More TSA Fuckery

[Trigger warning for assault and general harm.]

What's the Real Radiation Risk of the TSA's Full Body X-Ray Scans? I'm not even going to excerpt this piece, because you really must read the whole thing. Note that the two gene mutations noted which may make people "less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA" are "the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 mutations associated with breast and ovarian cancer." Yes, "some people" may be more susceptible to harm from back-scatter X-rays. Ahem. [H/T to Iain.]

Cancer surviving flight attendant forced to remove prosthetic breast during pat-down: "[Cathy Bossi] says two female Charlotte T.S.A. agents took her to a private room and began what she calls an aggressive pat down. She says they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast, the one where she'd had surgery. ...Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra. 'I did not take the name of the person at the time because it was just so horrific of an experience, I couldn't believe someone had done that to me. I'm a flight attendant. I was just trying to get to work.'" [H/T to Shakers technophobia and gypsyset.]

Man claims Charlotte TSA employee groped his 6-year-old son:

WBTV found the anonymous submission on a blog, "We Won't Fly." The man says the incident happened earlier this month and he describes how his little boy was traumatized saying the TSA agent groped his groin and that the little boy left the checkpoint in tears.

The commenter says his son was aggressively patted down by a TSA employee.

"He was pleading for me to help him and I was admonished for trying to comfort him," the comment on the blog states. "His genitals area was groped. He walked down to the plane in tears."

You know, my father is currently in remission from a type of skin cancer with a genetic link. If I go through a back-scatter X-ray, could it trigger that gene in me? Maybe. So my options are: Risk increasing my chances of cancer, or risk having my PTSD triggered in public and having a panic attack just as I'm about to get on a flight.

Yeah. I'm so not flying anywhere for the foreseeable future.