Your article, "600 TSA officers screening passengers, bags at BWI" (Feb. 13), took a disturbingly rosy view of this agency's egregious violations of our rights. First, presumably the title should have read 599 officers, considering that Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport TSA employee Samuel Bryant was arrested February 13 for alleged sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl. And let's not forget former BWI TSA employee Michael Scott Wilson whose sentencing for possession of child pornography was also reported in your pages.
The truth is that employees of the Transportation Security Administration routinely traumatize innocent adults and children by touching their genitals in the course of what the TSA euphemistically calls "pat downs." The TSA spent years exposing passengers to carcinogenic radiation and creating nude images to be viewed by its untrustworthy workforce. The TSA also offends our nation's values by conducting warrantless and suspicion-less searches.
The TSA provides no real security. The cause of security is not advanced by treating passengers like criminals while employees and deliveries pass unscreened, background checks are missing or faulty and while TSA insiders are regularly discovered to be smuggling contraband. We need to cut the TSA's budget to zero and stop funding our own abuse.
Sommer Gentry, Baltimore