TSA Body Searches A Three-Year Old Girl

Following up on James Joyner’s post from earlier today, I give you this video showing a three-year old girl being body searched at the Chattanooga airport:

TSA Screener Accosting 3 Year Old Child at Security Checkpoint from RonPaul Fan on Vimeo.

I’m not saying that children who fly shouldn’t be subject to security screening, but do they really need to be treated like this?

Ed Morrissey put its best, I think:

If we’re mugging random three-year-olds to provide security to air travel, I’d say we need to rethink our approach.

FILED UNDER: National Security, Terrorism, ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. john personna says:

    In the best of all possible worlds, the terrorists would be sure we searched three year old girls, but in fact we never would.

  2. Michael says:

    The TSA are a bunch of fascistic jack-booted goons.

  3. Nikki says:

    As a mother, I’ve told my children to scream if someone touches them inappropriately or if they were not comfortable being touched. Now, because of the government saying we have to be politically correct, we cannot have RACIAL PROFILING, so we are ALL subjected to being searched, including our children. WTH !!!!!!!!!! This country is going to HELL because of this kind of nonsense. We know who to check and it’s certainly not OUR CHILDREN.

  4. James says:

    Power: More Government Power, this the the PC model.

    There are other methods.

    Hope your like the power.

    James

  5. MarkedMan says:

    Wow. Nikki. I’m glad you know who to search. And you’re right, there have been a fair number of cases of non-white, non-christian (oh what the heck, lets just call them muslim). Of course, it appears to be a white Christian male who targeted schools last week in Florida after listening to a crazy right wing radio host. And the Anthrax terrorist was a white middle aged man. And Timothy McVeigh was fundamentalist Christian, wait for it: White male. And the guy who flew his private plane into the IRS building a couple years ago, oh wait, another white middle aged guy. And the crazy militia who had developed a plan to kill government officials and start the “revolution” last summer, well, they weren’t all white males. That time there was some white females. Maybe you should take a look around. I’m certainly nervous about religious fanatics. But I sure as heck don’t limit it to those “other” people. Especially since 100 years ago, I would have been the targeted other that everyone knew was culturally and genetically violent (Irish Catholic descent).

  6. Tano says:

    “we cannot have RACIAL PROFILING,”

    Ah, last I checked, all of the terrorists who have attacked our homeland were of the same race as the majority of Americans.

    god, I hate these mindless rants…..

    Or do you mean “ethnic background” instead of race? You think any of the terrorists we have encountered would have any trouble getting through your screening if they had a good fake name and a shave? Are you claiming that such people would never stoop to the level of having a kid carry the bomb?
    Are you willing to bet your life and your child’s life on that?

  7. anjin-san says:

    I wonder how many three year old children died in the “shock and awe” bombings. Guess that’s just not important.

  8. m says:

    thats bullshit a 3 year old child come on there has to be a line drawn somewhere

  9. wr says:

    Anjin — Don’t be naive. Those three year olds killed in shock and awe — they were “them.” They didn’t count.

    White, blue-eyed, button nosed, and rich. Those are the lives that matter.

    To stand up for anyone else is to say you hate freedom.

    Get a clue, man, or they’ll never let you in Galt’s Gulch.

  10. Alex Knapp says:

    @Tano –

    Or do you mean “ethnic background” instead of race? You think any of the terrorists we have encountered would have any trouble getting through your screening if they had a good fake name and a shave?

    Nobody ever remembers Timothy McVeigh, for some reason….

  11. Abdul Khan says:

    I have read this blog for a very long time, but I have never commented until now. My dad is a Sunni Muslim from Karachi, and my mom is the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher man from Oklahoma City. This war has driven me crazy for a long time.

    The idea about profiling Muslims, because we know who they are…
    This was posted by Nikki, “Now, because of the government saying we have to be politically correct, we cannot have RACIAL PROFILING, so we are ALL subjected to being searched, including our children. WTH !!!!!!!!!!”

    I could very well be wrong, but I thought, when I read this, that it has the feeling of meaning that if an 8 year old in a hijab comes through the gate she can be patted down like that.

    Please, I mean no disrespect because my uncles tended to say things like this. They have long since stopped. The only reason they felt that is way because they knew no Muslims other than me and my father, and as they knew us it never registered that we were Muslims. Until 9-11.

    By 9-11-02 they were against the war. My Uncle David recently died of what the doctors think is agent orange stuff. And uncle Carl died of an Arayan biker life. Since 9-11 he has broken at least 3 peoples faces standing up for me and my father.

    Welcome to moderation.

    I don’t get it, personally, but I have been baptized and reverted to Islam, in no particular order. I hate to hear this kind of thing, but I also understand.

    It sucks.

  12. anjin-san says:

    > White, blue-eyed, button nosed, and rich. Those are the lives that matter.

    Come on, it’s not like that. Look at how much effort Fox News puts into finding missing black kids or bringing the killers of black children to justice.

  13. anjin-san says:

    > Nobody ever remembers Timothy McVeigh, for some reason….

    You can’t seriously be asking these Great Americans to think back 15 years. They already have selective amnesia about the fact that our economy was on the verge of collapse as Bush left office.

  14. wr says:

    Besides, McVeigh wasn’t killing people — he was killing Federal employees. With pensions. Those soul-sucking bastards who only exist to destroy the freedom of the American people. Heck, they’re almost as bad as the brown people to Foxbots.

  15. ES says:

    Wow,

    There are numerous idiots reading this garbage. Timothy McVeigh was NOT a Christian! He said so in his own words!!! Timothy McVeigh was not a member of any militia. The Michigan Militia wouldn’t accept him!

    Stop wasting your time reading the Left Stream Media, such as the NY Times, Washington Post, and many others. You show incredible ignorance!

  16. Percepto says:

    Eyes-wide,
    Hands tied.

  17. MarkedMan says:

    I stand corrected on McVeigh’s christianity. (Not that he was a white male. He was.) I assumed he was a fundamentalist because of his infatuation with the Turner diaries, a fundamentalist christian, racist slasher fiction tract advocating, well, advocating the type of thing McVeigh did. Here’s the Wikipedia section on his religious beliefs:

    McVeigh’s only known political affiliations were his voter registration with the Republican Party of New York when he lived in Buffalo, New York, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the military.[82]

    McVeigh was raised Roman Catholic.[83] During his childhood, he and his father attended daily Mass at Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York.[citation needed] In a March, 1996, interview with Time magazine, McVeigh professed his belief in “a God”, although he said he had “sort of lost touch with” Catholicism and “I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs.”[83] In June, 2001, McVeigh wrote a letter to the Buffalo News claiming to be an agnostic[84] and told the authors of American Terrorist that he did not believe in Hell.[85] McVeigh once said that he believed the universe was guided by natural law, energized by some universal higher power that showed each person right from wrong if they paid attention to what was going on inside them. He had also said, “Science is my religion.”[86]

    By the way, here’s a summary of the ending of “The Turner Diaries”. Think about the fact that this is sold openly at gun shows in the US.

    The Organization then uses both the Southern California base of operations and their nuclear weapons to open a wider war in which they launch nuclear strikes against New York City and Israel, initiate a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, and plant nuclear weapons and new terrorist cells throughout North America. The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government before it orders an assault to retake California. The novel ends with an epilogue summarizing how the Organization continued on to conquer the rest of the world and how all people of other races were eliminated.[2]

  18. mk says:

    FFS you should control your child. Getting frisked is no big deal. You take your child and say

    “Mandy, this security man needs to search you so be a good a girl and stand still for him. It won’t take long”

    See. would that have been so hard?

    It’s so obvious that he told his daughter to play up for the camera.

    So so so so so so obvious.

    Create yourself a news story….classy.

    Glad our reporters in england aren’t c*nts like you guys