At what point does an airport search step over the line?Further details in Daniel Rubin's column at the Philadelphia Inquirer. The TSA apparently does not deny any of the details; they claim they were justified in their actions because she looked nervous.
How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?
That's the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8...
That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said...
In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000...
She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."
When she got home, her husband of 20 years, John Parker, a self-employed plastics broker, said the police had called and told him that they'd suspected "a divorce situation" and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account. He set them straight.
"I was so humiliated," she said...
A "divorce situation"? How is that a threat to national security? Maybe if they had some standards for hiring, paid a professional wage, had proper training, then they might do a decent job.
ReplyDeleteIt seems silly that a country of some 327 million people would put up with all those checks (see what I did there) just because once a group of supposed terrorists carried craft knives onto a plane and were able to overpower the crew and other passengers, thereby allowing one of the biggest insurance payouts ever and giving reason for an entire money making war.
ReplyDeleteAll conspiracy theories aside, if thats what they are, should not the TSA be only checking for sharp blades, guns and prayer books ?
Even here in New Zealand they stop you carrying shampoo onto a plane because .... well, I don't know why, but it is all to do with some shady happenings on the east coast of the USA, back in 2001
I know the USA is a super power, I know it is called the leader of the Western World, and I know they produced some mighty fine looking cars when I was a young fella, but .... from an outside point of view, they, as a country, are looking pretty laughable, with their clown president, killer racist cops, massive incarceration numbers and an abject need to have wars.
Just to balance that, I met a woman from Texas just the other day as we were both shopping in a hardware store, she had a sparkling personality and talking with her was a delight.