[Scan-DC] American airport staff admits racial profiling

[~Bill]

Many Airports are still in the CLR
172.9000 as well as multiple Low Power simplex (P25 and Analog Ops)
http://mt-fedfiles.blogspot.com/p/tsa-frequency-updates.html


Bill - N1KUG
Boston, Mass
Cruise Ship Frequencies
http://scanmaritime.com/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: scan-dc-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:scan-dc-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Alan Henney
Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2014 11:47 PM
To: Scan DC
Subject: [Scan-DC] American airport staff admits racial profiling


Interesting comments about the TSA radio channel.  Has anybody been able to
hear TSA still?  Last I tried, it had gone encrypted.


The Sunday Guardian (India)

February 8, 2014 Saturday

American airport staff admits racial profiling

LENGTH: 613 words

DATELINE: London 

London, Feb. 8 -- Millions of passengers have long suspected it. Now their
suspicions have been confirmed. US airport security staff routinely stare,
and smirk, at images of naked passengers on full body scanners. The Daily
Telegraph reports that John Harrington, a former US Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) officer from 2007 to 2013, alleges that until 2010
passengers were targeted on the basis of their nationality. 

Writing on the website Politico, Harrington said: "The (full-body scanners)
were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden
explosives and guns. Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight
people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Women who'd had
mastectomies were easy to discern - their chests showed up on our screens as
dull, pixellated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in
the crotch area." Sometimes, a security offer would "identify a passenger as
female, only to have the officers out on the checkpoint floor radio back
that it was actually a man. All the old, crass stereotypes about race and
genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels." TSA staff
developed a special vocabulary: "Alfalfa" means an attractive female
passenger while "retaliatory wait time" is what happens "when a TSA officer
doesn't like your attitude. There are all sorts of ways a TSA officer can
subtly make you wait longer  to get through security - the punitive
possibilities are endless, and there are many tricks in the screener's bag."

But Harrington claims most TSA officers "felt the agency's day-to-day
operations represented an abuse of public trust," saying "it was a job that
had me patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants
as part of the post-9/11 airport security show." On one occasion, Harrington
"had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home
from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men
in the group - a young, decorated soldier. He was in a wheelchair, both legs
lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk
again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of
national security."

Harrington admitted that until 2010 "All TSA officers worked with a secret
... Selectee Passport list" consisting of 12 countries "that automatically
triggered enhanced passenger screening." Harrington memorised the list "like
a little poem": Syria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Cuba,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and North Korea. Passengers from these
nations "were automatically pulled aside for full-body pat-downs and had
their luggage examined with a fine-toothed comb." The list is striking for
the countries it omits; the list "was purely political, of course, with
diplomacy playing its role as always. There was no Saudi Arabia or Pakistan
on a list of states historically known to harbour, aid and abet terrorists."
It was mainly Middle Easterners who faced "special screening" because most
TSA staff "didn't know Algeria from a medical condition." He added, "Each
day I had to look into the eyes of passengers in niqabs and thawbs
undergoing full-body pat-downs, ha  ving been guilty of nothing besides
holding passports from the wrong nations."

But do full body scanners, which cost "about $150,000 a pop" work? This was
the question one TSA officer asked their instructor. The instructor
shrugged. "They're ****," he replied.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from The Sunday Guardian. For
any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement,
please contact Editor at htsyndication at hindustantimes.com
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