Berkeley woman misses flight when bra triggers alarm .
In the post-9/11 world of heightened airport scrutiny, Kates, like most travelers, is familiar with the drill: Take off shoes and belts, open the laptop, carry shampoo in 3 oz. bottles.
For Kates, on Sunday, though, the security check got too invasive. A big-busted woman wearing a large underwire bra, she set off the metal detector. She was pulled aside and checked by a female TSA agent with a metal-sensitive wand.
"The woman touched my breast. I said, 'You can't do that,' " Kates said. "She said, 'We have to pat you down.' I said, 'You can't treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.' "
The last time I flew I wore a tight cami (barely containing 40DDs) under my shirt instead of a bra. But lots of women fly spontaneously, can't find wireless devices that fit, or feel naked without a wired bra and dislike being fondled (IN PUBLIC). Airport security is best describe as security theatre and is a total joke. (Like how I accidentally brought an opened coke bottle through security and was told if I wanted to drink it, I'd have to go back through the line. WHAT???)
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That's crazy! Remember right after 9/11 when everyone was all gung-ho about "not changing" and not letting "them" win? How many times did people get stopped for a bra before then?
The security IS a joke. Innocent people are being stopped for no reason, other innocent people are racially profiled (did you all see the story about the American-born guy who they wouldn't let fly because he had Arabic on his shirt!?), it's a mess. And I don't feel a bit safer, just annoyed.
The job of TSA screener was created to keep people who have the skills but lack the personality and disposition to be the host or hostess at Denny's off the street.
Seriously: Do a search for "Red Team TSA" and check out how often items designed to look like bombs get past them. Meanwhile your tit-ninjitsu/boobarang gets you felt up.
It's so easy to get stuff past them too. The E-ray can't really see through the high density batteries in laptops, etc, so putting a blade in there is simple as hell. And at the PDX airport and the Sacramento airport terminal A they have those 1/4 million dollar sniffers that detect bomb residue but they are never on.
It's just the illusion of safety that makes me really mad. If these morons were actually effective then I could disagree with the ideology, but I wouldn't actually blame the TSA agents for policy. But they aren't even good at implementing the bullshit as it is. So all the hassle is for precisely dick.
We've practically got an armada of non-ferris metals at our disposal in the Developed world. Why don't bra manufacturers just make their underwires out of non-ferris (and thereby non-magnetic) metals?! I know it's possible, cause my underwires aren't magnetic cause I wore a bra yesterday when I had to go to the courthouse and didn't set off the metal detector.
Excuse the ableist language, but this is fucking retarded.
My underwire has never set of the screener.