CNN contributor who wanted to urinate on dead Afghans complains about TSA pat down

Get short URL email story to a friendprint version Published: 15 October, 2012, 23:25 TAGS: Sex, USA, Security, TSA Screenshot from youtube.com @Dana Loesch Conservative radio host and CNN contributor Dana Loesch says she was molested by TSA agents over the weekend when a routine security pat-down ended with federal agents repeatedly touching her vagina all the while refusing her a public screening. Loesch, 34, says the incident occurred on Sunday at the Phoenix International Airport in Arizona as she prepared to board for a flight. After passing through a primary screening without incident, Loesch says she was told she tested positive for explosive residue and required a secondary pat-down behind closed doors. “TSA said I was covered in explosives, took me to a private room and touched my vagina. So how was your day?” the commentator writes from her @DLoesch Twitter account. Loesch’s husband managed to catch some of his wife’s encounter with Transportation Security Administration agents on camera in a clip that has quickly accumulated thousands of hits on YouTube. On the page where she’s uploaded the footage, Loesch goes further into detail about the day’s event and the “enhanced screening” that she describes as “pressing down repeatedly upon the front of my vaginal area.” “It began after I was ‘randomly selected’ for an additional screening which consisted of swabbing my hands with paper strips. The strips were then taken to a machine for analysis and an alarm sounded. TSA agents determined that I had a suspicious, possibly explosive, residue on my hands and required another, ‘enhanced screening,’” she writes. “They performed the regular pat-down and then the agent informed me that she would be using the front of her hands to "sweep" my groin. She pressed and swept across my crotch three times horizontally and three times vertically. In any other circumstance this would be sexual assault.” Loesch insists that she asked twice for a public screening but was denied both times, and on Twitter she writes she recited the agency’s official rules “as per their website” yet was still refused. Even still, Loesch says she doesn’t have a bone to pick per se with the TSA agents that subjected her to what she equates to sexual molestation. “The agents themselves were friendly and smiled, yet I was still denied a public screening and no witness of my own present for the screening itself (a second agent was in the room at the time). I had no reason to be angry with the agents themselves, yet I was angry, and still am, at the regulations which require them to routinely violate men, women, and children in the name of a false sense of security,” she writes. Even if there are no hard feelings with the agents involved, Loesch writes on Twitter that she intends on filing an official complaint with the TSA and asks others subjected to similar accounts to do the same. “It only continues because we allow it,” she writes. Back on YouTube, though, Loesch breaks-down with a health sampling of snark the TSA’s sometimes overzealous actions on account of counter-terrorism. “After concluding that I wasn’t a terrorist hiding weapons in my vagina, the TSA agents allowed me to go,” she writes. Just months earlier, however, Loesch had a much more open mind about what’s allowed for the sake of security. When video footage was leaked in January of US troops urinating on the corpses of dead Afghan fighters, Loesch chimed-in on her radio show by saluting the soldiers, saying, “I’d drop trou and do it too” and suggesting the guilty persons were worth of receiving “a million ‘cool points.’” “Come on people, this is a war,” she said at the time. And rightfully so: it’s the very same War on Terror that spawned the Department of Homeland Security and, consequentially, the TSA. In the name of war, however, lines must be drawn, and, apparently, airport security screenings are on the side that warrants speaking up about. But the desecration of slain humans? Cool points galore. =============== Scan scam? Full-body scan-maker denies faking test amid TSA probe Get short URL Link copied to clipboardemail story to a friend print version Published: 17 November, 2012, 11:40 TAGS: Conflict, Human rights, Terrorism, USA, Security, Transport, TSA A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner, being trialled by Manchester Airport, during a photocall at the airport, in Manchester(Reuters / Phil Noble) A US legislator says Rapiscan, the maker of controversial body-scanners used at American airports, may have falsified its software test results. The company denies the allegations, saying it’s cooperating with the TSA probe into the matter. The test made by a third party was to evaluate the producer’s attempt to address privacy issues with the machines. The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole on November 13, according to a Bloomberg report. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests. The company denied the allegations on Thursday, saying that in couldn’t have manipulated the testing because it was controlled by the government. “At no time did Rapiscan Systems falsify test data or engage in any fraudulent conduct,” said Ajay Mehra, president of Rapiscan Systems, in a statement. At a Thursday hearing before the committee Rogers was questioning John Sanders, assistant administrator for TSA’s Office of Security Capabilities. Sanders said the agency has no evidence that tests were manipulated. “At this point we don’t know what has occurred,” Sanders said. “We are in contact with the vendor. We are working with them to get to the bottom of it.” Rapiscan machines use backscatter radiation to detect objects concealed beneath clothes. The company is one of the two vendors supplying full-body scanners under a contract with the TSA. The other, L-3 Communications, uses a different type of technology for the same purpose. US authorities accelerated introduction of full-body scanners in 2010 following an alleged attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. This was met with a publicity backlash, as privacy advocates and passengers protested against the revealing images produced by the scanners. Activists said being subjected to the machines equated to a strip search. In a bid to quell the outcry, the TSA asked the producers to adjust the scanners so that a generic outline of the body was displayed in place of the actual image of the person being searched. L-3 Communications managed to do this while Rapiscan failed, Bloomberg says. Instead the TSA places operators of the backscatter scanner in a separate room, where the feedback cannot be seen by the public. If an operator notices anything suspicious, he or she communicates with officers at the checkpoint via radio and asks for further screening. Recently the agency said it was moving backscatter machines from big airports to smaller ones to address the extra time they take for screening. But eventually it moved 91 units to a warehouse instead of redeploying them. As a result, Sanders told the committee, the same number of lines can now process an additional 180,000 more passengers per day. They will stay there until the privacy software issue is resolved, he said. At present the TSA has 174 backscatter machines, according to David Castelveter, a TSA spokesman. Rapiscan has a contract to produce 500 for the agency at a cost of about $180,000 each. The TSA believes backscatter technology is still effective in screening for suspicious objects. =============== Scan scam? Full-body scan-maker denies faking test amid TSA probe Get short URL Link copied to clipboardemail story to a friend print version Published: 17 November, 2012, 11:40 TAGS: Conflict, Human rights, Terrorism, USA, Security, Transport, TSA A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner, being trialled by Manchester Airport, during a photocall at the airport, in Manchester(Reuters / Phil Noble) A US legislator says Rapiscan, the maker of controversial body-scanners used at American airports, may have falsified its software test results. The company denies the allegations, saying it’s cooperating with the TSA probe into the matter. The test made by a third party was to evaluate the producer’s attempt to address privacy issues with the machines. The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole on November 13, according to a Bloomberg report. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests. The company denied the allegations on Thursday, saying that in couldn’t have manipulated the testing because it was controlled by the government. “At no time did Rapiscan Systems falsify test data or engage in any fraudulent conduct,” said Ajay Mehra, president of Rapiscan Systems, in a statement. At a Thursday hearing before the committee Rogers was questioning John Sanders, assistant administrator for TSA’s Office of Security Capabilities. Sanders said the agency has no evidence that tests were manipulated. “At this point we don’t know what has occurred,” Sanders said. “We are in contact with the vendor. We are working with them to get to the bottom of it.” Rapiscan machines use backscatter radiation to detect objects concealed beneath clothes. The company is one of the two vendors supplying full-body scanners under a contract with the TSA. The other, L-3 Communications, uses a different type of technology for the same purpose. US authorities accelerated introduction of full-body scanners in 2010 following an alleged attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. This was met with a publicity backlash, as privacy advocates and passengers protested against the revealing images produced by the scanners. Activists said being subjected to the machines equated to a strip search. In a bid to quell the outcry, the TSA asked the producers to adjust the scanners so that a generic outline of the body was displayed in place of the actual image of the person being searched. L-3 Communications managed to do this while Rapiscan failed, Bloomberg says. Instead the TSA places operators of the backscatter scanner in a separate room, where the feedback cannot be seen by the public. If an operator notices anything suspicious, he or she communicates with officers at the checkpoint via radio and asks for further screening. Recently the agency said it was moving backscatter machines from big airports to smaller ones to address the extra time they take for screening. But eventually it moved 91 units to a warehouse instead of redeploying them. As a result, Sanders told the committee, the same number of lines can now process an additional 180,000 more passengers per day. They will stay there until the privacy software issue is resolved, he said. At present the TSA has 174 backscatter machines, according to David Castelveter, a TSA spokesman. Rapiscan has a contract to produce 500 for the agency at a cost of about $180,000 each. The TSA believes backscatter technology is still effective in screening for suspicious objects. ================