The most invasive search I ever experienced was in Athens flying to the US.
First, I had a partial bag search after the x-ray machine.
Then, a "random selection" for a full bag search and a full body pat-down in a private room.
The bag search went, meaning emptying almost all of the contents of my bag (mind you, I have a large touring backpack I'm taking on as a carry-on...EVERYTHING is in there). That took about 5 minutes. The most offensive thing they found was my zippo lighter, other than my bag of dirty socks ;-). Ended up being able to keep the lighter. Surprising.
Then it came time for the body search/pat down. At this point, I was so cooperative with the agent during the bag search that he was embarrassed he had to go through with all of this procedure.
He asked me to take off my socks (read: I've been backpacking in them for the last 2 days) and I gave him the "Are you sure?" look, he nodded, then I proceeded. Sorry for your nose...
Then, he began with the metal detector. Got to the inside of my legs. Starting going up...up...up...turned it from perpendicular to parallel, to the point where he kinda nodded to me to give him more room so he could raise it some more. I shared an awkward laugh with him.
I could tell this guy was just trying to do his job, but I could easily see how people could get really offended by this.
Since we were hours early for the flight and actually about 1/5 of the people were searched like this, I was okay with this. If I had to have that kind of "feel down" as they are describing in the article almost every time I had to fly, I would really get pissed.
The funny thing is...after all of this...and through US Customs...they never found my pocket knife.
