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02-06-2014, 06:41 PM
TSA Employee Pens Article That Should Kill TSA
February 3, 2014 by Sam Rolley
15K 94 9 15.3K
TSA Employee Pens Article That Should Kill TSA
UPI FILE
For years, conservative media outlets have been chronicling the abuses of the Transportation Security Administration only to be derided as conspiracy theorists by TSA and other government officials. But an article published in POLITICO Friday by former TSA screener Jason Harrington reveals that TSA critics have been right all along.
Harrington began working for the TSA in 2007 while pursuing a degree in creative writing. By 2010, Harrington had come to hate his work, which had him “patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show.”
“I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots–the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying,” he wrote for POLITICO.
“Once, in 2008, I had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men in the group–a young, decorated soldier,” Harrington continued. “He was in a wheelchair, both legs lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of national security.”
Acting on his frustrations, Harrington sent a letter to the editor to The New York Times titled “To Stop A Terrorist: No Lack of Ideas” in 2010 criticizing the national security bureaucracy. The letter got him in trouble with his superiors, but Harrington was not fired.
Harrington also started a blog called Taking Sense Away to chronicle the TSA’s abuses.
Four years later, Harrington has opened up completely about his time as a TSA employee in his POLITICO piece. And, in doing so, he has backed up many of the criticisms lobbed against the agency.
Here are some key revelations from the former TSA agent’s new piece, “Dear America, I Saw You Naked”:
TSA agents know the full-body scanners don’t work:
Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone.
Many TSA agents find humor in looking at naked body scans of air travelers:
Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern–their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. …
All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.
TSA agents often go out of their way to target attractive travelers:
Then there was the infamous “guyspeak” in my “Insider’s TSA Dictionary.” One of the first terms I learned from fellow male TSA officers at O’Hare was “Hotel Papa,” code language for an attractive female passenger–“Hotel” standing for “hot,” and “Papa” for, well, use your imagination.
TSA agents know that the body scanning machines are unhealthy:
But the only people who hated the body-scanners more than the public were TSA employees themselves. Many of my co-workers felt uncomfortable even standing next to the radiation-emitting machines we were forcing members of the public to stand inside. Several told me they submitted formal requests for dosimeters, to measure their exposure to radiation. The agency’s stance was that dosimeters were not necessary–the radiation doses from the machines were perfectly acceptable, they told us. We would just have to take their word for it. When concerned passengers–usually pregnant women–asked how much radiation the machines emitted and whether they were safe, we were instructed by our superiors to assure them everything was fine.
A video by Johnathon Corbett, which illustrated how ineffective the body scanners actually are, prompted the agency to lie about their effectiveness:
Officially, the agency downplayed the Corbett video….Behind closed doors, supervisors instructed us to begin patting down the sides of every fifth passenger as a clumsy workaround to the scanners’ embarrassing vulnerability.
People who give TSA agents problems are often punished by screeners:
We would also sometimes pull a passenger’s bag or give a pat down because he or she was rude. We always deployed the same explanation: “It’s just a random search.”
Most TSA agents know that they aren’t stopping terror and hate their jobs:
Most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds. …
I hinted several times on the blog that a determined terrorist’s best bet for defeating airport security would be to apply for a job with the TSA and simply become part of the security system itself. That assertion stemmed from personal experience. …
As I saw it, $40 million in taxpayer dollars had been wasted on ineffective anti-terrorism security measures at the expense of the public’s health, privacy and dignity.
Last month, Representative John Mica (R-Fla.), head of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on government operations, told lawmakers that “one way or the other,” he intends to push legislation that would privatize all transportation screeners within two years. Harrington’s revelations, and a forthcoming novel based on his time at the TSA, could help lawmakers like Mica gain support in efforts to tamp out the TSA.
youtube linky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEoc_1ZkfA
February 3, 2014 by Sam Rolley
15K 94 9 15.3K
TSA Employee Pens Article That Should Kill TSA
UPI FILE
For years, conservative media outlets have been chronicling the abuses of the Transportation Security Administration only to be derided as conspiracy theorists by TSA and other government officials. But an article published in POLITICO Friday by former TSA screener Jason Harrington reveals that TSA critics have been right all along.
Harrington began working for the TSA in 2007 while pursuing a degree in creative writing. By 2010, Harrington had come to hate his work, which had him “patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show.”
“I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots–the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying,” he wrote for POLITICO.
“Once, in 2008, I had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men in the group–a young, decorated soldier,” Harrington continued. “He was in a wheelchair, both legs lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of national security.”
Acting on his frustrations, Harrington sent a letter to the editor to The New York Times titled “To Stop A Terrorist: No Lack of Ideas” in 2010 criticizing the national security bureaucracy. The letter got him in trouble with his superiors, but Harrington was not fired.
Harrington also started a blog called Taking Sense Away to chronicle the TSA’s abuses.
Four years later, Harrington has opened up completely about his time as a TSA employee in his POLITICO piece. And, in doing so, he has backed up many of the criticisms lobbed against the agency.
Here are some key revelations from the former TSA agent’s new piece, “Dear America, I Saw You Naked”:
TSA agents know the full-body scanners don’t work:
Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone.
Many TSA agents find humor in looking at naked body scans of air travelers:
Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern–their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. …
All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.
TSA agents often go out of their way to target attractive travelers:
Then there was the infamous “guyspeak” in my “Insider’s TSA Dictionary.” One of the first terms I learned from fellow male TSA officers at O’Hare was “Hotel Papa,” code language for an attractive female passenger–“Hotel” standing for “hot,” and “Papa” for, well, use your imagination.
TSA agents know that the body scanning machines are unhealthy:
But the only people who hated the body-scanners more than the public were TSA employees themselves. Many of my co-workers felt uncomfortable even standing next to the radiation-emitting machines we were forcing members of the public to stand inside. Several told me they submitted formal requests for dosimeters, to measure their exposure to radiation. The agency’s stance was that dosimeters were not necessary–the radiation doses from the machines were perfectly acceptable, they told us. We would just have to take their word for it. When concerned passengers–usually pregnant women–asked how much radiation the machines emitted and whether they were safe, we were instructed by our superiors to assure them everything was fine.
A video by Johnathon Corbett, which illustrated how ineffective the body scanners actually are, prompted the agency to lie about their effectiveness:
Officially, the agency downplayed the Corbett video….Behind closed doors, supervisors instructed us to begin patting down the sides of every fifth passenger as a clumsy workaround to the scanners’ embarrassing vulnerability.
People who give TSA agents problems are often punished by screeners:
We would also sometimes pull a passenger’s bag or give a pat down because he or she was rude. We always deployed the same explanation: “It’s just a random search.”
Most TSA agents know that they aren’t stopping terror and hate their jobs:
Most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds. …
I hinted several times on the blog that a determined terrorist’s best bet for defeating airport security would be to apply for a job with the TSA and simply become part of the security system itself. That assertion stemmed from personal experience. …
As I saw it, $40 million in taxpayer dollars had been wasted on ineffective anti-terrorism security measures at the expense of the public’s health, privacy and dignity.
Last month, Representative John Mica (R-Fla.), head of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on government operations, told lawmakers that “one way or the other,” he intends to push legislation that would privatize all transportation screeners within two years. Harrington’s revelations, and a forthcoming novel based on his time at the TSA, could help lawmakers like Mica gain support in efforts to tamp out the TSA.
youtube linky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEoc_1ZkfA