The American Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently implemented screening procedures that some members of the public consider unreasonable and intrusive. I’m curious about what you think of these measures. Answer the questions below in the comment thread, and add any other thoughts you’d like to share and discuss.
- Would you submit to a full-body imaging scan?
- Would you submit to a full-body pat-down search?
- Do you find either of these measures personally invasive?
- Do you find both of these measures personally invasive?
- Do you find both of these measures equally invasive?
- Do imaging scans enhance airline passenger safety?
- Do pat-down searches enhance airline passenger safety?
- Are there other measures that airlines should take, in addition to these, to enhance passenger safety?
- Are there other measures that airlines should take, instead of these, to enhance passenger safety?
- Will these security measures make you more or less likely to fly in the future?
I’ll share my thoughts in an update to this post. Before doing that, though, I’d like to hear from you. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.
– the chaplain
UPDATE: Here’s the update I promised last week.
I don’t fly often, but, should I choose to do so while these procedures are in place, then I will choose the scan over the grope, as I feel that it is the less invasive of two distasteful procedures. Treating all people who purchase airline tickets as terror suspects grossly contradicts such ideals as “innocent until proven guilty,” and the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. I doubt that either the scans or the gropes enhance passenger safety significantly and see both measures as being poorly played “security theater,” rather than serious anti-terror measures. I already fly as little as possible, perhaps once or twice a year, and will continue avoiding air travel as long as the American government considers ridiculous measures like these effective deterrents against terror.
There may be some who don’t realize it yet, but the USA lost the War on Terror years ago. If I were Osama Bin Laden, measures like these, color-coded terror alerts (the Washington DC area has been Code Orange for nine years), searches of fans entering sports arenas and museums, and other ridiculous measures would have me howling with mirth. Every time Americans do things like this, we demonstrate that bin Laden won the psychological war against us.
Do I feel less secure today than I did on September 10, 2001? Certainly. But, I refuse to treat all those around me as potential murderers. It’s too bad the American government isn’t doing more to help me sustain that attitude.
AnonaMiss
November 23, 2010 at 3:01 pm
1. Would you submit to a full-body imaging scan?
I wouldn’t say never, but I’d go out of my way to avoid it.
2. Would you submit to a full-body pat-down search?
I wouldn’t say never, but I’d go out of my way to avoid it.
3. Do you find either of these measures personally invasive?
Yes.
4. Do you find both of these measures personally invasive?
Yes.
5. Do you find both of these measures equally invasive?
I find the idea of the pat-down less invasive, actually. A digital image has unlimited scope – it can be viewed or distributed by an unlimited number of people. I hold no illusions that my own image would be distributed, but the idea squicks me out. Plus, the body scan has the potential to show a lot more information, the full scope of which I’m not clear on. Would it show feminine products? Breast implants? Various metal body parts (tooth implants, pacemakers, bone screws)?
Also, regarding sanitary pads or incontinence diapers – isn’t letting people wear them on planes at all a risk? I expect it would be easy to create a plastic explosive that would pass for a pad in a patdown. That’s a great, gaping security hole unless they make you show your bloody pad to the agent.
6. Do imaging scans enhance airline passenger safety?
Only if they’re thorough. And thoroughness implies checking every pad and breast implant the scanner catches manually.
7. Do pat-down searches enhance airline passenger safety?
Not really. There’s plenty of body cavities to hide things in.
8-9. Are there other measures that airlines should take, in addition to or instead of these, to enhance passenger safety?
New planes, and thorough maintenance on older planes, would enhance passenger safety far more than any anti-terrorism measures. Of course, anti-terrorism is what gets funded in this country.
10. Will these security measures make you more or less likely to fly in the future?
Significantly less likely.
Moe
November 23, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Intersting exercise. Okay, here goes.
1. Yes
2. Reluctantly
3. Yes
4. No
5. No – I’m neutral about the scan, would be very relucatant re the pat down, but wouldn’t take it all the way to civil disobedience.
6. No
7. No
8. probably
9. probably
10. Neither
I would add that we can’t avoid risk and we always seem to try to protect ourselves against hte last event while perpetrators are looking for new way. We’re taking our shoes off and I think many who would harm us are laughing.
Ahab
November 23, 2010 at 10:46 pm
1) No, out of privacy and health concerns. This is why I won’t be flying any time soon.
2) No, because it is unecessary and invasive. Another reason why I won’t be flying.
3) A loud and resounding YES.
4) Another loud and resounding YES.
5) YES!
6) No. Cunning extremists will find ways around these measures.
7) No. See my reply to question 6.
8) These measures are unecessary to begin with.
9) Instead, airlines should be cooperating more with the intelligence community to identify potential problems.
10) Less likely. I’ll be driving or taking trains to my destinations.
Ben Finney
November 24, 2010 at 1:38 am
Both measures are invasive, and I would submit to neither from the TSA. I would be very surprised if either of them enhance passenger safety, and am confident that even if they did, they are not at all worth the cost in money, machinery, manpower, morale, nor mindless subjection to misplaced authority.
Trained professionals able to determine risk have, in other times and today in other countries, proven to be far cheaper and more reliable than minimum-wage operators following top-down inflexible policies.
the chaplain
November 24, 2010 at 8:31 am
AnonaMiss:
I hope no terrorists read your ideas about explosive pads and plugs. Just sayin’.
Moe:
You’re right about the impossibility of avoiding risk. Just living is risky.
Ahab:
It’s too bad the USA doesn’t have a better rail system. We could, and we should, so we don’t.
Ben Finney:
You’re suggesting that airlines train people to do their jobs, pay them decent wages and treat them like professionals?!? Are you one of those socialist types?
PhillyChief
November 24, 2010 at 10:18 am
Doug Stanhope wrote a nice piece on this nonsense. I’m just glad I don’t have to fly very often. They showed a number of idiots on the news who just went on about how they’ll gladly give up privacy for safety. It’s a shame how idiots in this country want to promote pseudo-history in school yet ignore actual history, like Franklin’s wisdom…
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
When I eventually will have to fly, I’ll choose the pat down and try to make it as uncomfortable for them as possible. You know, moan a little, ask if they could rub that area again but harder, etc. Maybe I’ll give them a dollar afterwards.
PhillyChief
November 24, 2010 at 10:19 am
The messed up the link I guess. Stanhope
PhillyChief
November 24, 2010 at 10:20 am
Hmmm, ok then
http://www.dougstanhope.com/journal/2010/11/21/tsa.html
Cephus
November 24, 2010 at 10:56 am
It’s interesting to note that the TSA has never once caught a terrorist using these methods, yet the very few terrorists that have gotten on planes have managed to avoid the TSA or TSA-like tactics. The scanners they are using now are extremely useless. They cannot detect anything that is in a body cavity or under 1/10″ of flesh. An overweight person could pack in anything under a roll of fat and the scanners wouldn’t pick it up.
As for the pat-down, don’t we have a Constitutional right against unreasonable search?
Forget it, the airline industry isn’t getting a penny of my money until these insane searches go away.
Kagehi
November 24, 2010 at 11:59 am
1. Yes, but then I personally find people’s irrational fear of nudity completely stupid.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. To an extent, maybe.
5. No.
6. No, since its known that the technology was rushed in *before* it could detect even the damn stuff we already had people stuffing in their shoes and underwear.
7. Only if applied to the right people.
8. Gee.. How about interviews, like all the places where there are even **bigger** terror threats, but they don’t randomly strip search people?
9. See 8. Oh, and add in that *apparently* at least one other country has one that does detect powdered explosives, and overlays potential “threat locations” onto a bloody stick figure… Go figure..
10. Since I don’t fly much at all, it would be hard to say, but like most things, people will still need to fly, so will still do so, no matter how bad it likely gets. Its not like something on the level of Star Trek tech wouldn’t be worse, for example, even if it was like 99.99999% accurate. Heh, lets replaces fuzzy nude images with something so accurate you can have a 3D image of them dancing nude at the local strip club in 3 hours, complete with perfect dental records, fingerprints and the mole on their left thigh! Anything that gets better, and isn’t completely specific to *just* detecting the threats, will be more invasive.
the chaplain
November 24, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Philly:
I don’t think you messed up any of your links; when I clicked on it, the filter at work blocked it as being related to “sex.” I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but, hmm, okay – it’s their computer. It may have looked like you messed it up because this template apparently doesn’t show comment links in different colors. It doesn’t allow blockquotes in comments either. It looks like I’ll have to re-decorate the place again.
Cephus:
Apparently, everyone who buys an airplane ticket in the USA is a suspected terrorist until they can clear themselves by means of a search. Come on, man – if they don’t have anything to hide, what’s the problem?
Excuse me – typing that last sentence stimulated my gag reflex.
Kagehi:
I don’t fly much either. If I can drive someplace in 12 hours or less, then I drive rather than fly unless I’m on a really tight schedule.
vjack
November 26, 2010 at 8:40 am
1. No
2. No
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. No
7. No
8. No, these measures must be stopped
9. Yes
10. Far less likely
Nightcap
November 26, 2010 at 9:12 pm
I blogged a bit about this today: http://bill-sheehan.livejournal.com/171629.html
But in answer to your questions:
1. No.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
5. The x-ray “feels” more impersonal and less invasive, which is why it needs to be opposed. I am a citizen, not a parcel.
6. No, imaging scans are Kabuki security enriching profiteers like RapiScan and The Chertoff Group.
7. No, they are actually fairly easy to beat. They’re also an extremely costly protective measure against an exceedingly unlikely event.
8. No. The TSA is political theater.
9. Yes. See Ben Gurion airport for full details.
10. The current measures make me far less likely to fly in future.
Uzza
November 27, 2010 at 4:11 pm
My answers are here.
Jørgen Jakobsson
November 29, 2010 at 6:02 am
1. Would you submit to a full-body imaging scan?
Definately not
2. Would you submit to a full-body pat-down search?
Considering I’m not a criminal. No.
3. Do you find either of these measures personally invasive?
By not adhering to my personal space and privacy, yes.
4. Do you find both of these measures personally invasive?
Yes.
5. Do you find both of these measures equally invasive?
No, the enhanced patdown is by far the worse. Not only do you need to let someone see your body but they also grope you.
6. Do imaging scans enhance airline passenger safety?
They enhance the “feeling” of being secure but concidering the fact that the measures the TSA are implementing arn’t reasonable to the threat level(bigger chance to get killed by a bee than a terrorist attack) they should take a chillpill and relax alittle.
7. Do pat-down searches enhance airline passenger safety?
No, they enhance the fear that the TSA want’s to implement so that they can get more security gadgets and make more money of from contracts.
8. Are there other measures that airlines should take, in addition to these, to enhance passenger safety?
They should ban all carryon luggage and make people wear a snug fitting orange jumpsuit with no shoes so that they all look alike and have no chance of smuggling anything. This removes the need for a patdown or a scanner.
9. Are there other measures that airlines should take, instead of these, to enhance passenger safety?
See 8.
10. Will these security measures make you more or less likely to fly in the future?
Less, by far. But considering I live in Norway I don’t really have that problem… Yet.