On Friday an advertising creative named Geoffrey McGann was arrested at Oakland airport for wearing a watch that looked suspiciously like a bomb. How is that possible, you ask? How can a watch look THAT much like a bomb? Wait ’til you see this..
Following a recent viral expose by blogger Jonathan Corbett on the potentially serious weaknesses in the TSA’s airport body scanners, multiple journalists have reported receiving emails from the TSA “strongly cautioning” them against covering the story. Corbett is encouraging media outlets to cover the story anyway.
Yesterday the European Union prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners, the kind frequently used by airport security in United States, citing cancer risks. American airport security, meanwhile, has deployed hundreds of scanners, screening millions of airline passengers – and if the European Commission’s conclusions can be trusted, exposing a fraction of those passengers to cancer risks.
Really not exaggerating in that headline. Two days ago, blogger Shoshana Hebshi, a self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife,” found herself cuffed and thrown off a Frontier Airlines flight and strip-searched – because she was seated next to two Indian guys she didn’t know, and another passenger had found that suspicious.
Since 9/11, flying has sucked. For all of the wrong reasons, flight security has become paranoid and despotic, and nowhere worse than the USA – where TSA agents have manhandled infants and the infirm in ‘the war on terror.’ So it’s nice to see that the Texas House of Representatives just banned TSA searches without probable cause.
Patting people down for a living must take a special kind of person. To see just how special, check out this video of a 6-year-old girl being searched EVERYWHERE for possible drugs. It is conducted by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employee – the people responsible for the safety on board public modes of transport in the US. They clearly take their job very seriously.
Fantastic. Self-described sex blogger, ‘Furrygirl,’ opted to go for a patdown instead of undergoing TSA scanning at a Seattle airport, citing health concerns about radiation; to protest the TSA’s super-invasive new procedures, she stripped down to sexy underwear prior to her interview, and videoblogged the whole thing. Mildly NSFW, but hey, it’s okay if it’s political. […]