TSA to exempt children to pat-downs. Old folks are next
TSA agent, when uniform shirts were white and not yet blue, screening a potential terrorist (not!).
Ten years and a couple of days after the 9/11 tragedy and nearly nine years and 10 months after the Transportation Security Agency was established, and after increasingly intrusive procedures, agents are finally going to have to keep their hands of people’s kids. After tests were conducted at Boston Logan International, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, Miami International, Orlando International, Houston Intercontinental and Denver International, the TSA will be instituting new procedures that will result in fewer pat-downs of children 12 and under.
Parents who have cautioned their children about “inappropriate touching” had to stand by as US government security screeners did just that and perhaps explain the contradiction of when it’s OK and when it isen’t. The TSA finally relented and is introducing new procedures to reduce, thought not likely to eliminate, pat-downs of children at airport checkpoints. Also, kids age 12 and younger will not have to remove their shoes when passing through a metal detector or full-body image scanner. If there’s a suspicious shape, the children will reportedly be allowed to pass through the devices several times before they are either cleared or physically searched.
CNN reported, “The furor over screening of children erupted in spring after a video posted on YouTube showed a 6-year-old girl being searched at New Orleans airport on April 5. The girl protests the search at first, although she complies quietly while it is under way.”
Maybe old and/or ill people like that poor 95-year-old, wheelchair-bound cancer patient who had to remove her adult diaper because it was “too dense” for the screening devices. That occurred last June (click here to read the CNN report). At that time, the TSA defended its screener after the story went viral, but the outrage over the pat-down of a 6-year-old seem to have caused the agency to change its tune. What a difference 89 years make!
I suspect many older people simply refuse to fly – my mother won’t fly anymore. While parents must take the kids along, so there’s more pressure on kid’s rules. Stupid, tho’, when yo think of all the adult ticket sales the airlines miss out on.