Was autistic teen assaulted by TSA worker?

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I'm still intrigued as to why there isn't more of an active protest about this sort of thing. Tell an American he might have to pay a fraction more on his taxes for health care, or that he can't own his favourite class of anti-tank ordnance, that a gay can marry a gay and its no bad thing, or that his next president is more chocolate than white, and he will go ape-shit crazy about it. Tell him that rent-a-cop airport mooks are going to digitally penetrate his disabled teen daughter, AND his elderly war-veteran grandfather and he just shrugs. Doesn't make any sense.

Macbeth

Have you traveled from the UK to another country yet? How is the security at the UK airport? I'm sure it's way easier than the US. There should totally be more protests at US airports. But some people have no choice but to travel by plane to visit their families and friends.

UK security isn't much worse than it ever was. They get a bit strange about liquids and some of the things they think you could use to hijack an aircraft are ridiculous, but they also actually use things like wands. However I don't think the industry would last very long if they got THAT intensive, especially for internal flights (which are something of a luxury in a country our size). TBH if your TSA people are doing this to incoming foreign tourists then I don't imagine that trade will make much money any more. I would suggest that boycotting flights en masse would be the best way to make an impact. The major airlines will feel the pinch first, and THEIR complaints are liable to make bigger waves than the public. No doubt trains and buses are going to see a profit soon, and possibly even transatlantic shipping. I would rather go by sea than by plane even before all this ridiculous messing about.

Also, I would love to see the statistics for how many disabled children with families have EVER been found to be a terrorist threat.

I wonder if anyone has boycotted against any major airline. I haven't heard of anything of the sort in the news. I usually fly United.

Considering fireworks kill more people than terrorism, this is stupid.

In fact, even if that wasn't the case, this'd still be stupid.

Really don't wanna go to America for a holiday any more.

You see apathy. I see fear. When people protest against other things, nothing really happens to them. When people protest against this, they risk going on a Homeland Security Watch List and being subject to even harsher treatment if they ever try to fly again. The "don't touch my junk" guy is being sued for 10,000$ by the TSA for not letting them complete their check.

It's easy to protest against things when there is no repercussion for protesting. Here, there are real repercussions.

What will get people past this fear? A flashpoint incident. I don't know what it will be but something is going to happen at one of these checks that goes beyond the horrors already happening. This incident will be filmed by somebody's cameraphone and be on Youtube and that's when the outrage will crest.

Of course a Homeland Security Watchlist rapidly becomes utterly pointless when it contains the greater percentage of all travellers in America. Quite apart from the fact it becomes utterly unmonitorable, it even allows real terrorists greater freedoms, at which point they might just have to start over. Not to mention I imagine that sooner or later there will be another plane bombing despite all this security, and innocent people will die anyway.

And Americans never seem to be afraid of anything else (apart from terrorists apparently) so why suddenly start now? As if all those people who openly demand the right to own any manner of ridiculous weaponry don't get tagged somewhere in a file.

People are protesting. An allegorical dialogue:

TSA: Well, you chose to fly.
Passenger: OK, now I choose not to fly.

The passenger begins to drive everywhere and sort of enjoys it. He actually gets to see things and not be around thirty-plus people that aren't exactly sanitary. This makes Airline mad.

Airline: You kicked all these people off and now I'm nearly out of a job!

Because TSA relies on Airline for most of its revenue, it does what it can to get Airline back in business. Bye bye scanners and pat downs!

Well, the part after the third sentence hasn't happened yet, but it's getting quite close.

That's the best way to do it: vote with your wallet.

A beautiful scenario but the TSA doesn't rely on the airlines for its revenue. It's a government organization and is paid for with federal funds. If they screw the airlines out of customers (which they may be doing), there are no repercussions for them. If these security measures make people drive, the TSA at most just lays off some of its screeners, which is no big deal to the department as a whole.

I think it's meaningful that the "don't touch my junk" guy had his ticket refunded immediately and with no hassle beyond the clerk having to get an ok from her supervisor. If the TSA actually was funded by the airlines then yes, this would change because customers are already starting to drain away. But they aren't. So the airlines get hurt but not TSA.

One thing the airlines can do, and maybe will for some damage control since they don't set the policies, is to improve customer service to make up for the bad feelings caused by TSA. Doing their utmost to minimize the hassles a traveller is subjected to would help. They can't minimize what TSA does. (And they can't exert financial pressure since they haven't hired TSA in the first place.) But they can minimize other unpleasantries. Making ticket refunds less of a hassle would help (which they already did for Mr. "Don't touch my junk") and making the waiting areas more pleasant would help.

Also, trainig their clerks to be as polite and kind as humanly possible to their frazzled, upset customers to help them recover from the security indignities. If there is anything they can do to help repair a particularly grievious indignity, they should leap to the opportunity. For example, there was a man whose urostomy (urine bag for a damaged bladder) was ripped by an aggressive pat down and urine went all over his pants. The airline could have leaped in and fixed that by offering a ticket exchange to a later flight if he would like to wait in a private room while his pants were emergency dry-cleaned and then brought back to him. These indignities are popping up all over and TSA doesn't care but the airline can try to put things right.

They might not be directly responsible for their wages but its not as if Airline companies are a minor business concern. They are BIG business, and BIG business tends to get the ear of government more often than not. If they feel the need to change things, they will. Besides, I suspect even the mighty United States can ill afford to lose all of its international tourist revenue, or even its internal revenue. Not using airlines would definitely make waves. Also, the nation functioned before cheap air travel. I'm sure the enterprising folks would manage without, at least long enough to cause serious issues. Emergency dry-cleaning is NO compensation for the sheer indignity of having your own urine splashed everywhere.