"Don't Touch My Junk!"

[PAskate]

I read about it. TSA said she shouldn't have been asked to remove it. There are also written rules about prostheses/medical devices/etc. on their website. Still no word about what constitutes the pat-down and whether they're supposed to put their hands in our underwear. Or anywhere else.

I'm also a breast cancer survivor. At my local airport (where i know all of the screeners), they confirm that there are procedures against this type of behavior. However, I have been subjected to special searches by male TSA screeners at LAX due to the compression sleeve that I must wear due to lymphadema risks. The female screener that had to do special search is telling him the whole time that it's not right and that anyone can see that there is no way that I am smuggling anything inside my compression sleeve. There are idiots everywhere. The problem is that the US has become so enamoured with security that they are forgetting that people have fundemental rights.

And before someone says that I don't have to fly, that's not a valid statement. When you work for a company that requires cross-country (or international for that matter) travel, flying is your only option. I can decide to just drive it.

[Zemgirl]

The profiling at B-G is much worse than you are aware of. (Or than I would be aware of, since as a middle-aged Jewish woman with an American passport I scoot right through the security line.) South Asians and Europeans are often asked much more searching questions than Americans, especially young Euros who might have been volunteering in the territories. And they have gotten stuck for hours if something doesn't seem right to security, missing flights and with no help getting onto the next ones.

And that doesn't even begin to describe what happens to Arabs, either with Israeli citizenship or from the territories. Our board members have had their laptops trashed, their suitcases upended in public and spilled out onto the floor, humiliating and loud questions posed publicly, been flatly forbidden to get on planes -- and these are academics with credentials, imagine what happens to Muhammed Sixpack.

I'm so torn on this subject. Profiling makes sense, but it can also lure security into a false sense of let-the-blond-grandmom-through when she's actually an Al Qaeda agent. It's so unfair to the millions of innocent Muslims and/or South Asians who fly. I don't like the full-body scan either, especially when cargo isn't being x-rayed, but I guess at the end of the day I prefer it to blatant and selective violation of civil rights that goes with profiling.

I'm well aware that my experience at Ben-Gurion is not the one my Arab friends usually have. My understanding, however, is that the extremes are far less common than just a generally unpleasant, suspicious attitude toward those who are not Jewish-Israeli. Personally - I don't think destruction of property without an extremely good reason is okay, or that humiliating searches are appropriate. I don't have an issue with more thorough questioning for some people, though - e.g. those who've come from the territories can expect to arouse some suspicion.

What I was trying to get at in my first post (and I had a hard time deciding how to phrase parts of it) is that the Ben-Gurion security model works in Israel, that it is probably not going to work in other countries, but that some things can be taken from it (e.g. the stupidity of the liquids ban being one). I wanted to avoid getting into matters that would be more appropriate in PI.

[deltask8er]

This is interesting to me. A celebrity (and felon, long ago) had bullets in his carry-on luggage. Apparently the TSA staff treated the items as if he had too much shampoo. He just gave up the bullets and got on the flight .

http://www.cleveland.com/ohio-sports...opkins_wi.html