Have you been following this TSA stuff that's going on still?
Louis: Not much.
David: There's a bunch of these different stories. There's a woman who was arrested...
both of these happened in Texas. A woman was arrested for refusing to be groped, essentially,
in Austin, and then an elderly woman completely shut down a terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth.
Which one do you want to hear first, Dallas or Austin?
Louis: Dallas.
David: Dallas. OK, so here's the Dallas story. Let's go to-- let's figure out exactly what
happened there.
Jonathan Betz: The airport mobilized its command post while officers searched the terminals
for a passenger described as an elderly woman. The TSA says she went through a body scanner,
agents spotted something suspicious, but by the time they tried to pull her aside for
more screening, she'd already moved on into the terminal.
Mary Spoonemore: Well, that's kind of scary, especially if she was supposed to be stopped
and she just kept on going, because you don't know what she was doing.
Betz: TSA described it as minor, but it sparked a manhunt throughout the entire airport.
David: It delayed 100 flights, too. An elderly woman, she was just too quick, did you hear
that? Something suspicious happened, but before TSA was able to actually get to her, not that
there's not 50 of these TSA people around, she was able to just disappear into thin air.
Louis: Doesn't surprise me.
David: [Laughs] Those elderly people are spry. She delayed 100 flights, but it was a minor
incident. And then here's the other one. This is a woman who was arrested at an Austin airport.
This one is significantly more bizarre.
Jim Bergamo: ... the female passenger who says she's a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type
device implanted in her chest told me her constitutional rights were violated and she
never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.
Claire Hirschkind: But they insisted that I go through it again.
Bergamo: 56-year-old Claire Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in
California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint at ABIA.
Hirschkind: Because I can't go through them because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker
in me.
Bergamo: Hirschkind says because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee
and three Austin police officers. She said she was told she was going to be patted down.
Hirschkind: I turned to the police officer and said, "I have given no due cause to give
up my constitutional rights, and you can wand me." And they said no, it's... don't want
to wand you, you have to do this.
Bergamo: Hirschkind, who says she's a rape victim, agreed to the pat-down, but on one
condition.
Hirschkind: I told them, I said no, I don't-- I'm not going to have my breasts felt. And
she said, "Yes, you are."
Bergamo: When Hirschkind refused, she says:
Hirschkind: The police actually pushed me to the floor, handcuffed me. I was crying
by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security.
David: All right.
Bergamo: An ABIA spokesman says it's...
David: So they drugged her.
Louis: They drug her all over the place.
David: You know, I feel bad for this woman, because she does seem to be not... she clearly
did not know what to expect. And you know what, I mean, unless you're living under a
cave, you have to know what to expect if you're flying, right?
Louis: Of course.
David: And if it doesn't work, maybe there's a better mode of transportation. I feel bad
for her. She claims to be a rape victim, she has something like a pacemaker, but do you
really think that she was, you know, dragged? I don't think the TSA actually did drug this
woman, but let's-- I don't know if they dragged her 75 feet either. But I don't... I really
don't know what to make of this. We've talked about how they're certainly overreaching here,
there is, I mean, everything is just being touched at this point, and even if certain
people like Louis look forward to this type of thing, I don't know that it is the way
we want to be going, right? I mean, where are we going to be 10 years from now on this?
Are we going to be having, you know, digital rectal exams for everybody? How far is this
going to go? I don't see the endgame.
Louis: I think a pat-down is actually a very good way to do things, and...
David: You like the pat-down.
Louis: It's very effective, you're not getting irradiated, there will be no tech malfunctions.
I mean, if someone's trained and they know how to pat someone down, there's a very slim
chance that someone will get something through security.
David: OK. Hold on a second, Louis. You're going off here on all sorts of different directions.
Number one, I don't think that this actually really is making us safer, for a number of
different reasons, but as we've talked about before, I believe that the system that is
used in Israel, which is one where let's take the focus off of is the person setting off
an alarm here, do they have too much shampoo, is it more than the allot-- you know, the
allowable amount of shampoo. Let's observe people here and use more of a psychological
observation rather than looking at what's being done...
Louis: That's fine, we've talked about this, but it's never going to happen.
David: But if you believe that these people are properly trained, you know, I don't know
that the TSA really is...
Louis: Well, no.
David: I don't want to say anything bad about the TSA, but let's be honest, these people...
this is a very low-wage job, it's very, you know, fast-paced.
Louis: Anybody can do it.
David: There's more and more evidence that actually this really may not be the high training
and great pat-down system that many people are making it out to be. Now, I'm flying in
a couple of weeks. I will have the choice at our local airport that I fly out of, I'm
going to have the choice, do I want the enhanced pat-down of my stimulus package, so to speak,
or do I want to be irradiated?
Louis: Do you care about getting pat down?
David: I don't really like it. I don't know.
Louis: Yeah, but does it bother you? Are you going to like curl up in the fetal position
in your bed that night and cry about it?
David: I don't know. On the way to...
Louis: Just suck it up, people. Suck it up and get pat down. You're not getting raped,
you're not getting molested, just suck it up and do it.
David: But hold on a second. You go in there with a kid, Louis. If, God forbid, you had
a kid one day...
Louis: Kid's not going to know what's going on.
David: But that's what I'm saying. So you've been telling the kid the only people who can
touch you down there are parents, doctors if your parents are around, or you, you know,
whatever, whatever it is you're teaching the kids. Now you're saying and at the airport
in front of thousands of people, the guys in blue, they can do it too?
Louis: I say they're checking you for weapons. Very simple. I'd like to think my child has
enough smarts to accept that.
David: [Laughs] Louis very optimistic about his child's intelligence.
Louis: Even if we were to train people to do...
David: Properly.
Louis: Properly.
David: To do pat-downs or psychological...
Louis: Psychological evaluations of people.
David: Yeah. We're not talking about evaluations, just observing how people are acting.
Louis: Like just the resources and the time it would take to get that rolling would be
huge.
David: It's a pathetic excuse. I mean...
Louis: Countrywide and in international airports, like Israel does, if you want people going
into your country from another airport.
David: Right. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, where will we be on this 10 years from
now? I mean, honestly, where are we going to be? Tell me, please. On the bonus show
today, there's a lot going on on the bonus show. We're going to be talking about one
state that has bucked the Tea Party tide, what's going on with Barack Obama's smoking
and should we care, I think we actually should, 10 tech disasters that haven't happened. There's
a lot going on, so let's be honest, it's time to do it. It's almost the end of the year.
www.DavidPakman.com/membership. Rest of the show, and then we'll see you on the bonus
show.
Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com.
Transcript provided by Alex Wickersham. For transcription, translation, captions, and
subtitles, contact Alex at directtranslation@gmail.com.