Where will it end?
Elderly woman asked to remove adult diaper during TSA search.
A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.
Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.
Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.
Who knew that adult diapers could be so dangerous? Maybe they had visions of someone setting fire to grannies crotch?
Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said.
Wheelchairs trigger certain protocols, including pat-downs and possible swabbing for explosives, Koshetz said.
“During any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm,” she said.
Weber said she did not know whether her mother had triggered an alarm during the 45 minutes they were detained.
She said her mother was first pulled aside into a glass-partitioned area and patted down. Then she was taken to another room to protect her privacy during a more extensive search, Weber said.
Weber said she sat outside the room during the search.
She said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.
Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.
Weber said she wished there were less invasive search methods for an elderly person who is unable to walk through security gates.
“I don’t understand why they have to put them through that kind of procedure,” she said.
Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.
“TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.
I'm thinking that their alarm might be part of the problem here. Should the TSA get to determine whether a search is legal based on if a black box tweets at them? But much larger than that is the willingness (with absolutely no apparent hesitation) these people have to do demeaning and disgusting things to fellow citizens.
More opinion below.
Where does it end? According to the standard of one TSA official much much further down the line:
“TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.
I wonder if she realizes that we live in a society based on freedoms? I wonder if she even approves of a open society? Based on that quote, I would say she has her foot on the slippery slope of roadside checks because terrorist "might exploit vulnerabilities" in or Interstate Hwy system.
I think what she really meant to say was that the Fourth Amendment is a vulnerability that terrorist might exploit. I guess we can just do away with that one since it makes it harder to stop terrorists.
At this rate we will be able to do away with at least half of the Bill of Rights by the end of the year.
Just for a reminder, the 4th Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Maybe that should be posted on the wall in every airport screening checkpoint along with the poster telling me not to talk about bombs. The TSA it appears to have no sense of irony, they might not have a problem with it.