Mother Found Guilty After Protesting TSA Pat-down of Daughter 652
Penurious Penguin writes "In 2011, en route to Baltimore, Tennessee mother Andrea Abbott was arrested after squabbling with the TSA over their pat-down and "naked" body-scan process. Initially Abbott had protested a pat-down of her 14 year-old daughter, though eventually backed off. When her own turn came, she refused both a pat-down and body-scan. This week, despite having no criminal record, Abbott was found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to one year of probation. A surveillance video of the affair shows what appears an agitated Abbott surrounded by various TSA agents, but seemingly contradicts the premise by which she was convicted. In the case against Abbott it was claimed that her behavior impeded the flow security-lines and lawful activity. Beyond Abbott's confession of issuing some verbal abuse, the video does not appear to display a significant blockage of traffic nor anything noticeably criminal."
Guilty of not doing as she was told. (Score:5, Insightful)
Scum like that should be executed!
No crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
She didn't want to be fondled by total strangers in public. There's your crime right there!
Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
the video does not appear to display a significant blockage of traffic nor anything noticeably criminal.
She was defying the TSA.
If they let her get away with it then pretty soon other people would be defying them, too. All protesters must be stamped on, hard.
America... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Land of the Freedom to abuse
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Questioning the system will get you in trouble every time. It helps make sure that the cost of complaining or asserting your rights or asking for consideration or doing anything but keeping your head down and doing whatever you're told is too high compared to the (relatively) momentary discomfort and inconvenience. And it's pretty effective too. I know my rights- in encounters with the police, or when going through security at the airport - but when if a cop stopped me for no reason walking to the store (as frequently happens to my sister) and demanded to see my ID or search my bag....I can't say I wouldn't do exactly as she does and just go with it. I certainly do with the TSA's nonsense. The possibility of getting dragged off for some bullshit reason is a good threat. Even if it doesn't stick, it still sucked. You still endangered your job/vacation/whatever.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget it is also the home of the brave. Where 'brave' means so scared of the extremely remote chance you might be the victim of terrorism that they gladly give up their freedoms.
Land of the oppressed, home of the cowards.
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I do suppose this logic is "interesting."
I would personally prefer this "humiliation" to losing one of my family members because one woman would rather be free from the pat-downs/security scanning etc.
So you're saying you'd rather have everyone who wants to get on a plane have their privacy violated because you're afraid of the minuscule chance that a terrorist might attack? I guess privacy isn't important at all as long as you can have your security theater.
But how about we install surveillance cameras in everyone's homes? It's for your own safety and could stop a few crimes, so it's all worth it. Rights mean nothing at all.
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after we pumped up security?
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack since I received my anti-terrorist rock?
And more than likely, it's not because of the TSA's security theater, but because of secured cockpit doors and the willingness of citizens to fight back.
Re:No crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're the ones who made all that shit up.
Seriously. Man in cavern in middle east. Has rusty Rifle.
Response: billions of dollars in (crony built) weapons. Crazy laws outlawing all manner of protest and enforced by (crony built) equipment and forces.
You lost before you knew you were playing.
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
One would think that in the land of the free those kind of shenanigans would only provoke a stronger response from the populace..
Normally these acts would have people screaming, calling police, lawyers, etc.
But ... the government knows that most people with a 'plane to catch will choose 20 seconds of utter humiliation over a 30-minute confrontation with big brother.
If the people got their act together and organized themselves the TSA would be shut down in a week. Unfortunately most of them have already set up the cognitive dissonances that the government planned for them.
Re:If billionaires were decent people... (Score:5, Insightful)
If billionaires are needed to get justice in the US, the problem isn't with the billionaires, its with the justice system.
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
I would personally prefer this "humiliation" to losing one of my family members because one woman would rather be free from the pat-downs/security scanning etc.
What about the kid who died in the wheel well of the jet airplane? If he could get in there then anyone could. Hell, just this week I saw a story about a guy who was stranded and hopped the fence into an airport, hoping to be confronted immediately by security (and thus saved). He walked around all the airplanes out on the tarmac, and right up to where the passenger terminals are. So, what good is getting groped or scanned other than to acclimate you to personal intrusions? None. It's the illusion of security. The scanners don't even work. Remember that story about the guy with a pocket on his sleeve? He put a metal cigarette pack in the pocket and since it was off his body, and appeared black as the background, they didn't see it at all on the scanner and he hopped on the plane with it.
Whatever happened to, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death?" Or that bit Ben Franklin said about trading your freedom for security and having neither? You've lost your way somewhere. You've become an irrational fear slut. You're thousands of times MORE likely to be killed in a car wreck and you don't run around spouting BS about how a TSA agent needs to ride with every car load to ensure safety. FUCK YOU. It's fools like you that are letting them turn the US into an oppressive regime, just like the ones we so hated in the 80's.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Romney & Obama - Do they support pat down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
One would think that in the land of the free those kind of shenanigans would only provoke a stronger response from the populace..
They might, if more of said populace were still educated and had their eyes open to what's happening instead of sitting fat and happy in front of their sports programs.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look up bread and circuses
Welcome into our times... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says they have to "slip by"?
This is the thing I really don't get. Who created the belief that terrorists have to get past airport security to do anything and why do people believe it?
If I was a terrorist leader I'd blow up a few bags of ball bearings in the lines of people waiting to nudie-scanned. The country would implode overnight...
The only reason this isn't happening is that there are no terrorists.
(nb. If they want to "slip by" they can just put the C4 up their asses or whatever... Drug smugglers do it all the time, why not terrorists?)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the "if you kill on you'll just anger more" bullshit the fighting overseas has actually worked and killed many of the enemies of civilization.
Years ago, they noticed the death toll of "terrorists" was above the sum of all "terrorists" on the planet. Either the war manufactured terrorists faster than we were killing them, or we were just killing innocent civilians and calling them terrorists to justify out mass murder. Either way, we are as bad as they say we are.
Re:Guilty of not doing as she was told. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just vote Repubmocrat for more of the same treatment. The longer the TSA operates, the longer they have to refine authoritarian tyranny.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Romney has not been elected yet.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an american, I strongly suggest that anyone from outside to not visit us. This is a Police State, we like tromping on freedoms here. and they treat non citizens WORSE than citizens.
Your money is better spent in a Free country like Canada.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:3, Insightful)
You should have them clean the airport toilets and floors. Would be usefull, and would promote tourism instead of scaring the people like me who would like to visit USA but won't because you have become damn scary in the past 10 years.
Re:No crime? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is sad here (Score:4, Insightful)
So a person wearing a bomb is going to be afraid of a gun? If they are willing to blow themselves up, then threatening to shoot them after the fact is not going to dissuade them.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, as a citizen you have fewer rights in the US than a non-citizen. Citizens can be labelled ennemy combatant and removed from the public and judicial circles. If it happened to a non-citizen, then a foreign embassy's diplomatic staff would kick in to provide judicial assistance, and all foreign medias would be in uproar.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Airport security by itself wouldn't stop me from travelling to the US, but there's so much more than that. There are plenty of countries that are "trusted" and so qualify for visa-free travel to the US for business or tourism - standard short stay stuff. Unfortunately, the list of requirements to qualify for that keeps growing. If you don't have a biometric passport containing details of retina patterns and fingerprints, matched against your passport on entry, you don't get to travel visa-free. The visa application process takes months and requires multiple visits in the flesh to a US embassy. Coincidentally, a passport application to update to a shiny new biometric passport also takes month and multiple visits in the flesh to a passport office.
Can anybody honestly say there's anything in the US that is so uniquely spectacular that it's worth all the hassle and paperwork? I can travel throughout the entire Schengen area with nothing more than a flash of an ID card. There are dozens of nations where a visa is just a bit of paper that you purchase on entry.
If only Obama got into office he'd fix this all (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish Obama would be in some office where he could wield some executive power so he could show us how Democrats value freedom more...
(If I lived in the USA, I would probably vote for Obama as smaller of two evils... but it's not as if the security theater would be a partisan issue.)
Re:Romney & Obama - Do they support pat down? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you examine the legislation and executive decisions responsible for the civil liberties abuses of the past 12 years, you will find strong bi-partisan consensus for these measures. You mention Romney, but when it comes to the expansion and abuse of executive power, President Obama has been even worse than Bush. Ask Obama about his secret kill list and "disposition matrix".
I'm not voting for Romney or Obama.
Re:No crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rosa Parks: She went to the front of the bus. What did she think would happen if she refused to go to the back of the bus?
Lesson: Just because it's law, doesn't mean it's right; just because it's law, doesn't mean that complying with it is the best choice; just because it's law, doesn't mean that an intelligent citizen writes someone off for a strict violation.
Some laws are simply wrong and arise only by malfeasance of legislators and those that encourage them down wrongful paths. This is unquestionably one of those cases.
Re:What is sad here (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after we pumped up security? Uncomfortable, yes. Bothersome - heck yeah. But we live.
When was the last time you heard of an airplane hijack after people realized they could be crashed into buildings?
Before September 11, no one had crashed a commercial airplane into a building as a terrorist attack. But, airplanes had been hijacked. Civilians were told not to interfere with a hijacking. If your plane were hijacked, you could expect to be flown to Cuba, sit around for a week or so, and then end up back in the US. That dynamic changed on September 11. AS SOON AS people realized that terrorists were flying planes into buildings, they started fighting back. That is why that plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Because the terrorists had hijacked the plane, but the passengers found out (from cell phones) what was probably going to happen and tried to take the airplane back. There is almost NO chance of a commercial flight being hijacked by terrorists now. Even if we didn't humiliate people with the TSA. Because the other 100 people on the plane would sacrifice their lives to stop them. No one would believe the hijacker WASN'T going to crash the plane into a building, so there would be no point in anyone NOT being a hero (you know you are going to die if you don't fight back, so you might as well fight back and try to live).
I fly quite often (at least a couple times per month). I would be perfectly fine with increasing my chance of dying on a plane by 0.00001% if that meant getting rid of the TSA. I would also be fine with the increased risk to my family because I believe their freedom and happiness are more important than their security.
You sir, are a coward. And it is people like you who allowed the Hitlers and Stalins commit their atrocities.
Re:Summary is rediculoous (Score:5, Insightful)
TSA screeners aren't law enforcement.
Any other fallacious bullshit you'd like to spout while you're here?
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, you have two options. Which one is healthier for you?
A) Taking more bleach, in an even smaller quantity.
B} _NOT_ taking more bleach.
Re:What is sad here (Score:3, Insightful)
On 9/12/2001, I purchased an anti-terrorist rock. It wards off terrorists hijacking planes in the country that it's located in. And sure enough, there have been no more hijackings inside the US. You're all welcome.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
That's certainly what RapiScan and the TSA officials stated, but they never published what the numbers really were. They just assured us.
I'm not big on going all tin-foil on this. Many of us have been wondering why they insist on not publishing what the measured/actual radiation exposure is. The concerns have been raised as reports came out (some dubious) that TSA agents were already showing higher than normal incident rates for cancers. There was an incident where an inspection turned up unusually high readings. Granted, that also turned out to be a clerical issue where the inspector didn't understand part of the inspection... Which was a concern in itself. Through all this, we still don't know what the exposure is supposed to be, nor what it really is.
The problem here has been a lack of transparency... and other abuses involving the millimeter wave scanner horror stories (storing images, having ladies go through multiple times). Worse is that these "measures" are invasive, possibly a health risk, and they don't actually increase our security. There are plenty of videos out there on how to beat the scanners, the measures irritate us and end up (in my opinion) more complacent.
As for the passive scanners, that would be great. I need to see where they are in development because I haven't heard anything on that yet. If you have a link, I'd appreciate it. I'll get going on Google in the meantime.
Re:Guilty of not doing as she was told. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this world coming to?
Fear and those who exploit it.
Re:Romney & Obama - Do they support pat down? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you examine the legislation and executive decisions responsible for the civil liberties abuses of the past 12 years, you will find strong bi-partisan consensus for these measures. You mention Romney, but when it comes to the expansion and abuse of executive power, President Obama has been even worse than Bush. Ask Obama about his secret kill list and "disposition matrix".
I'm not voting for Romney or Obama.
If he has a secret kill list and "disposition matrix" then how do you know about it? If you know about it, then it must not be secret. You make a lot of statements but no mention of any verifiable facts.
Re:I wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if the increased risk of cancer is miniscule, the risk of dying in a terrorist act is even more so. Almost certainly by at least one order of magnitude.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
No fuckhead, this is not a police state.
Yes, as we all know, a police state would be a country where:
Oh, wait, that would be the United States.
Re:Romney & Obama - Do they support pat down? (Score:5, Insightful)
The choice between Democrat and Republican is not freedom, but a box to contain you.
Both support these measures.
Both support more spending on the War Department (I refuse to call it by its doublethink name.)
Both oppose ending marijuana prohibition.
Both endorsed and passed the NDAA.
Both support the TSA's existence.
So which one will you choose? It is no different than our ridiculous telecom oligopoly. Sure you can choose, between three equivalently shitty, abusive options.
Choosing between provided options is not freedom, it's multiple choice where no answer is freedom.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the risk of being killed in a terrorist act?
Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should [reason.com]
Vs. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer [cancer.org]
1 in 20 million vs even a .1% increase in the risk of cancer which at best is 1 in 5000
Re:Not criminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
...Or reading/posting to Slashdot about it. ;)
I'll actually go ahead and disagree with your message: talking about these issues, even if we don't do anything immediately, is trillions times better than just staying put and consuming some pop entertainment. We share among us our thoughts on what's wrong, what should and what shouldn't be, we educate each other on facts and events.
I cannot but look at this as a positive way to spend one's time.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, not tinfoil, it's full lead foil territory.
If a doctor or dentist was operating such gear without a third party testing for emission levels they would go directly to jail.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you haven't had your teenage daughter break down in tears because a TSA creep crossed the line.
Or maybe you have't seen a victim of past sexual abuse panic when she gets touched?
Or maybe you just lack empathy?
Obama Administration and abuse of power (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama is standing on the shoulders of giants. Funny that you say "expansion" and not creation. See, he is expanding what is already there. I'm not saying it's right, but that's fact. Our entire legal system is built on this principle.
REAL abuse of executive power is invading a soverign nation and overthrowing its government with no just cause, and in the process fabricating evidence to try and gain support for your actions. To this DAY there has never been a reasonable explanation for our invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Obama hasn't fixed the mess he inherited in our country, and may have made some things worse, what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things, and more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world. That is where I see a massive difference between this and the former president.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
"... assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.
Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists."
Re:If only Obama got into office he'd fix this all (Score:4, Insightful)
If I lived in the USA, I would probably vote for Obama as smaller of two evils...
And when the reckoning comes, you will be remembered as one who chose to support one of the evils rather to oppose both of them.
Re:Not criminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Romney & Obama - Do they support pat down? (Score:5, Insightful)
The chance to vote for the lesser of two evils is something many people around the world would kill for.
If you're in a swing state, a vote for a third party candidate is a vote in favor of Romney-appointed Supreme Court justices.
Re:Obama Administration and abuse of power (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not criminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
My brother-in-law in Japanese, living in Japan. He had no problem visiting the US very recently. Yes, he had to give his fingerprint.. but is that really a big issue?
Yes it is. I'm old enough (57) that back in elementary and Jr High school one of the things that was drummed into us was that the USA was better than all those other wimpy countries because we had complete freedom to travel anonymously, had no personal ID papers, and could not be forced to identify ourselves unless under arrest. So it's a very big deal that these allegedly Constitutional rights have disappeared.