mokudekiru

There’s a lot of rage on the internet these days about the new TSA screening procedures at major airports. I wanted to share my experience & groping story to give you one more data point, and encourage my friends also to choose groping by the TSA over body scanners next time you fly.

Why Opt Out?
In case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the deal. The TSA is using X-ray Backscatter and Millimeter Wave Screening Machines at major airports. There are many reasons people are against these machines, including not being into:
– getting cancer
– being seen naked
– new rules being sprung on travelers without explanation
– the fact that Michael Chertoff, who pushed the security policy that put these scanners in place, is personally profiting from it

So your only other option (the one that they never tell you about at the airport) is to opt out. You do this by saying “I opt out” in exactly those words when the TSA agent tells you to step up to the x-ray or millimeter wave machine (which look, for the record, like they’re right out of an evil sci-fi dystopian futuristic movie… it’s all very Minority-Report-esque).

My TSA Groping Experience
So I was flying from ORD->SJC on Friday. This was the first time I flew directly out of an airport with the Backscatter/MM-Wave machines (they aren’t at the smaller airport, so presumably the terrorists who want to circumvent these EXTRA-secure new machines can just fly out of podunk-USA and then catch a connecting flight at destruction destination of choice).

Anyway, I noticed the security lines were longer and slower than usual. The TSA agents were directing some people into the X-ray machines, and some to the good old-fashioned metal detector. When it was my turn in line, a female TSA agent directed me towards the X-ray machine, and I said “I opt out.” She got out her little radio thing and announced, “We’ve got an opt-out.” Yep, just like everyone else on the internet said.

They took me through the machine (which they said was off while I was walking through it), and into the area where your bags come out of the x-ray machine. I stood with my shoes off still and my arms out on a little mat and a different female TSA agent came and did the infamous pat-down, in rubber gloves. She seemed to be slightly uncomfortable with it. Apparently my pants and shirt were tight enough that she didn’t need to go inside my clothes, though she did ask if there was something in my pocket (there wasn’t, it was just scrunched up because my pants were tight and I was sitting on a bus for 4 hours beforehand). She did touch pretty much everywhere on my body, including my boobs (mostly right above and the underside though, clearly trying to avoid making it into a bona-fide boob grab) and up the inside of my legs, very briefly (most of the time was spent on boobs, around the pocket/hip areas, and ankles, where my jeans were a bit scrunchy).

In total, it lasted about a minute or so, and was actually relatively painless from my perspective. I did not feel sexually assaulted, or like I was in a medical/gynecological exam. And it was nothing that all-girls school in Japan didn’t prepare me for.

I was, however, the ONLY person to opt out, out of everyone I saw ahead of me in line (around 30 people or so).

Despite the TSA’s attempts to make you feel bad / discourage you from opting out (the “we’ve got an opt-out” line, etc.), I did feel like choosing the opt-out and getting groped was actually interfering with their day and their procedures on a micro-level. To protest and interfere on a macro-level is the point of things like National Opt-Out Day (November 24), and Loopt’s Touched by the TSA iPod Touch Giveaway.

So I would choose the groping again over being zapped, and I encourage anyone who is considering opting out to go for it. While I’m sure your own personal groping experience will vary widely based on which TSA agent is doing the feel-up, it’s not as traumatic as the John Tyner internet saga may indicate.