When Barbara Leary went through the full-body scanner at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport recently, her hip replacements set off the alarm. She was directed to another line, where she underwent a physical search by a Transportation Security Administration agent. Read more “The TSA’s new pat-downs get too personal for some”
Tag: security
What’s wrong with the TSA?
That’s a valid question, considering how the Transportation Security Administration seems to be spinning its performance lately. The agency wants you to believe the dark days of body scans and pat-downs, of liquids, gels and shoes obediently placed on the conveyor belt, are well on their way out, thanks to its vaunted new Pre-check system. And remember, there have been no successful terrorist attacks since the agency’s creation, it would hasten to add.
So why aren’t we buying it? Why are lawmakers such as Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., threatening to introduce legislation that would force TSA agents to mind their manners?
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When your credit card gets compromised at a hotel
A day later, her friend Jennifer Henderson got a call from a MasterCard representative. Her card number had also been stolen. The thieves had made a $67 charge at the same online store moments after they hit Reardon’s account.
“We had checked into the Bellagio at the same time, side by side,” says Reardon. She and Henderson believe that their credit cards were targeted while they were at the resort — most likely while they were checking in — because it was the only time when their cards were used together. Reardon says that she hadn’t used her card, a “travel-only” Amex, since a trip to Florida last summer.
Read more “When your credit card gets compromised at a hotel”
Is my 15-year-old son a terrorist?
It happened to Susan Bruce recently when she flew from Phoenix to Dallas with her husband, teenage son and daughter.
“When we got to security, my son went first in line through the X-ray machine and TSA flagged him for the hand swab test,” she remembers. “While the rest of the family was stuck on the other side of the X-ray machine, my son was pulled aside for supposedly having a positive result for explosives.”
Bruce, who lives in Dallas and is a mathematician by training and a homemaker, is certain it was a misunderstanding. Her son is no terrorist, she says. He’s a clean-cut honor student.
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The five kinds of people you meet at an airport screening area
Next time you fly, take a minute to look around at the airport screening area. You’ll see all kinds of interesting passengers, from the “get-alongs” to the dissidents to the folks who think the rules don’t apply to them.
Just last week at the crowded Orlando airport, I had a front-row ticket to a confrontation between a young woman and a TSA screener.
Young woman: “I don’t want to be X-rayed.”
Screener: “We don’t use X-rays.”
Young woman: “I don’t want to be scanned, either.”
Screener: “Then you’ll get a pat-down.”
Read more “The five kinds of people you meet at an airport screening area”