some people, such as 58-year-old Jenny Kreindl, said they didn't mind a pat-down.

"I understand it and it's just something I accept," said Kreindl, a Bellingham nurse who has been subjected to many pat-downs. She has flown four times since September, and each time the gold bangle around her wrist, which she can't remove, has triggered a metal detector.

"I've never had anybody do anything inappropriate. They tell you exactly what they're going to do."

For some passengers, relief may be on the horizon. The government is testing a machine that can detect explosives less intrusively, by blowing a puff of trace-detecting air on people as they walk through a portal.

Officials are also watching how an X-ray machine is being used in England. But if pat-downs are intrusive, the X-ray, which takes an extremely graphic picture of a passenger's body, may be worse.

"TSA ... has big privacy issues with that technology," Peppin said.

 

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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