......... America's Funniest Airport Screening Videos Funny or ridiculous? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
America's Funniest Airport Screening Videos
Funny or ridiculous?
from MJ Goyings: This article is entitled America's Funniest Airport Screening videos ... but I'd say it should be the most "ridiculous" instead of funny. There are 4 videos on the site. The third is the now infamous "Don't touch my junk." It's 12 minutes long and essentially an "audio" (not a video) because the camera is pointed at a wall.
by Robery Mackey
New York Times
November 24, 2010
.
TSA Pat-Down of a 3 Year Old Boy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just in time for the holidays, a new genre of home movie is sweeping the nation, or at least YouTube: the bizarre security checkpoint pat-down video. Fueled by hysteria over new screening techniques at America's airports, an informal competition seems to have started, the aim of which is to film the funniest, or most outrageous, or most outrageously funny example of over-reach, or under-reach, by an employee of the Transportation Security Administration.
The genre has taken a couple of years to evolve — as this clip, sardonically titled “I Feel Safe Now” that shows a young girl being subjected to intensive screening in 2007, illustrates:
.
I Feel Safe Now
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still, it took the advent of newly invasive pat-downs this year — and perhaps the improved video-recording abilities of cellphones — to really fix in the nation's mind the idea that uncomfortable airport screening experiences are veins of rich comedy and outrage just waiting to be mined.
A review of the evidence suggest that the T.S.A. might share at least part of the blame for the new popularity of this sort of gotcha citizen journalism. Earlier this month, a libertarian activist named Meg McLain claimed — in a radio interview heard more than 800,000 times on YouTube — that she had been subjected to harassment and handcuffed to a chair at an airport in Fort Lauderdale for refusing to go through a scanner. She explained later that she had a philosophical objection to the new screening machines: “For the government to require you be photographed naked in order to travel is invasive and dehumanizing."
Ms. McLain, who says that she is part of a movement of 20,000 “liberty activists,” then insisted that the government's video was “misleading.”
The next day a passenger posted the YouTube clip, embedded at the top of this post, of his 3-year-old son's “ridiculous” pat-down.
Two days later, another passenger, John Tyner, turned on the video camera on his phone before going through a security checkpoint at San Diego International Airport and so captured his own wisecrack to a T.S.A. agent who was preparing to give him a pat-down: “If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested.”
.
TSA Screening - Teminal 2 - "If you touch my junk .."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although Mr. Tyner only posted that video on his blog 11 days ago, the phrase is already so deeply lodged in the national consciousness that it might require some sort of surgery to have it removed.
A week later, this video, of what the person who shot it described as a young boy being “strip-searched” by the T.S.A. at Salt Lake City International Airport went viral:
.
Young Boy Strip Searched by TSA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many are coming to their own conclusions about what's happening in the video which is now perched at the top of the Drudge report and being linked to in many other blogs and tweets. We looked into this to find out what happened.
On November 19, a family was traveling through a T.S.A. checkpoint at the Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC). Their son alarmed the walk through metal detector and needed to undergo secondary screening. The boy's father removed his son's shirt in an effort to expedite the screening. After our T.S.O. completed the screening, he helped the boy put his shirt back on. That's it. No complaints were filed and the father was standing by his son for the entire procedure.
It should be mentioned that you will not be asked to and you should not remove clothing (other than shoes, coats and jackets) at a TSA checkpoint. If you're asked to remove your clothing, you should ask for a supervisor or manager.
That seems not to have quenched the public's desire to record, or if necessary provoke, outrageous screening experiences. So, on Sunday a woman who describes herself as a “sex worker/pornographer” filmed herself stripping down to her underwear for her pat-down at an airport in Seattle. On Tuesday, a man proudly recorded video of himself proving that he had “successfully navigated a T.S.A. security checkpoint in a Speedo swimsuit at the Salt Lake City International Airport,” with a slogan about sticking it to “Big Sis,” on his naked back.
Where will it end? There's no telling. But one journalist who has written extensively about the apparent absurdity of the T.S.A., Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, said on the Madeleine Brand Show on Tuesday that there is a real, if little-appreciated, danger in the transformation of airport security checkpoints into places people laugh — and it might be added, film — their way through. The security agents are, after all, looking for signs that someone attempting to pass through to a gate might be a terrorist. People approaching those parts of airports with the aim of recording, or staging, an incident that could led them to viral fame, are perhaps not helping the agents whose job it is to save their lives.
To reinforce the danger of treating all this as a laughing matter, Mr. Goldberg also pointed out on his blog this week that there is still one excellent target at every airport in America for a terrorist who would like to kill as many people as possible: the tightly-packed lines of passengers waiting to go through security checkpoints.
