Charlotte Ann Kimbrough is a 57-year-old retired law enforcement professional. She worked for 32 years in an administrative capacity with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and other federal law enforcement agencies. She has two metal hip replacements.

She told me she hadn't flown in a few years. So she was unfamiliar with TSA procedures. When she went through the metal detector yesterday, she alarmed it. She thought they would wand her. She was wrong. 

As we’ve been reporting here for years, many of us have used all sorts of methods to fight TSA abuse. 

There’s not just one way to resist. There are several. That’s true for all kinds of protest, about all kinds of things. There’s never just one way. The point is to stand up against injustice when you see it, whether or not you’re successful. Fighting the TSA is a longterm battle, not a short one.

Yet another article in the mainstream press with people whingeing about the fact that they have to -- gasp! -- pay a few extra bucks to carry on and/or check their luggage.  

In the continuing cavalcade of innocent people put in prison in this country -- the vast majority of whom are poor and/or people of color -- we now add Cecily McMillan, an Occupy activist who was assaulted by a New York City cop and who is now in jail for it.

You read that right. She was assaulted by him. Yet she is in jail. And he -- with a history of committing abuse -- is walking free.  

Danger! Danger! Pot on a plane! TSA to the rescue!  

I’m so glad the brave men and women of the TSA rifle through our luggage, leave cheeky notes, and in general stick their noses in our business. Because otherwise, we would all be in danger of being blown out of the sky due to concealed greenery.

Another bs article about the bs program that is Pre-Check. And, of course, a discussion thread full of comments by the Special People o-woe-is-me-ing their fate.

The Jewish holiday of Passover is here (April 14th-22nd). And rest assured: the crack teams of the TSA are ready for it. Since we all know how respectful the TSA is of people’s private belongings, dignity, and integrity, you can count on safe passage for your religious artifacts.  

Yet another person, a disabled person in this case, has been abused by the TSA. In Los Angeles last week, Sherry Wright was traveling with her disabled, wheelchair-bound sister Heidi when they approached the checkpoint at LAX. Heidi had a stroke 10 years ago and can no longer speak. When Sherry presented their ID documentation — perfectly valid IDs, as indicated on the TSA's own website — the nitwit in blue balked. First he demanded that the mute Heidi speak, even after being told she couldn’t; then he denied passage to the women, claiming that Heidi’s expired driver’s license wasn’t valid ID.

We have an update on the case of John Brennan, the man who stripped naked at a TSA checkpoint in April of 2012.

Our whistleblower buddy Jason Harrington has written another exposé. We were the first site in the blabbosphere to publicize Harrington’s TSA tell-all blog, calledTaking Sense Away. That was two years ago. And we wrote about him several times thereafter.

As usual, the mainstream media are a day late and a dollar short. The Los Angeles Times not only has an article reporting information that's been out there for years, but even the headline to the article is inaccurate and equivocal: "Enhanced airport security may waste money, study says." 

I can't keep up with all these stories. They come too fast and furious, one more idiotic than the next. Although there is sometimes method to the TSA's madness, as in this case where the employees clearly wanted to steal somebody's expensive perfume.

Read the rest at ABombazine.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are two different agencies operating under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they have sensibilities, practices, and impunity in common. The major difference is that the TSA has no law enforcement authority while CBP does. That power makes the latter even more dangerous.

Read the rest at ABombazine.

Someone who describes himself as an anarchist believes what the TSA is saying? Really?

Davi Barker, I'd check my anarchist credentials if I were you.

Barker has written a post detailing his most recent experience at the hands of the TSA. He titled it, rather misleadingly . . . .

A round-up of some stories in the news lately about the TSA and TSA-similar organizations:

Nice to know that UK security can be just as idiotic as US security . . . .

In the on-going sordid history of TSA agents bullying, harassing, robbing, and sexually assaulting people, we have a new story, this time about a cancer survivor.
 

The man is 36 years old and suffers from an overactive bladder because of a past bout with prostate cancer. Therefore, he wears an adult incontinence garment -- a disposable brief -- something that hundreds of thousands of people are familiar with in this country, especially with our aging population.

As I wrote two days ago, our DHS overlords were fretting about Terroristy Toothpaste Bombs.Well, now their paranoia is complete: along with their bumbling handmaiden, the TSA, they've banned all -- all

Houston TSA agent arrested after making “terroristic threats”

by Deborah Newell Tornello

Ah, well, it was only a matter of time. Anybody with a brain knew it was only a matter of time.

Finally! Someone in law enforcement is taking seriously the charge of sexual assault by TSA workers.

Jamelyn Steenhoek, 39, was accompanying her 13-year-old daughter to the gate for the daughter’s flight. Steenhoek “alarmed” when she went through the metal detector. Then her hands were swabbed and they “alarmed.”

We at TSA News have written before about the particularly egregious violations perpetrated upon the disabled (or, more precisely, those who with the assistance of medical devices function quite well) by the TSA.

Another in our continuing series, Psychopath of the Week. It's always a tough call, because there are so many of them. This week, however, there's no contest.

Because we have the smarmiest of the smarmy, the personification of a sophist, which is to say someone who twists language and meaning and decency and his own soul beyond limits to justify the unjustifiable:

"Stop. Screen. Go."

Those are the magic words in a new TSA video cartoon aimed at children, called Prepare for Takeoff. It’s on a nifty page — “TSA Kids” — that’s part of the “Official Website of the Department of Homeland Security,” which also includes links to other fab TSA stuff, such as “Fun Page” and “Parents Page.”

The media are once again doing the TSA’s dirty work for it. Who needs PR flacks when you have newspapers, TV, radio, and the internet?

As we’ve written so many times, security at U.S. airports was working just fine after 9/11. Planes weren’t being blown out of the sky left and right. Then along came TSA Administrator John Pistole to implement the Reign of Molestation. And he's been shoveling the shit ever since, abetted by a credulous media just as intent on fear mongering as he is.

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. No, it isn't a scene out of a dystopian novel. It's just another day in the good ol' USA.

First in Texas and now in Pennsylvania, drivers have been flagged down by police and told to pull over into a parking lot so that a survey company can "ask" them for blood draws and a saliva swab.

Read the rest at ABombazine.

Some people in the media are finally catching on to what we here at TSA News have been saying for two years: Pre-Check is a joke. Just enter “pre-check” in the Search box. We’ve been pointing out the facts about this program from the beginning.

Two of the latest “Gosh, who knew?!” articles are in the Jacksonville Business Journal and the New York Times. Some of our readers have already commented at the former. The latter isn’t accepting comments, though I wrote to the author, Joe Sharkey, last week. It’s my second time writing to him about a TSA-related article. I’ve never gotten a reply.

While half the country is up in arms over the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray budget deal in Congress — with both conservatives and liberals disliking it for their own reasons — I see a twinkling, nay glittering, silver lining.

“Appalled and shocked and embarrassed”?

That’s one way of putting it.

That's how Phyllis May of Redmond, Washington described her reaction when the brainiacs of the TSA seized a little cloth sock puppet — sock monkey, to be exact — in her bag and discovered the monkey’s nefarious intent: