01 August 2008

The travesty of airport body searches

The following from CBS news in Chicago, where there is an equally depressing video of the news report.
In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone

"It's humiliation," Perry said.

Perry was also taken to a see-through room by a TSA agent when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

"He yelled at me to get the belt off. 'I told you to get the belt off.' So I took the belt off. He ran his hands down over and pulled the pants down, they went down around my ankle," Perry said.

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

"She was yelling 'I have power, I have power, I have power," Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

"It makes you feel like you have no rights," Perry said.
I suppose there is small consolation in knowing that standing in one's underwear in public in the U.S. is much less humiliating than the strip searches conducted in Israel. Airport security is just too depressing a topic for this blog. I give up. No more rants on this topic.

addendum - the previous rants on this subject are HERE.

2 comments:

  1. That's just horrible! Let me know if you mind, but I'm going to link to this post on my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't mind - to the contrary, it's a compliment, and a blog's ranking on Technorati rises with every citation on other blogs. Link away.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...