TSA’s Frisky New Pat-Downs

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


If you’re traveling this summer and don’t want a TSA agent to see your graphic full-body scan, you might have to opt for a grope. Reports have surfaced that passengers who’ve refused to go through the TSA’s expensive and invasive body scanners have been treated to a more rigerous pat-down. “If anybody ever groped me like that in real life, I would have punched them in their nose,” one male traveler told the Boston Globe. “It was extremely invasive.. actually probing and pushing and seeing if I was concealing something in my genital area.”

The new “enhanced” pat-downs are different in that screeners are using the front of their hands to probe sensitive areas instead of the backs of their hands as they had previously. Another difference is screeners will use a sliding motion to move their hands over passengers’ bodies instead of a patting motion. As one female passenger said, screeners touched her face, hair, and underneath and between her breasts in their search for weapons. These new pat-downs are currently being used at Boston’s Logan airport and Las Vegas’s McCarran airport, but the TSA plans to roll them out nationally. And in case there was any doubt, these touchy-feely pat-downs are just for those who refuse to have their bodies scanned. If you go through a regular metal detector, one source says, you would only get the regular, back-of-hand pat-down.

I can’t say which I’d prefer less: being personally probed and prodded by a TSA agent, or having my body graphically scanned knowing the image has the potential to be saved. Despite the TSA blog’s bold declaration that “TSA has not, will not and the machines cannot store images of passengers at airports,” a lawsuit turned up evidence from DHS that the machines had indeed stored more than 2,000 images for “test purposes.” The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a motion to immediately halt TSA’s use of scanners pending an investigation, but until then, the agency’s stance is clear: get scanned or face the consequences.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate