Posted on August 26th, 2008 by
Suetonius
In the quest to keep al-Qaeda from flying the otherwise friendly skies, the Transportation Safety Authority is making sure that large-breasted women are thoroughly screened before allowed onto airplanes:
OAKLAND — When Berkeley resident Nancy Kates arrived at Oakland International Airport to board JetBlue flight 472, she thought she was heading off on a routine journey to visit her mother in Boston. Instead she ended up in a standoff with Transportation Safety Administration officials over her bra.
In the post-Sept. 11 world of heightened airport scrutiny, Kates, like most travelers, is familiar with the drill: Take off shoes and belts, open the laptop, carry shampoo in 3-ounce bottles.
For Kates, on Sunday, though, the security check got too invasive. A big-busted woman wearing a large underwire bra, she set off the metal detector. She was pulled aside and checked by a female TSA agent with a metal-sensitive wand.
“The woman touched my breast. I said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” Kates said. “She said, ‘We have to pat you down.’ I said, ‘You can’t treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.’ ”
Kates asked to see a supervisor and then the supervisor’s supervisor. He told her that underwire bras were the leading item that set off the metal detectors, Kates said.
…
The supervisor told her she had the choice of submitting to a pat-down in a private room or not flying. Kates offered a third alternative, to take off her bra and try again, which the TSA accepted.
“They tried to humiliate me and I was not going to be humiliated over this,” Kates said. “If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn’t have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear.”
So she went to the rest room, then through the security line a second time. Walking through the airport braless can be embarrassing for a large-chested woman, not to mention uncomfortable. The metal detector didn’t beep on the second time through, but then officials decided to go through Kates’ carry-on luggage, she said.
Ok. Making her get out of line and walk to the bathroom–probably shoeless, ew– is bad enough. But then making her wait again (as she has missed her flight because of TSA imbecility) as they rifle through her possessions? What, was the otherwise sufficient X-ray conveyor suddenly no longer capable to detect any metal (or other) contraband in it? (You know, just in case she was carrying a Tech-9 in her bountiful bosom.)
Thankfully, not all of the TSA is as ridiculous across the board:
Kates said that although she flies about once a month, the only other time her bra has set off alarms in an airport was while she was being “wanded” in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When she explained to the security agent that the wand was picking up the metal in her bra, she said, that was the end of the matter and she was allowed to go on her way.
Next time, just make her jump up and down and let the woman catch her flight.
Via Boing Boing.
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