Note: The woman in this photo is not the author of the post below.

The following was sent to me in an e-mail. This comes from the mother of one of my Twitter friends. It is unedited:

I’m a frequent flying consultant in NC with clients all over the US-also a senior citizen with hip replacements. Since 9/11 I’ve undergone hundreds of manual screenings by TSA.

Nov 15 I flew to Austin TX on a business trip. I had not heard of the new “enhanced pat down” procedures so was shocked when the agent began without warning aggressively rubbing my body with the front of her hands -breasts, waist, buttocks, and legs with 4 firm touches to the genital area once sliding up each leg from the back, once on each leg from the front.

When I protested, I was told, Either this “pat down” (the media need to make it clear, there is no patting – never has been – only rubbing, only now much more aggressively) or the body scanner which was not at my security station. When I questioned the risk with the scanners, I was told I could “choose another means of travel.”

Since my clients are far away, that’s not an option. I would have to close my business if I could not fly. The media should make it clear: If you are anywhere else in the US and a stranger touches you in this fashion, it would be assault. The new procedure is not just a little “enhancement,” (government Doublespeak) but a major shift to an aggressive body search.

Also patting is the friendly, affectionate touch one might give a baby or a beloved dog. TSA has never patted. Even though the prior procedures were offensive I submitted to them believing it was the best way to keep us all safe. The new procedures are more than offensive-they are criminal.

Even before the change, a TSA agent after wanding me asked me to step into a private area. When I asked the purpose, she said she had “felt something unusual” in my bra. (The underwire and metal adjusting clips for the straps always set off the wand.) I protested but protesting or questioning TSA always results in a belligerent response. She insisted that I go to a private area with her and another female agent and lift my shirt so that she could examine the “unusual” something.

The other agent probed and said she felt nothing unusual but the first agent would not clear me to fly until I had lifted my shirt so that she could see my bra. The “something unusual” was the end of my bra strap-a 1 inch strip of polyester.

America, now don’t you feel safer?

On our return trip from Austin Nov 17 I was once again subjected to this assault. Austin has no body scanners. This time I requested that my husband join us so that he could witness what the agent was doing. While her search was just as aggressive and invasive as the one in Charlotte, it was quite different in technique. I have experienced great variation in the manual body search techniques.

This time I asked the agent what would happen if they searched a woman passenger and felt a thick sanitary napkin or Depends. She looked uncomfortable with my question, but said “I’d have to ask her to go back and remove it and come back through security.” I persisted. “So you’d make a woman who was menstruating go take off her bloody napkin and come through security, possibly soiling herself?” “Yes,” she said, “but that hasn’t happened.” I persisted.

“And you’d make an elderly woman or man go remove their Depends and come back through security, probably wetting themselves before you’d let them board?” She hesitated, flushed, and said, “Yes.” TSA. Keeping America safe from menstruating women and incontinent senior citizens.

Janet Napolitano tried to reassure us that the aggressive body searches are done by a person of the same gender, and that we can always request a private screening. My response is that assault is assault no matter who does it, and I don’t want a private screening unless I’m forced to by a TSA agent because if my human rights are going to be violated, I want as many witnesses as possible. The last thing I want is to be violated in private by a government agent, with no witnesses except another government agent.

To all those who protested “big government run amok” in the last election, this is the
worst of big government.

It is important to note that these screeners are low-wage, unskilled, poorly trained people who have been given enormous power over the basic human rights of Americans, with no
experience, insight, or skill on how to use that power with the great care that it demands.

Unlike health care professionals or even law-enforcement officers, they do not receive years of training and mentoring, and they are not screened for judgment and sensitivity or anything like customer relations skills.

For once I agree with Charles Krauthammer (11/18/10): “We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish.

This has nothing to do with safety – 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling – when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and
universally known.

So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.” And make a cancer survivor remove her prosthetic breast. And break a man’s colostomy bag.

And make a woman remove her skirt.

And probe a grandmother’s bra.

And make a menstruating woman and incontinent grandpa soil themselves.

And traumatize a rape victim by having a uniformed official probe her
genitals.

There has to be a better solution. A cleared flier’s list, perhaps. I once was cleared to work on site at the nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge and Savannah River. But I’m not cleared to board a plane.

We’ll never make flying 100 percent safe, and we’ll never come up with a perfect screening process, but we have to find a better way. This “enhanced” process is handing the terrorists a great victory – the brutal stripping of our human dignity and human rights.