Are Older Women Being Used to Make a TSA Counter-Profiling Statement? Letter of Concern from UCSF Professors About Back-Scatter X-Rays

Journalism.org published an article, Social Media Join the Anti-TSA Movement:

Anger and frustration over the new TSA airport security measures boiled over in the social media last week. And while much of the mainstream press reported or commented on that rage, those in the online community embodied those sentiments.

And, in a rare case of news agenda unity, heavy interest in the new measures cut across all three social media platforms studied in the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. For the week of November 22-26, more than half (54%) the news links on blogs were about the security measures, making it the No. 1 subject.

They were also the fourth largest topic on Twitter with 9% of the links. And on YouTube, the new procedures were the subject of the second most popular news video as viewers gravitated to an element of comedic relief produced by a Taiwanese company.

Twitterers mainly drew attention to one specific incident concerning a cancer survivor whose urostomy bag ruptured during a TSA pat-down. Links to the story were often accompanied by words of empathy like Emi Lani Lee's, "Feel bad for him," and Billy Shih's, "I'm getting real tired of the TSA."

In the arena with the most discussion, the majority of bloggers emphatically agreed with-and even went beyond-two Washington Post columnists, Charles Krauthammer and George Will, who came out strongly against the airport security measures.

Krauthammer suggested that the phrase "Don't touch my junk"-words adapted from an objection first uttered by an annoyed passenger in California-had become a new political battle-cry. Will argued that the TSA's measures are nothing more than ineffective "security theater" which do not make passengers safer.

Read the rest of the report at Journalism.org

We've included part of the letter of concern written by four University of California San Francisco professors about the issue of the backscatter X-rays used at some of the US airports (see below).*

We've seen older women and the proverbial 'grandmotherly' type taken aside for some years now at airports to be patted down — years before the more invasive TSA techniques were put into place before this traveling holiday. But in recent years, we've been singled out for a number of pat-downs whereas my husband has not.

Is this because we, as older grandmotherly figures, can be used to visibly democratize the scanning process, countering those who complain that the US is indulging in profiling of young men and women of Middle Eastern background or descent?

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Are Older Women Being Used to Make a TSA Counter-Profiling Statement? Letter of Concern from UCSF Professors About Back-Scatter X-Rays

Anger and frustration over the new TSA airport security measures boiled over in the social media last week. And while much of the mainstream press reported or commented on that rage, those in the online community embodied those sentiments.

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