Security in Australia Makes TSA's (Many) Excesses Look Nearly Rational

The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun is reporting on a Sunday incident that underlines why the public are genuinely irritated with so-called 'security' measures, and particularly with airport screeners.

Melbourne uses Chubb Protective Services for screening, and the company is now as famous, and as popular, as that Chinese guy who carried SARS onto the first airliner last year.

Kathleen O'Kelly-Kennedy, 16, identified as "Australia's tallest female basketball player," was humiliated when security guards forced her to remove her prosthetic right leg. (She was born with a short leg.)

She explained to the paper, "It is quite clear when I lift my pants that I wear a leg prosthesis. I had also given it a few whacks, so there was no doubt that it sounded like a false leg. It was too much that security staff then chose to frisk me, from ankle to hip, in front of dozens of other passengers. I had already taken my shoes off, which made standing difficult, and I was not even offered a seat."

Standing out in a crowd is a normal thing for Kathleen -- she is, after all, very tall -- but this was different. She's used to people's looking, she said, "but what happened on Sunday puts my difference in a whole new and negative public light."

She said that other kids, some of them disabled athletes returning from the games, were also put through the wringer, wheelchairs and all. Her parents were quoted as saying, "It was sad after a great week in South Australia that some kids left in tears or angry at how they had been treated at the airport."

FMI: www.chubb.com.au/aviation.asp