Pat This! Nov. 24th: National TSA Opt-Out Day

The day before Thanksgiving is the first National TSA Opt-Out Day, in which airline customers are being urged to protest the Transportation Security Administration's invasive new X-Ray scanners by bypassing them and asking instead for TSA's aggressive pat-down search. The new scanners show travelers naked, so TSA officials can see under their clothes, and travelers who refuse to submit to the scan must instead submit to an aggressive "pat down" by TSA officials that involves the touching of breasts, genitals and groins. The new search policy requires TSA officials use the fronts of their hands, instead of the back of the hands, which was the old procedure. The new screening methods have created an uproar among airline passengers who complain that the new searches constitute sexual assault. Jeffrey Goldberg, a blogger for the Atlantic, is suggesting men make the search process more problematic for TSA by wearing kilts. Advocates of the Opt-Out day hope that if even a small percentage of travelers demand the pat-down search instead of the scan, it could jam up the entire system and demonstrate more clearly to people how they sacrifice their personal privacy and civil rights upon purchase of an airline ticket.