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Comment by oiuytgfyhujik | Hacker News Reader

There is a gay rights group who are planning to protest it by turning up at the airport in costume insisting on a special pat down and pretending (or not) to enjoy it very much.

Sounds like a great day out - especially if you are into uniforms!

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Sexually harassing someone who makes $10 an hour to make a point to someone who makes $150,000 a year several thousand miles away and who has actual decisionmaking authority does not strike me as a justice-enhancing move.

This has already been done to death on HN. 1) "Doing your job" is never an excuse for doing what is wrong. 2) These pat-downs are wrong.

If you agree with the first 2 points, it seems to me that making the wrong-doer personally accountable is a reasonable response. Yes, their boss several thousand miles away also needs to be held to account, but so do the people physically executing the searches.

I'm pretty sure that argument should be reserved for possible war crimes and not frisking people.

There are plenty of jobs that violate rule #1 above. Spammers, those who take advantage of the economically disadvantaged, et cetera.

If groping someone's genitals doesn't cross a line, what does?

I don't think there's a reasonable way to interpret the uninvited and unwelcome prodder of one's genitalia as a victim of sexual harassment.

Of course there is. Consider a male patient who has a legitimate medical need to visit a female doctor and have his privates examined. That could possibly be a very uncomfortable situation for the male patient (speaking from personal experience). It is not license to make lewd comments.

You choose to go to the doctor, the TSA is imposing.

If you're sick enough, the "choice" of whether or not to go to the doctor is pretty abstract.

The individuals working for minimum wage are not imposing, they're trying to do their jobs. Your beef is with a group of people who allocated millions of funds in a bill passed years ago. Harassing the people hired to implement the bill isn't going to convince many lawmakers of anything.

>they're trying to do their jobs.

Their jobs are immoral and should be illegal and yet they still choose to do it. I have no respect nor mercy for such people. Stop using the idiotic "trying to do their job" as an excuse. The WWII war trials proved that you are responsible for what you do. "Just doing my job" is no excuse.

While I agree on the whole, the WWII is a very poor example. It proved that "trying to do their job" may not be a good excuse in some limited circumstance. On top of that, the whole things was on a shaky legal (although maybe not moral IMHO) ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Criticism

The trial itself may have had issues but the point remains that you are responsible for what you do. The only possible exception would be if your life or the life of your loved ones were on the line. Otherwise you are directly responsible for what you do.

It must be this way, otherwise "just doing my job" can be used to justify anything. How many bad things have happened because it was someone's job and it never occurred to the person to simply quit?

As I said, I agree with that sentiment.

It doesn't matter that they are "just doing their jobs". They have choosen to work there, they have signed up for what their employer does. If they don't like it then they should quit. If a large percentage of their staff are unhappy and complain, then they might change it

All of the statements like "they're just doing their jobs" are missing the point. So do the rebuttals such as "their job is immoral!". The point is - you need to get as many people as possible to hate the situation, _including_ the TSA workers. The TSA workers should start hating their jobs, you should start hating flying, authorities should start hating dealing with this mess.

Will I contribute to the hate of the body scanners? You bet, I have a wife and planning to make a family. She's been going through medschool, I've been working nonstop for years, without a vacation. We were planning on going to a few places now that she finally has a break from all the studying, but this TSA situation is literally stopping us. This is crossing the line of invasiveness.

And one of these mall cops refuse to pat down the gay guy cos he'll get aids. The airport is sued for $1.2Gazzillion discrimination lawsuit, it decides to have a quiet word with the politician and suddenly looking tough on terror with security theater doesn't get you as many campaign contributions

It's not about the TSA employees, it's more about making a spectacle of the whole thing to show all the other passengers in line that the whole security theater is stupid. The objective is to make everyone else opt out as well.

It could in turn have the employees boycott the methods, I guess it's tough with the unemployment rate in America, many may not want to make a stand because the job is more important to them at the moment.

TSA employees are pretty easily replaceable at present. Maybe that will change some day, but I really feel like pressure needs to be applied to the politicians, not the grunts.

They're the ones who came up with this. They're the ones who are able to keep themselves from being subjected to this. They're the ones who can put a stop to this.

Do you have a link with more information? I'm not interested in participating, just learning more.

Umm, what exactly are they demanding? Invasive pat-down by an officer of the opposite sex?

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