The uproar over the TSA’s new porno scanners (and the agency’s general fecklessness) is spreading.
Seems that the TSA is facing increasing push-back from passengers, pilots, and others over the new “submit to a privacy-invading full body x-ray scan of questionable usefulness or have your crotch inspected manually” policy.
Nearly a week before the Thanksgiving holiday air travel crush, federal air security officials struggled Monday to reassure rising numbers of fliers and airline workers outraged by new anti-terrorism screening procedures they consider invasive and harmful.
Across the country, passengers simmered over being forced to choose scans by full-body image detectors or probing pat-downs. Top federal security officials said that the procedures were safe and necessary sacrifices to ward off terror attacks.
Jon Tyner, The software engineer in San Diego who refused to be groped and was threatened with a civil lawsuit and a $10,000 fine, is now actually being investigated by the TSA, and they’ve upped the penalty to $11,000.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she “regrets” the resistance to these new procedures, but they are “necessary to deal with emerging terrorist threats such as a Nigerian man’s alleged attempt to blow up a jetliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit last Christmas Day using hard-to-detect explosives.”
One guy’s failed attempt last year is not an “emerging threat.” It’s one guy’s failed attempt. People who want to blow up planes will use whatever method of concealing their weapons that you’re not checking for. Gaggles of hundreds people waiting to go through security is a bigger security threat than underpants. We’re spending too much time chasing after the last method we saw employed and not enough time using intelligence and common sense.
And groping a screaming 3-year-old? Just ridiculous.
Oh, and those machines that supposedly aren’t even capable of storing the revealing images they take? Bullshit.
This whole thing is starting to have a frog-in-a-pot feel to me. You know, the old adage about if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it’ll hop out (presuming it hasn’t already been parboiled), but if you put it in cool water and gradually bring it to boiling, it’ll cook before it notices the temperature change.
That’s what these screening techniques feel like to me. Every time there’s a new one, there’s an outcry and outrage.
“I have to take all my electronics out and put them in separate bins!”
“They took away my mother’s insulin!”
“No knitting needles!”
“No bottles of shampoo over 3ml!”
“They made me take off my jacket and shoes!”
“Everyone has to go through the see-me-naked machine!”
“Everyone has to get their junk felt.”
Yet every single time, the outrage dies down and the new screening technique becomes yet another routine annoyance of flying. I predict in a couple more years, we’re all going to be dropping trou and bending over for a cavity search next to the conveyor belts. Think that’s insane hyperbole? Think about flying ten years ago, how you’d have reacted if someone told you that in just a few years, people would be accepting crotch and tit gropes as a routine “security” measure.
Geni: Best comment on this entire post. You’re absolutely right.
@52 (80) – what’s funny is that I have a friend who’s on SPD, and she thinks these measures are useless bullshit too. I don’t know a single cop who thinks any of this TSA crap is anything but a cosmetic waste of time.
I swear, I’m gonna show up at the airport in Saran Wrap and a smile one of these days.
If you ever do it at the Denver airport, give me some advance notice. Wouldn’t want to miss that. 😉
@14 – everyone feels differently about things. You happen to not care. There are people out there who don’t care if they are naked. Some care. That is all.
@55, agreed. I know that everyone is naked under their clothes, yadda yadda yadda.
When the TSA decides that small amounts of explosives could be hidden in your labial folds, are you going to be OK with that, too? How do you feel about anal probes? Hey, we all look the same down there, so what’s the big deal, right?
You may not value your privacy, but I happen to value my privacy, modesty and dignity very much. BTW, did you know that a sex offender who hasn’t been caught in the past 10 years can get a job as a TSA feeler-upper? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want creepy Uncle Ernie fiddling about with my kid’s junk while he stands there and screams.
@51 the Rent Is Too Damned High.
I think people have really had it this time.
This country is full of indignant prudes who are paranoid about getting blown up and paranoid about some pervert violating their modesty. The whole controversy – both sides – is so emblematic of this country and its weird fusion of unjustified personal pride and venerated fear it’s pathetic. But heck, maybe that trip to grandma’s is worth seeing Timmy get molested by a sex offender, roasted with x-rays, carved up with a box cutter, and then blown to pieces by some Fruit-of-the-Looms all in one day.