TSA bullshit

[gfish]

The explosion of concern about body scanners and pat-downs is leaving me with mixed emotions. I'm against them, of course, because I'm against security theater. They're guarding against a kind of threat (underwear bomb) that didn't work in the first place. We can't guarantee 100% safety of any kind, and we need to face that like adults and have a reasoned cost-benefit discussion. Even if we make air travel compeltely safe from terrorists, they'll just attack someplace else.

I went through one last month. It was a bit weird to think about, but then I shrugged it off. And I once had a fairly intrusive pat-down, which was mostly only embarrassing because it turned out to be the foil wrapper on a forgotten condom which set off the metal detector in the first place. But this isn't the kind of thing I can judge just on my own reactions. The descriptions of what the process feels like to sexual assault victims is what we need to be thinking about here. And the anecdotal evidence that the pat-downs are being used in a punitive way is pretty clear at this point. The idea that we have a governmental agency with a policy of committing minor sexual assaults in order to coerce people into using expensive (profitable for lobbyists!), privacy-intruding devices that serve little practical purpose is obscene. And the video of a little kid being screened... that was pretty horrible.

But the backlash also feels very fake in many ways. The health risks of the scanners are (predictably) being blown up far out of proportion. If you don't like ionizing radiation, you shouldn't be flying in the first place. And despite the very real mental trauma concerns, all the attention is being focused on self-righteous "don't touch my junk" guy. The crypto-homophobic side to all of it is very off-putting. Hardly the first time society has sent the message "sexual assault is pretty bad, we guess, unless it's male-on-male, then it's the worst thing ever omg", but still. Ew.

I'm also very uncomfortable with some of the suggested reactions, like wearing a kilt commando style or faking an orgasm. I don't think turning something that might be sexual assault into definite sexual assault in the other direction is morally defensible. That's all thi is, trying to guarantee that the agent is sexually uncomfortable or humiliated. Ugh. And, again, there is a lot of homophobic undertones here. "Ha, I'll make that guy touch *balls*, what could be worse than that?" I like the idea of mass opting out of the scanners, to just overwhelm them with numbers, but there can't be anything punitive about action taken. In the end, most of the agents are just poor schmucks with crappy jobs dealing with incredibly entitled people all day. Some (probably well above background rates, as with any position of power) are power-hungry jerks, but not all.

More fundamentally, if we're committing ourselves to the path of adding new security procedures against every possible threat, no matter what the cost or side-effects, we need to be very clear about where that leads. There has already been at least one unsuccessful suicide bombing attempt (well, the suicide part worked, anyway) with rectal explosives. The only way to screen for those would be full x-ray screening and cavity searches. I'd ask if we're prepared for that, but I sadly think we kind of are. Ten years ago, no, the idea would have been preposterous and Orwellian. But so would banning liquids, requiring shoes and belts be removed for the screening, strong-arming people into creepy nude pics and federal agents feeling up little kids.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

If you're forthright about the fact that you're going to make your being groped uncomfortable for them, I don't see the problem. They can always opt-out — by the time you're about to be groped, you cannot. You cannot revoke consent and leave without facing threats and intimidations that, according to TSA officials, probably won't amount to anything, but which will be used to try to scare you, which is an unacceptable bullying tactic.

There's no reason to assume that the TSA cares about the comfort of the masses, especially when opinion polls show that people don't give a shit and observing the media suggests that people only care about the bullshit reasons. There may be no moral superiority in making someone uncomfortable in exchange for making you uncomfortable, but it doesn't seem like assault since they can always turn it over to someone who doesn't mind, which is an option that you don't have. Trying to trick them into getting squicked or injured is probably wrong, but we're talking about a situation in which if you are wearing a tight skirt you can be required to go to a room and remove it for them to be groped more directly, and you cannot refuse consent to that at that point. Even if you go along with the scanners in the face of the threats of punishment to the contrary, they can still subject you to a pat-down which you cannot refuse. Responding to coercion by emphasizing uncomfortable elements seems reasonable to me. Why should you make things pleasant for the TSA, to concede to their implicit request that you not make it gross or sexual, when they will not respect your bodily integrity, gender identity, etc.? It seems to me that it takes an enormous amount of privilege to say that making someone uncomfortable who can opt-out is worse than making somebody uncomfortable who cannot, solely on the basis that one person is doing their job and that the other person is trying to exercise their right to free movement without having to sacrifice entirely other rights to bullying, intimidation and a government policy that is disproportionately uncomfortable for gender, sexual and religious power minorities.

Many TSA screeners are union (perhaps all of them are?) and it seems to me that the TSA is more likely to respond to union pressure than to what appears to them to be a small number of whiny people. Making union members uncomfortable with the screening process seems like a legitimate way to exert pressure on the TSA.

(I am speaking from personal experience that TSA screeners can refuse to pat one down and ask somebody else to do it. I don't have any reason to believe that that has changed.)

[caladri.livejournal.com]

To put it another way: what's the difference between this form of non-violent protest and gay men kissing in public, nude protests, etc.? Using the discomfort of an oppressive regime that has the power to change whether they are uncomfortable to effect greater freedom for an oppressed group is fairly well-established. At its extremes, there's things like self-immolation. Protest using discomfort is pretty widespread (see also: what PETA and anti-abortion and anti-vivisection campaigners do, although there are perhaps arguments against discomfort caused by violence versus discomfort caused by sexuality, but I'm not sure I really buy them, even as much as I would like to.) And in this case, the TSA screener can choose to not touch you. You cannot choose to not be touched. Which makes it even more passive than any of the public forms of protest I mentioned.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

The fact that the TSA agents can opt-out while you can't is a very important point. I was thinking about those tactics as surprises, as that was how they were presented, not in the context of warning the agent.