Flight Attendants Outraged Over Intrusive Patdowns

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
Nov. 10, 2010

Despite a claim by the Transport Security Administration that its employees are not sexually assaulting passengers, a flight attendants union with 2,000 members has voiced its outrage over “invasive pat-downs” recently implemented by the TSA.

“We’re getting calls daily about peoples’ experiences, our members are concerned,” Deborah Volpe, Vice President of the Association of Flight Attendants Local 66, told ABC 15 in Phoenix, Arizona. Volpe said the union is offering advice to its flight attendants.

ABC 15 reports that union email informs flight attendants if they opt out of using the body scanner through security and are required to undergo a pat-down to ask the pat-down be conducted in a private area with a witness. “We don’t want them in uniform going through this enhanced screening where their private areas are being touched in public,” said Volpe. “They actually make contact with the genital area.”

In addition to voicing their concern with the union, some flight attendants have contacted the ACLU.

The outrage of flight attendants follows that of commercial pilots who have protested both naked body scanners and intrusive pat-downs. “Pilots are piping mad over the options, saying the full-body scanners emit dangerous levels of radiation and that the alternative public patdown is disgraceful for a pilot in uniform. Some pilots have said they felt so violated after a patdown, they were unfit to fly,” reports ABC News.

Captain Dave Bates, the head of Allied Pilots Association, wrote an email to pilots suggesting they forgo naked body scanners and the humiliation of a public patdown. “In my view, it is unacceptable to submit to one in public while wearing the uniform of a professional airline pilot,” Bates said.

On Monday, the head of the US Airways Pilots Association, Captain Mike Cleary, said the new procedures have both the public and pilots up in arms. “These changes are far reaching, intrusive and have been implemented almost overnight, leaving little time for groups who are adversely affected to form a response,” said Cleary.

He told ABC News about the experience of one U.S. Airways pilot who was so traumatized by a patdown, he is now unable to function as a crewmember. “The words this pilot used to describe the incident included ‘sexual molestation,’ and in the aftermath of trying to recover, this pilot reported that he had literally vomited in his own driveway while contemplating going back to work and facing the possibility of a similar encounter with the TSA,” Cleary said.

The procedures are also a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. “All this is a gross violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, of course. It’s also demeaning and (intentionally) humiliating to air travelers. In addition, the use of naked body scanners on children violates child porn laws,” writes Mike Adams of Natural News.

“The TSA, through its groping of passengers and the capturing of their naked body images, is guilty of committing numerous felony crimes. If a security guard at a grocery store, for example, groped little children with his fingers and took ‘naked body scanner’ pictures of customers, he would be arrested as a sex crime offender,” Adams continues. “So why are we letting our own federal government commit sex crimes against us when we’d be thrown in prison for the same lewd behavior?”

Addendum

Meanwhile, the corporate media is engaged in a full court press to convince people they have no choice but to submit to government molestation and/or a pornographic naked body scanner with its dangerous radiation.

On Tuesday, Bill O’Reilly said we have no choice but to submit or “hitchhike.” He said he would submit to a naked body scanner instead of allowing TSA minimum wage goons to grope his genitalia.

Especially disgusting is the reaction of Kimberly Guilfoyle who reacted with indignation that anybody would actually resist submitting to the government.