Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers 525
An anonymous reader writes "A man with a neurological disorder is currently pushing the TSA to release a full list of its policies and procedures after a series of incidents in which he was harassed while trying to fly. His condition requires medical liquids and causes episodic muteness, and the TSA makes his encounters very difficult. From January: 'Boston Logan TSA conducted an illegal search of my xray-cleared documents (probably motivated either by my opting out or by my use of sign language to communicate). They refused to give me access to the pen and paper that I needed to communicate. Eventually they gave it to me, but then they took it away in direct retaliation for my using it to quote US v Davis and protest their illegal search (thereby literally depriving me of speech). They illegally detained me for about an hour on spurious, law enforcement motivated grounds (illegal under Davis, Aukai, Fofana, Bierfeldt, etc). ... TSA has refused to comply with the ADA grievance process; they are over a month beyond the statutory mandate for issuing a written determination.'"
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So do something about it. (Score:5, Informative)
You want to get rid of the TSA?
Don't fly.
It's that simple.
No it's not. TSA is expanding to provide its services outside airports. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-elliott/the-tsa-wants-to-be-every_b_2393332.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
What are you trying to say? Those are all "countries" in the "continents" of North and South America.
War on Diginity (Score:5, Informative)
The TSA says they are all about the war on terror.
But their actions prove they are only interested in conducting a War on Diginity.
Groping children [techdirt.com]
soaking a man in his own urine [nbcnews.com]
Arresting people for wearing watches with exposed gears [tsanewsblog.com]
Arbitrary strip-searches [foxnews.com]
Detaining people armed with flash cards [forbes.com]
Forcing mothers to drink their own breast milk [usatoday.com]
Forcing a woman to remove her nipple ring with pliers [cnn.com]
Requiring women to remove their bras [sfgate.com]
Requiring a woman to remove the brace on her sprained ankle and then making her walk on it to prove it was sprained [gadling.com]
The list of abuses [travelunderground.org] is into the thousands. Every once in a while they get a taste of their stupidity. [nypost.com] But it isn't anywhere near enough.
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
Direct flight to canada, preferably avoiding British Airways and Air Canada, you should be ok with Swish, KLM or Air France (if you come "close" to the US border the Canadian accepted to submit to US flight conditions, so you'd prefer an airline that takes the flights as north as possible.
If you go to South america you will find direct flight to brazil, and for any other south american country use the Argentinian LAN, Buenos aires is quite a good hub, and LAN tries do be cheap (not always the most reliable in timing though, but then ... it's kind of a regional thing).
For Central America you can use Mexico city as an hub, and AeroMexico goes direct from europe to Mexico.
And finaly you can use www.amadeus.net and filter out: all american airlines, and prefer direct flights, this should enable you to find your flight quite easely and even if you might see now and then a share code flight that goes through some US hub, it will be clearly marked, and you'll be able to compare the price difference, and decide if in the faster/cheaper/less hassle criteria one or two trumps three ...
Cheers, and happy flights
Re:My answer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody close to me developed anomic aphasia recently, and I can certainly vouch for a recent finding of a UK health study - anybody who has suffered aphasia will vouch that it is one of the most debilitating disorders you can have. Aphasia is any condition that interferes with speech, and anomic aphasia basically is an inability to assign names to things (you can see an object and fully understand its deign/function/purpose, but you can't come up with the word to describe it and will not remember it even if told it).
Imagine being able to do anything normally, except communicate. This guy was fortunate that he could even write (and depriving him of a pen/paper is COMPLETELY INHUMANE - no different than putting a muzzle on somebody without such a condition). If you end up with damage in the language centers of your brain you're reduced to little more than gestures and a handful of words to communicate (the same regions govern ALL forms of language from speech to writing to sign language - no, there isn't an easy workaround), or pointing at pictures assuming a useful picture is there (and no, you can't spell words by pointing at the letters, or use any kind of symbolic representation of words, since that's the part of your brain that isn't working).
Most people who interact with somebody with aphasia assume they're mentally retarded, and treat them as such. (Not necessarily in an unkind manner, but rather by assuming that they need to be treated paternalistically and that they shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for themselves for their own sake.) While conditions that can cause aphasia can also cause other cognitive problems, they do not always do so. In general somebody with aphasia is no more or less intelligent than anyone else. However, they make poor advocates for themselves so they suffer quite a bit.
A recent episode was when the person I was talking about had to take a driving knowledge test. It was multiple choice, was computer based, and even included some pictures and recorded readings of all the questions and their answers that could be played repeatedly. However, it took about 10-15 attempts to pass the test (one per day per the state's rules, and spending about an hour to get through about a dozen questions). If you had asked them to give a free response to any of the questions they could have answered the questions verbally and satisfied you that they understood basic driving laws. However, somebody with anomic aphasia needs freedom to find words they can understand - it is very difficult for them to understand a fixed sentence just by listening to it over and over. Simply comparing the various choices to determine how they differ took many repetitions. In the end they passed both knowledge and driving examinations, but it was quite an arduous journey. It likely would not have been possible but for the fact that they had recovered quite a bit of their ability to communicate.
In general we as a society do not do a very good job accommodating those with neurlogical disorders.
Re:My answer (Score:5, Informative)
OP here. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
How would I know about airport security? I read. I listen. There are stories of travelers being held and questioned because the TSA thought they were carrying to much money. They may only be abusive SOB's to one in a thousand passengers, but from what I read, it seems to be more like one in a couple hundred. Even if it were only one in ten thousand, why put yourself through it?
I disapprove of everything the TSA does. What they seem to do, more than anything, is to indoctrinate people into being docile toward people in uniform. I'm not a docile individual. Security theater is revolting, and I refuse to participate in any way.
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
All European international airports have an area behind customs declared 'neutral', you don't (need to) enter the state of Belgium to just transfer flights at Brussels.
As far as I know the US does not have such facilities, during an international transfer at any airport in the USofA you have to enter and exit the US = pass the TSA probe.
I have personal experience flying from Paris, London and Amsterdam to places like Mexico and Trinidad. When changing planes in Miami, Atlanta, Houston and Detroit I had to cross the US border, totally unnecessary and a real plight for those with passports of non-EU countries.
No, only to non-English native speakers (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the accent Americans speak today is actually mush closer to real (old) English than what the English speak. Around the time when the US was just some colonies, French influence on language had become popular among the upper classes. Never really understood the the English/French love/hate thing they have going on.
That being said, I watch shows off BBC (love QI) and they refer to us as "America" all the time.
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
Use the dictionary of your choice and check the words "continent" and "country".
Well, I went one step further and used several of the dictionaries and encyclopedias of my choice and checked the word "America". Guess what I found.
From the New Oxford American (oh the irony!) Dictionary (emphasis mine):
America (also the Americas):
a landmass in the western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North and South America joined by the Isthmus of Panama. The continent was originally inhabited by American Indians and Inuits. The northeast coastline of North America was visited by Norse seamen in the 8th or 9th century, but for the modern world the continent was first reached by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
- used as a name for the United States.
Note that the definition of the landmass precedes the definition of the USA. Similar precedence will be found also in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com], and most other authoritative sources (admittedly not all, although all will acknowledge both meanings).
And regarding the definition of "continent" you need to realize that there are at least five different definitions for that word [wikipedia.org] using different criteria. You were taught a particular one that separated North and South America, but other people (in particular outside the USA) are taught other definitions and most of those don't make that distinction.
By the way, according to the CIA [cia.gov] the conventional short name for the United States of America is "United States", not "America".
Re:My answer (Score:4, Informative)
I'm terribly intolerant of being questioned, felt up, irradiated, or justifying my presence and/or my travel plans ... I've not flown since before 9/11/01, and probably won't again.
So you haven't actually been through airport security, but you have avoided air travel for the last 12 years based on the horror stories you read online or second hand reports?
I fly 20 or 30 times a year, domestically in the US and internationally. Never once have I been questioned about my travel plans when flying domestically, and EVERY country in the world asks you about your travel plans when you go through customs internationally. (Try flying to/from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv sometime for the ultimate "please justify your presence here" experience.) I have never been groped in hundreds of trips through airport security, nor have I considered myself to be "irradiated" any worse than I was going to get from spending several hours at 40,000 feet.
Look, I don't like the TSA security procedures... trust me, frequent flyers who have to put up with them all the time hate them more than anyone else. It's certainly your right not to fly. But ... seriously ... it's really not as bad as you (and apparently a lot of other Slashdotters who avoid the US or air travel all together) seem to think.