Goosed again!

July 28, 2016 • 3:12 pm

It turns out that TSA Precheck Status doesn’t help you when you’re flying internationally, so I had to go through the entire screening process at O’Hare: shoes and belt off, computer and liquids out of laptop, and so on. And, as usual, the See You Naked Machine found those suspect Yellow Patches on me. But this time, instead of being confined to one of my buttocks, they were on my entire lower back, both buttocks, and rear thighs.

That, of course, ensured that I got a thorough groping: not just a double goosing, but a full rubdown of my thighs, front and back, all the way from the knees to the naughty bits. Oh, and a hand swab, too.

I am stymied about why my dorsal side sets of the detectors, and, of course, don’t like the gratuitous caresses at all.

So it goes. On to Poland.

62 thoughts on “Goosed again!”

      1. Yes, it was odd and light-spirited, but can you image what could have happened had I gotten offended? I can imagine things turning nasty fast.

      1. But if I wore a mask, then they’d be profiling if they patted me!

        Seriously. Me and my puffy hair and thighs were not where they should have been concentrating their SCREENING efforts.

        1. Maybe some overkill in security checks. Sam Harris talks about people they waste time on. As inept as the agents seem, there has not been a serious event on a plane in many years. I give the system credit for keeping the US skies relatively safe.

          1. Correlation is not causation. I think that it is more probable that there just weren’t (m)any attempts.

          3. Oh, and the system in place could be successfully deterring attempts, which is the intended outcome.

          4. It’s not the TSA that deserves credit for the lack of terrorist attacks. It’s my anti-terrorist pet rock that’s responsible.

            And, before you laugh, I would challenge you: what has the TSA done that is more deserving of the benefit of doubt than all that my pet rock has done?

            b&

            >

          5. They’ve X-rayed the hell out of every pet rock that could be C-4. You don’t hear about terrorists trying to get through TSA at the airports in the US. Why wouldn’t they try if the security was ineffective? Give the system the benefit of the doubt and assume it is a deterrent. The experimental would be to leave the gates open for a month and make a public announcement in advance. Then see if any planes are hijacked or blown out of the sky. Want to try?

          6. I, too, was wondering how many real terrorist attempts were actually thwarted by TSA’s security scanners and airport personnel.

          7. I haven’t looked at it closely myself but I’ve heard that TSA has a history of doing very poorly on tests in which people attempt to pass illicit items through TSA screening. For one example, here is an excerpt from a CNN article from about a year ago.

            “The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that the acting administrator for the Transportation Security Administration would be reassigned, following a report that airport screeners failed to detect explosives and weapons in nearly every test that an undercover team conducted at dozens of airports.”

            That “nearly every” is not an exaggeration. They failed 95% of the tests. I am not confident that TSA has had any significant contribution to keeping our skies safe.

            Another thing to keep in mind is that there was security screening at airports already, prior to the TSA. I don’t think there is any good evidence that the TSA has improved our safety vs the security we had before. But there is, as they say, a fuck-ton of evidence that the TSA costs a ridiculous amount of money, has a record of mistreating people, and an abysmal test record. Just so the Bush Jr administration, of the party of “small government,” could say that they were doing something.

    1. It’s an hypothesis. Would wearing baggy shorts be an informative test of the hypothesis?

      1. Next time you visit Hili, may I recommend catnip spray? It works even better than the dried herb, and WalMart sells it off the shelf for about $3/7oz bottle. All ten of my cats love it. Indeed, I spray it on the tops of Faygele’s feet and tell her it’s perfume. She loves that!

  5. Not to quibble — I fly internationally all the time with TSA Pre Check status (unless I am randomly selected to go through the regular line).

    Maybe you need Global Entry, which speeds you through passport control on your return, and automatically qualifies you for Pre Check when headed out of the US.

    1. Well, LOT airlines wouldn’t take my Precheck number when I called them. Maybe they’re just petulant or something. I’ll try it in October when I go to Singapore and Hong Kong. But yes, I should have gotten Global Entry, which includes PreCheck for only $15 more for the whole five years. I was stupid.

      1. There you go again, throwing humility gauntlets down at the god-squaddies. How many of them dare to admit to failing to game bureaucracy?

    2. I second what Ted said. I recieved TSA precheck tickets even for my Quito-Miami leg (even though there is no TSA in Quito). And my return flight was also TSA Pre-Check, and I was treated like royalty in Miami. That was American Airlines though; maybe a foreign carrier can’t be bothered with this.

    1. There’s got to be a Readers Wildlife Photo or several in that – the Lesser-spotted Yellow-arsed Ailurophile?

  8. When I was growing up, were you to tell me of a country that had an official system for bribing airport security to not gate rape you, but you were still lilely to get gate raped anyway, I would have had no doubt that you were describing the Soviet Union. And if you told me that it was the States in the future, I would assume you meant that we had lost WWIII to the Soviets.

    What the hell happened!?

    b&

  9. Have you tried moaning sensually when they touch you? Like you are really, really enjoying the gratuitous touching?

    Make them uncomfortable for a change.

    2. That was the style of Stephen Fry’s response when he was bullied at school, iirc. “Oh. I’m getting a hard on.”

      I had my left arm massaged at SAN yesterday. I didn’t even get a semi.

      /@

  11. Last three times, they have asked to pat down only my left shoulder.

    Unusual?

    Each time I flex my muscles and they are caught off guard. Maybe they are expecting flabby arms??

    If they ever went for my groin I would absolutely moan like a porn star.

  12. Dr. Coyne, do please get a real xray! There might be something there that you’d be better off knowing about than ignorning. Please?

  13. So… which presidental candidate is running on a platform of reining in the security theater and complete paranoia that’s taken over the US in the last 15 years?

    None? Then I guess Americans want to be groped.

  14. Twice now the full-body scanner has high-lighted my wrists. The last time I was asked if I was wearing cufflinks. I had on a short-sleaved shirt

    1. Might there be calcifications from decades-long chronic inflammation somewhere there? That’s the only way I know of to unknowingly get bilateral spots showing up on wrist xrays.

  15. I am genuinely wondering why you are singled out so often for these ridiculous checks. I fly not infrequently…5-6 times a year (economy), and have never been subjected to it. Every time I read another post about it I get more annoyed on your behalf – why are you such a TSA magnet?!

    1. It’s pretty poor – it does seem like its targetted and I can’t believe what they do at the TSA. There are a lot of jokes about it but really its beyond funny. I wonder if they have bad dreams about bum patting. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and all that.

  16. Calamine lotion might allay the spread of those nasty yellow splotches on your butt.

  17. If I was suspicious Jerry I might think you have been classified as a threat to America and its security because of your freewheeling, freethinking, godless ways. Who knows what idiocy prevails when they see and react to your passport and the concomitant info piped through from your FBI file?

  18. I only ever had the hair tie on the back of my head checked. The devices utilize near-infrared light to see through clothes, but places which are a bit denser (ie, where hair is bundled up) tend to set it off. I would suspect that any places with extra crumpled fabric and perhaps slight extra moisture and heat are accumulating a little extra might also set it off.

    I’m pretty sure that an astronomer could figure out a way to backwards engineer it with a simple camera at home and hack their way through. Photons! They’re magical!

  20. The sad truth is that PCC simply spent way too much of his life in the Drosophila lab.

    He has become a [drumroll…] human-fly chimera!

  22. Surely the reason for Dr Coyne’s problems are his atheism. I feel certain that all believers in a Supreme Being could pass through unhindered, similar to their entry into Heaven.

  23. I have a similar problem when traveling by commercial aircraft. Both my knees were replaced some years ago and I cannot pass through the metal detector without setting off the alarms. I am required to remove my hat, jacket, belt and shoes (despite being 78 years old and supposedly exempt for the shoes part), empty my pockets and step to the fondle footprints area. When I ask for a shoehorn so I can put my shoes on, they look at me as if I were the idiot. Believe me when I say that I have to explain what a shoehorn is.

    2. In a pinch, you can use a thin, somewhat sturdy piece of cardboard slipped into the heel of your shoe for your own heel to slide down. If you have a wife, ask her about the sort of cardboard that used to come in a package of nylons. She’ll know what to look for.

      (We old women used them even used those cardboards as dustpans, when we were young, starving students in college. That’s how thin and durable they are.)

  24. Makes you wonder if the “See You Naked” machine isn’t a total con job that just puts out random results.

  25. A helpful TSA agent suggested I pull my jeans up before I was scanned. Apparently, saggy britches show up as a “shadow.”

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