TSA "Enhanced Pat-downs" Become Rape Under New FBI Wording

[Panzersharkcat]

From Russia Today:

The next time you board a flight in the US, be prepared to hand over your luggage to government-hired rapists. Under the FBI’s updated definition of rape, agents with the TSA are as good as guilty of the crime.
A recent meeting of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Justice Advisory Policy Board led to the FBI changing their definition of rape following a series of complaints from activists who said the earlier wording wasn’t broad enough to cover many sexual assaults. When the Bureau officially adopts the new definition in 2012, rape will be considered “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."
You know those “enhanced pat-downs” that Transportation Security Administration agents are always offering, often with unfavorable backlashes from airport patrons who feel humiliated, violated and disgusted with what the government thinks is an appropriate way to counter terror? Well, that’s soon going to be rape. And the TSA? Serial rapists.
Until the new definition goes in the books, the official wording of “rape” according to the FBI is simply “Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” That’s what it’s been dating all the way back to 1929, the last time the definition was changed, despite a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum finding that around 80 percent of the hundreds of police departments they surveyed saying that the definition was outdated.
An FBI advisory board voted on the change on Tuesday, and Director Robert S Mueller III will have to give it the go-ahead before it becomes official.
“By taking this simple step and updating the Bureau's definition to include all types of rape, we can make a real difference in the fight against this horrific crime,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard wrote Monday in The Hill.
That fight is expected to begin at terminals across America and end up in courtrooms thanks to the change. Airline passengers have long rallied against the TSA for its enhanced pat downs, crying foul and deeming them inappropriate and unnecessary. Now they will be able to legally call it rape. That has been a claim made in the past but the TSA countered allegations with lawsuits.
Blogger Amy Alkon wrote on the Web back in March about an experience she had with a TSA agent behind closed doors, in which she says she cried and screamed while an agent, she says, “raped” her.
“I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants,” wrote Alkon in her post. “Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked – utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there.”
In person she yelled at the TSA worker, “You raped me!” Online she called it a “government-sanctioned sexual assault.” When the TSA agent, Thedala Magee, came across the post, she hired an attorney to threaten Alkon with a defamation lawsuit and proposed a settlement of $500,000.
Next time, the TSA is going to need a much better attorney when they blatantly break the law.
Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project, says that striking that definition and adding the new one will “better inform the public about the prevalence of serious sex crimes and will ultimately drive more resources to apprehend sex offenders,” reports the Huffington Post.
“It’s a great victory,” Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority Foundation, tells the New York Daily News. "This new definition will mean that, at long last, we will begin to see the full scope of this horrific violence, and that understanding will carry through to increased attention and resources for prevention and action.”

[Zed]

"Until the new definition goes in the books, the official wording of “rape” according to the FBI is simply “Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”"

Wait, men can't be raped according to the FBI?

[The Romulan Republic]

My concern is that they'll either change the definition for "National Security", or decide that, like torture and indefinite detention without trial, rape is okay when its to fight terrorists.

[DPDarkPrimus]

"Until the new definition goes in the books, the official wording of “rape” according to the FBI is simply “Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”"

Wait, men can't be raped according to the FBI?

They can be sexually violated or whatever the term they use is, but by their definition it wouldn't be called rape. Semantics are great, eh?

[Todeswind]

Forcible sodomy is the term for men if memory serves.

[Serafina]

More likely they will use the "without the consent of the victim"-part. You have to consent to being violated in order to fly, thus it doesn't count as rape.

[Grumman]

More likely they will use the "without the consent of the victim"-part. You have to consent to being violated in order to fly, thus it doesn't count as rape.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the legal standard for consent with regard to rape allow the victim to remove consent pretty much at their whim? So wouldn't maintaining that consent via threats - in this case "if you refuse, the government will fine you $10,000" - be grounds to argue that that consent is invalid?

[aieeegrunt]

One of the reasons I absolutely refuse to fly is the knowledge that there is a very real chance this could happen to my wife or daughter. I already have pretty big Authoritah issues, an encounter with the TSA is likely to result in me getting tazered and shot.

[Akhlut]

More likely they will use the "without the consent of the victim"-part. You have to consent to being violated in order to fly, thus it doesn't count as rape.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the legal standard for consent with regard to rape allow the victim to remove consent pretty much at their whim? So wouldn't maintaining that consent via threats - in this case "if you refuse, the government will fine you $10,000" - be grounds to argue that that consent is invalid?

I am not a lawyer, but everything I've seen says that making a contract under threat or duress invalidates that contract, and I assume the same would apply for matters relating to sex.

There's also the matter that minors are incapable of consent for anything sexual.

One of the reasons I absolutely refuse to fly is the knowledge that there is a very real chance this could happen to my wife or daughter. I already have pretty big Authoritah issues, an encounter with the TSA is likely to result in me getting tazered and shot.

If I ever need to get across the US anymore, I'm renting a car. If I need to go overseas, I'm driving to Canada or Mexico and flying out of one of those nations. Turns out they are just as safe as we are, yet don't resort to feeling up passengers.

[aieeegrunt]

I absolutely will not set foot in a US airport ever again. Ever. I can fly out of my native Canada to anywhere I would need to go.

[eion]

If I ever need to get across the US anymore, I'm renting a car. If I need to go overseas, I'm driving to Canada or Mexico and flying out of one of those nations. Turns out they are just as safe as we are, yet don't resort to feeling up passengers.

There's also trains, or you could just make friends with general aviation pilots.

[TheHammer]

More likely they will use the "without the consent of the victim"-part. You have to consent to being violated in order to fly, thus it doesn't count as rape.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the legal standard for consent with regard to rape allow the victim to remove consent pretty much at their whim? So wouldn't maintaining that consent via threats - in this case "if you refuse, the government will fine you $10,000" - be grounds to argue that that consent is invalid?

I am not a lawyer, but everything I've seen says that making a contract under threat or duress invalidates that contract, and I assume the same would apply for matters relating to sex.

No one is forcing anyone to fly, therefore there is no duress. TSA pat downs certainly do not count as "sex".

There's also the matter that minors are incapable of consent for anything sexual.

One of the reasons I absolutely refuse to fly is the knowledge that there is a very real chance this could happen to my wife or daughter. I already have pretty big Authoritah issues, an encounter with the TSA is likely to result in me getting tazered and shot.

If I ever need to get across the US anymore, I'm renting a car. If I need to go overseas, I'm driving to Canada or Mexico and flying out of one of those nations. Turns out they are just as safe as we are, yet don't resort to feeling up passengers.

Whether you disagree with the TSA pat down procedures or not, the entire premise of the article is asinine. The FBI doesn't create laws, and that is what determines what is and is not sexual assault. Merely re-writing the definition by a law enforcement agency doesn't change a damn thing.

[Surlethe]

Tidbit: Increased security at airports has been indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths due to higher traffic flow on the highways. Estimates indicate that, every two or three years, the TSA kills more people than 9/11 did.

[Uraniun235]

Tidbit: Increased security at airports has been indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths due to higher traffic flow on the highways. Estimates indicate that, every two or three years, the TSA kills more people than 9/11 did.

What is the number of highway trips made each year that are attributed to a refusal to fly based on a desire to avoid post-9/11 security initiatives?

[Grumman]

I am not a lawyer, but everything I've seen says that making a contract under threat or duress invalidates that contract, and I assume the same would apply for matters relating to sex.

I wasn't thinking of the initial contract, but what happens if you get cold feet. Even if you agree in writing to that sort of sexual contact, if you change your mind and make that known, it's rape.

No one is forcing anyone to fly, therefore there is no duress.

If it was something like third party insurance, sure. But if your vehicle registration included a free entry into an "enhanced pat down" lottery, I wouldn't be comfortable making the same claim.

TSA pat downs certainly do not count as "sex".

How about sexual assault?

[Patrick Degan]

No one is forcing anyone to fly, therefore there is no duress.

Absolute bullshit. The initial agreement to take an airline flight in no way implies serial agreement to conditions arbitrarily imposed after the fact of that initial agreement, without the consent of the prospective airline passenger; particularly if said conditions involve either submission to a humiliating violation of person for little to no material cause and certainly without due process, or fine and possible detention for refusal to submit. That is duress.

TSA pat downs certainly do not count as "sex".

No, the intimate probing of sexual organs in the course of said pat-downs counts as "molestation", which is criminal.

Whether you disagree with the TSA pat down procedures or not, the entire premise of the article is asinine. The FBI doesn't create laws, and that is what determines what is and is not sexual assault. Merely re-writing the definition by a law enforcement agency doesn't change a damn thing.

The FBI is not "creating laws", it is expanding the conditions under which the Bureau will involve itself in what otherwise would be a local or state criminal investigation into a rape allegation, and bringing the Bureau's definitions of rape in line with how the crime is defined in the laws of the several states in modern times and not by the standards of 1929.

[Kanastrous]

I really dig the way that the TSA employee saw the traveler's blog post as an opening to try and score a free half-million dollars for herself.