[MartinCron]

To those who suggest that the pat-down searches are as intrusive or more intrusive than the electronic strip searches: no

I haven't been through an electronic strip search, so I can't speak to that. I can speak to the last time I had a pat-down at the airport: I found it pretty invasive. I've never thought of myself as a big "personal space" guy, but here is this TSA agent, grabbing aggressively at all of my pockets, having me empty them out for him, etc. All the while, I'm angry, but I know that I can't complain or give him a hard time because he's in a position of power to give me a much harder time, make me miss my flight, whatever. It's so frustrating when you know it's just security theatre, and doesn't do anything besides make people feel safer.

When I asked "must we do this?" he gave me the option of doing it in private (no thank you) and told me that I consented to this by entering the checkpoint. It's like click-wrap licensing, only with your feet.

There is no third option for people who don't want their nude photos persisted who also don't like being groped by strangers.

[swombat]

I can't recall where I heard/read that, but I seem to remember some psychology research that proposed that the psychologically damaging thing about the search you describe is not actually the search itself, but precisely the fact that you can't do anything about it.

IIRC, the conclusion of that research was something along the lines of: to completely destroy someone's self-confidence/emotional stability, all you need to do is that every day, for five minutes, at the same time, five people appear out of nowhere and hold him down, without harming him, for five minutes. If you do that every day for a year or two, you'll have a remnant of a human being at the end (in most cases).

My father works with victims of "mobbing" (basically bullying at work). One of his clients was a normal office worker who was being bullied by the security guard at work. Every morning, the security guard would single him out for a pat down search - every single morning. Apparently the guy was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time my dad saw him.

[Zak]

I have to ask: why would a security guard in a normal office situation have the authority to randomly pat down someone who is known to work in the building?

[swombat]

I don't know, I never asked... I think it was a government job... there might have been some special security. No idea, though, sorry.

[Splines]

FWIW, my son was selected for a pat-down search when we flew in Canada on a domestic flight. Notwithstanding the logic of deciding that a 10 year old carrying a Nintendo DS was a security threat, the agent was quite respectful, asking for my permission first, being very clear what was going on, and performing the pat-down in a professional (to my eyes) and efficient manner.

[tptacek]

The guy who screened me said "I may need to touch you near a sensitive area now, just let me know if you have a problem, I'm going to use the back of my hand only" something like 5 times, so I'm pretty sure they're scripted to be "respectful".

[jeebusroxors]

The (unfortunate) third option is not flying, or at least not commercially and via airlines.