First, Slashdot brought to light a story from the San Francisco Chronicle about a three-year-old girl having to suffer a pat-down at the hands of a TSA security agent. According to the report, the girl was terrified after watching her teddy bear go through the x-ray machine and refused to go through the metal detector. She was then subjected to the standard TSA alternative: the pat-down. Apparently the girl's father captured the event on video but since it has been posted on YouTube, it has now been removed "due to a copyright claim by Tribune".
Today, I picked up an article from Adam Savage's Twitter feed (via Mike Tyka) about an incident involving Penn Jillette from the comedy/magic duo of Penn and Teller. I don't think I could possibly re-tell the story with the same impact as it coming directly from Penn himself. Please do read it in its entirety here. However, to sum up, Penn was required to have a pat-down and the TSA agent did not ask his permission before patting down his crotch. Insanity ensued.
Also today, Jaunted and the Toronto Star have articles about Wednesday November 24 being "National 'Opt-Out Day'". Basically, the idea is to start a grassroots movement where people will opt out of the full-body scanners now deployed across the USA in favour of a pat-down. The Jaunted article also points to the TSA's latest blog post on their "new pat-down procedures". Although there isn't much relevant information in the blog post itself, it's worth noting just because of the volume and nature of the comments left by users. I would like to note that Jaunted is extremely anti-body scanner. Their views do tend to be a little skewed when it comes to that subject. However, the idea of a (possibly) large percentage of people choosing the "alternative" screening method on one of the busiest travel days of the year (the day before American Thanksgiving) is worthy of note.
However, earlier this week, the Toronto Star had a much more interesting article comparing North American aviation security to that of Israel. Israel obviously faces a more "present" and constant security threat due to high-tension relationships with neighboring countries, proximity to active war zones, and the activity of local factions which have been labelled by some governments as terrorist organizations. To be clear, I don't want to get into the issue of the ongoing tension/conflict in the middle east. I only mean to state that the risk of a major security threat is, in general, much higher in Israel than it is in North America. With that aside, the article describes how security is handled at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV). Most of the screening is done without any direct involvement of the passenger. The security personnel at TLV are trained to properly profile people based on their actions, body language, and level of eye-contact. In addition, small things like bomb-proof rooms and boxes in the luggage screening area make it so only a small area needs to be evacuated (instead of the whole airport) in case contraband is only detected by more traditional methods. TLV claims to be able to get passengers from the street to the gate in an average of 25 minutes. I doubt any major North American airport can boast that.
On a lighter note, Jaunted also reported Canada's own famous photobombing squirrel has put his $0.02 worth in. The "squirrel" recently tweeted the following gem:
TSA is handling this "enhanced patdowns" thing all wrong. What they need is a "free hugs" sign.Now that I've got all of that out of the way, I believe I will opine. The problem with this whole system likely isn't (as some people suggest) that the TSA is some evil organization bent on destroying the freedoms of good law-abiding citizens. It all comes down to a few simple things.
The main issue is actually a culture and training issue in the TSA. The policies for security screening seem to be changing far more rapidly than can easily be kept up with. As a result, it seems that frequently many people and TSA agents are uninformed as to what the appropriate procedure is in certain circumstances. If the TSA wants to be constantly changing its policies to keep up with the changing issues of airport security, then it needs to be ensuring that ALL of its security agents are kept abreast of these changes. However, training only goes so far. The consistent thing that I have noted in all of these recent security horror stories is the arrogance of the TSA agents. Although I will admit that I haven't read any of these stories from the opposite point-of-view, it usually seems that the TSA agents view themselves as all-powerful. They almost seem to want to intimidate passengers into conforming to their idea of security screening.
To fix this requires a culture change in the TSA organization. They need to instill a set of ideals and values in their employees that they are not the almighty gods of air travel but merely one part of a system designed to keep the average person safe from the few individuals wishing them harm. They need to be aware that just because someone is requesting a pat-down instead of a full-body scan, that they are not doing it to be a trouble maker. They are doing it because they either don't like the idea of someone seeing through their clothes or don't believe the level of radiation put out by the machines is safe.
This, of course, necessitates a change of attitude by the average air traveler as well. The TSA has not implemented body scans as part of some nefarious scheme to see people's naughty bits and irradiate them. To be honest, I don't envy the person who has to see all of those body scans. I am quite sure that the people working for the TSA genuinely believe they're doing the best job they can protecting the USA from airplane-related terrorism. With it being North America, for every person with a good body, there would be at least 5-10 overweight to obese people. Not the sort of thing I want to see all day. Also, people, in general, need to learn to be patient at airports.
Well, I've made enough detours from my point. The fact of the matter is that the type of cultural change required by the TSA would take a normal large corporation a decade or more and the average american traveler is not likely to become any less indignant (possibly rightfully so).
So we have a crappy system but it's all we have and if you want to fly without incident, you've got no choice to go through it. The only thing I know is that the next time I go through a security checkpoint, I'll just keep my mouth shut and just get it all over with as fast as possible.
Edit:
The day after the above post I found a fantastic story by the Seattle Weekly on what they call "Airport Body Scan Porn". This article gives you a pretty good idea of how "visible" your private parts are when going through a full-body scan. I couldn't have put it better than how the article is summed up:
Amen.The point, perhaps, is that anyone who is aroused by vaguely discernible outlines of average people's asses is likely either Amish or an 11-year-old. And anyone else probably gets a similar kick just looking at you with tight jeans on. Basically, there ain't much you can do about that person.But yes, by all means, raise hell about airport body-scanning. It's not like there are more important things to worry about in America.
No comments:
Post a Comment