By E. Roberts Musser –
I had occasion to fly between the West and East Coasts over the winter holidays. On the return flight through Baltimore-Washington International Airport, I was one of the “lucky” passengers who was separated from my adult children and “randomly” selected for subjection to extra security measures. As I stood patiently in the long line to go through the new airport scanning machines, the lady in front of me loudly voiced her displeasure: “I paid extra for business class tickets. I shouldn’t have to wait in line like this, or be separated from my husband. I cannot believe how I am being treated. This is just disgusting. Can you believe this?”
As this woman continued to arrogantly complain, an airport security guard began walking through our line, emphatically declaring: “Anyone not cooperating with security measures will be removed from the line and ejected from the airport if necessary. I will remove you from this facility if I am forced to. If everyone cooperates, the lines will move more quickly.”
Deciding it was time to deflate her pretensions, I quietly told the irate woman that no, I had not paid an extra ten dollars for a business class ticket. She promptly stopped complaining to me, but kept muttering to herself how unjust her treatment was. At about that point, it became clear to both she and I that we were going to have to go through the large airport scanning machine. Unwisely, this lady would not stop protesting to anyone who would listen, including airport security.
As we approached the scanners, my thoughts wandered. I had been appalled to previously watch an elderly grandmother being frisked as she stood in front of her wheel chair at the Sacramento Airport. And I am not talking about a wand passed over the body without making contact. This was a full and lengthy pat-down of the poor elderly lady’s breasts and between her legs. It was horribly humiliating to watch, so I can’t even imagine how degrading it must have felt undergoing the actual frisk.
You would have thought the whining passenger in front of me would have gotten a hint of things to come from the stern words of the security guard if she didn’t keep quiet. Sure enough, after this argumentative woman passed through the scanner ahead of me, she was thoroughly patted down, belligerent the entire time. I, on the other hand, was whisked through immediately upon being scanned without a “by your leave”. I know when to keep my mouth shut. However, the entire experience gave me pause, and certainly had elements of the ridiculous about it. My gut instincts were telling me something was not quite right about the entire episode. Let us just say it gave me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Apparently I am not alone in feeling that way. There are several lawsuits wending their way through the federal court system, each on different theories. Some claim the pat-downs are a violation of the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Others claim the screening process is detrimental to emotional, psychological and mental well being. Yet another claims the procedures impact freedom of religion when modesty is required as part of one’s spiritual beliefs. According to a suit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the new screening procedures are “unlawful, invasive and ineffective”.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader commented that even more lawsuits may be coming, adding, “Changing this policy, or even backtracking, doesn’t mean we’d suddenly be flying on a wing and a prayer. In fact, better use of available intelligence alone would have stopped last year’s Christmas underwear bomber from flying to the USA. Indiscriminate and inefficient dragnet-type security checks of whole populations, if anything, make us less safe by focusing on the wrong things.”
The website www.wewontfly.com comments: ““I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” said Rafi Sela, leading Israeli airport security expert”…The millimeter wave scanners do not detect
the kind of powdered explosives used in January’s attempted underwear bomber attack. The TSA doesn’t claim that the x-ray backscatter scanners do either! Alert passengers stopped the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber and stopped an airplane from striking the white house on September 11. We passengers have a better track record than the TSA, yet the TSA humiliates us, intimidates us and lulls us into a false sense of security with their security theater.”
Another concern is the danger of x-ray emissions from the scanners, as cited on www.wewontfly.com: “As University of California scientists noted earlier this year, the airport scanners may pose a serious health risk. “Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed,” they said in a letter of concern earlier this month. The TSA has not demonstrated the safety of these machines and it’s their own employees who are most at risk!”
Another interesting issue is the connection between the federal government and the company that manufactures the scanners. From www.creativeloafing.com: “It turns out that when former Homeland Security director Michael “The Skull” Chertoff, left his government position, he formed a “security consulting” business and signed on to “consult” for companies that make full-body scanners. The day after the underwear bomber fiasco, Chertoff went on as many TV programs as he could (as “former Homeland Security director”) and began touting the full-body scanners as the one, true answer to the terrorism problem. He even wrote a column for the Washington Post in which he said that people who opposed the porno scanners were “privacy ideologues…
In any case, within a few days of the underwear bomber scare, the government gave Chertoff’s business clients a $350 million contract to rush the machines into U.S. airports. Never mind that Chertoff’s wheeling and dealing is a blatant, in-your-face conflict of interest; never mind that the machines are completely intrusive and privacy-destroying; and never mind that they don’t work nearly as well as advertised… Chertoff knew the right people to talk to in D.C. (which is why he was hired as a “consultant,” of course), and voila, $350 million for a technology that has infuriated the nation.”
It has been suggested that there are far less intrusive methods of airport security, such as using bomb sniffing dogs. In a 2007 article written on the federal website www.tsa.gov, it remarks: “The Transportation Safety Administration at Southwest Florida International Airport wants passengers to get used to seeing security dogs, and to talk about it. K-9 teams at the airport are not new, but a heightened presence will be from now on. TSA Regional Director Robert Cohen is proud of the extra measure of security the dogs provide. They’ve often headed off a worrisome situation. “We’ve had them confirm that it wasn’t an explosive on several occasions..something we may have picked up with our ETD machines..an explosive…we brought the dogs in,” he says. Cohen also cites a bomb scare that was called in last September at the airport aboard an international flight. The plane was evacuated. The canine teams called in. Fortunately no explosives were found.”
There is also a heightened fear that if the scanning machines are successful in airports, they may very well start appearing at train stations, sports events and the like. All this does is essentially play into the hands of the terrorists, as security guru Bruce Schneier notes: “Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.”
As for the pat-downs, take a look at the TSA agents frisking a 3 year old at the following website. I personally witnessed the “gate rape” of an eighty year old woman in a wheel chair. As www.wewontfly.com observes: “A recent article in the San Diego Entertainer on August 31, 2010 stated that “the scans are detailed enough to identify a person’s gender… to identify a passenger’s surgery scars, or to discern whether a woman is on her menstrual cycle or not.” CNN has reports
that scanner images can be stored and shared by design. As CBS News recently reported, US Marshals saved 35,000 images from similar scanners at just one courthouse. The bottom line is that the TSA is forcing us to trade our privacy for absolutely no security in return. There is no balance. “This time they’ve gone too far,” declared Philadelphia We Won’t Fly Day co-organizer Ken Krawchuk. “I have three beautiful daughters, and the last thing I want is some stranger groping them or snapping nude pictures under color of law. Every parent should be outraged at such a gross violation of their children’s privacy. Enough is enough!””
On the Congressional front, www.elliott.org mentions what is coming to the floor of the House of Representatives and Senate: “Washington may be about to offer air travelers who are frustrated by the Transportation Security Administration’s new screening techniques a little relief. Several initiatives to reform the beleaguered TSA will be on the legislative agenda when the 112th Congress convenes on Jan. 3. [2011], according to experts. Perhaps the most high-profile of the proposed bills is Ron Paul’s American Traveler Dignity Act of 2010, which would deny immunity to any federal employee who subjects a person to any physical contact or scanning.
“Enough is enough,” Paul, a Texas Republican, told Congress when he introduced the bill last month, adding that federal employees should be held to the same standard as everyone else, when it comes to touching another person. “If you can’t grope another person, and you can’t X-ray people, and take nude photographs of an individual … why can the government?” he asked. If passed, the law could effectively put an end to full-body scans and pat-downs at the airport, although there’s no telling how TSA might change its techniques in response…
A related bill is also making its way through the Senate. The proposed law, introduced earlier this month by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), would make it illegal for anyone to record or distribute images made by full-body scanners. “Anyone who would try to use these images for purposes other than security should be severely punished,” he said. However, the law wouldn’t stop the agency from using full-body scanners or prevent TSA from using its controversial “pat-down” techniques on air travelers who decide to opt out. But they might prevent a rerun of what happened earlier this year in Orlando, when U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner – pictures that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published online.”
Lesson to be learned: Citizens must put a limit on how intrusive the government is permitted to be. Frisking innocent three years olds and old ladies in wheel chairs is a bit over the top in my opinion. And neither am I convinced that the extra security is making citizens any safer. It may be doing just the opposite.
Elaine Roberts Musser is an attorney who concentrates her efforts on elder law and aging issues, especially in regard to consumer affairs. If you have a comment or particular question or topic you would like to see addressed in this column, please make your observations at the end of this article in the comment section.
I have been amazed and disgusted at how willingly the American people permitted this kind of intrusion into our freedom. Free movement has always been at one’s own risk and safety one own responsibility.
“Alert passengers stopped the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber and stopped an airplane from striking the white house on September 11. We passengers have a better track record than the TSA,…”
This has always been the case, since the first wagons crossed the country and even before. It is what makes our streets and homes safe. Communities and nations are defined by a commonality of culture and goals. Their failure or success is determined by cooperation between individuals and families within the community. If you are assaulted on the street, for example, a neighbor coming to your aid will be of more timely help than a police officer giving you a report writers phone number to call.
Other than looking tough on TV news spots, what has the government done to increase “Homeland Security?”Why have we not isolated the terrorist’s sponsors by barring them from access to the US and our assets? If we stopped all trade with Pakistan and barred known terrorist nations , including Pakistan, Syria, Algeria, Iran and any others whose governments allows terrorists to hide and train within their borders, I must believe that Bin Laden and others would be turned over within minutes.
“I know when to keep my mouth shut. ” The TSA is counting on it.
Would it be possible to get the same scientific claims from their sources instead of from a wonk website? They do mention the UC system… maybe you can get the source and full context there.
Bin Laden is sitting on a rock laughing his head off.
My gripe goes beyond the security – we are abused by the airline reservation practices (rules, fees and pricing), we are abused by security and then we are often treated like cattle on the plane. Wasted time, wasted tax dollars and general frustration sums up the “Flying Experience”. I simply do not enjoy the experience and will always drive (to a place like LA) if at all practical.
As for security – it is not focused enough. They seem to screen all people the same way which means they are wasting time and probably missing things. Politically correct screening leads to pat downs of 3 year old and 90 year old people. They should hang a big sign saying “Security Screening is not a Politically Correct Process” and then focus more attention on type of people who statistically speaking pose the greatest potential threat. We have to live with security but we can demand a better process.
biddlin: “Other than looking tough on TV news spots, what has the government done to increase “Homeland Security?”Why have we not isolated the terrorist’s sponsors by barring them from access to the US and our assets? If we stopped all trade with Pakistan and barred known terrorist nations , including Pakistan, Syria, Algeria, Iran and any others whose governments allows terrorists to hide and train within their borders, I must believe that Bin Laden and others would be turned over within minutes.”
Alphonso: “As for security – it is not focused enough. They seem to screen all people the same way which means they are wasting time and probably missing things. Politically correct screening leads to pat downs of 3 year old and 90 year old people. They should hang a big sign saying “Security Screening is not a Politically Correct Process” and then focus more attention on type of people who statistically speaking pose the greatest potential threat. We have to live with security but we can demand a better process.”
Both of you make an excellent point. Unfortunately “profiling” of any kind is politically incorrect these days, and is why you have in the extremis pat-downs of 3 year olds and elderly grannies. Proper profiling of the type Ralph Nadar is talking about (better use of available intelligence) is perfectly appropriate. Better our money was spent on an improved computer system that instantaneously updates terroristic threats from the CIA/FBI to the airports, than to purchase useless “porno-scanners” that cannot detect the latest form of explosives used by the terrorists.
Alphonso: “My gripe goes beyond the security – we are abused by the airline reservation practices (rules, fees and pricing), we are abused by security and then we are often treated like cattle on the plane. Wasted time, wasted tax dollars and general frustration sums up the “Flying Experience”. I simply do not enjoy the experience and will always drive (to a place like LA) if at all practical.”
Obviously, if people stopped flying, the airline industry would have to improve its customer service. The problem is that many people do have to fly as the only practical means of getting somewhere. I fly, bc my parents live on the East Coast. If I want to visit them twice a year, then it is really only practical to fly. This would be true of a lot of business people as well – altho w new computer technologies for teleconferencing, actual visits to business sites is not as necessary as it once was.
However, don’t be surprised if the “porno-scanners” start showing up at train stations, sporting events and the like. After all, there is a lot of money to be made from selling these machines…
Justin Kudo: “Would it be possible to get the same scientific claims from their sources instead of from a wonk website? They do mention the UC system… maybe you can get the source and full context there.”
I think the real problem here is there is no definitive data that shows the “porno-scanners” are very effective – which is what UC was pointing out. That is the bottom line (pardon the pun). The federal gov’t had a responsibility to make sure the scanners were an effective means to detect explosives and other tools of terrorism BEFORE they purchased the darned things. But instead the feds took the word of Chertoff – who had a definite conflict of interest, since he worked as a consultant for the very business that sells the machines – and bought the scanners anyway. At a humongous cost to the taxpayer – both in terms of money, and in lulling the public into a false sense of security.
biddlin: “”I know when to keep my mouth shut. ” The TSA is counting on it.”
That is one of the main reasons I decided to write this article – people have got to start speaking up against this intrusive system that is probably not even effective at countering terrorism.
Alphonso: “Bin Laden is sitting on a rock laughing his head off.”
The same uncomfortable thought crossed my mind…
Keep in mind that if you start profiling and singling out people as safe (like 3 year old and 90 year old people), terrorists will take notice of that practice…
Great article Elaine! This is the first time I have seen “Gate Rape” used to describe the preposterous scanning and pat downs that American flyers are now expected to endure.
If I really believed that there were terrorists behind every bush, who represented an actual threat, I would say that they have won. The American people are scared stupid. The more civil liberties their own government takes away, the safer they feel. I feel like I am living in the middle of a herd of sheep, being herded slowly toward a cliff, who have no clue what’s about to happen. Our civil rights are eroding. Our standard of living, health, education, are all in decline. And we sit passively and watch it all go down.
The real terrorists here are the U.S. Government and the multinational corporations who control that government.
This whole paranoia mode started on 9/11. I have been researching the events of that day ever since. And while there are many red herrings planted everywhere by those trying to hide identities of the real perpetrators of those events, the available, ever growing, incontrovertible evidence leads straight back to our own government as the co-perpetrator of the event that spawned the whole paranoia industry. The profits have been immense!
Profits accumulated by Chertoff’s company from bogus nudie scanners are a drop in the bucket compared to the profits to “Daddy Warbucks” from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And with all the talk of Federal deficits, nobody in Congress dares to even bring up the subject of military budget cuts.
Last I heard, fifty eight percent of Americans believe the Governments story about Arab terrorists with box cutters is a crock. Yet only six percent of us are demanding a real investigation of those events, complete with subpoena powers. We understand that events of that magnitude have got to leave a huge paper trail.
Senator Mike Gravel is the brave soul who read 4000 pages of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, which eventually lead to Congress de-funding the Viet Nam War. I am supporting his campaign to introduce an initiative on the next California ballot for a real 911 investigation. Until we summon the courage to hold the true perpetrators of 9/11, and the resulting fear industry, responsible for their horrendous crime against the American people, we will continue down the path of being SCARED STUPID.
Please Google 9/11truth.org and Sen.Mike Gravel.
[i]”Keep in mind that if you start profiling and singling out people as safe (like 3 year old and 90 year old people), terrorists will take notice of that practice …”[/i]
Israel’s long experience with airplane terrorism suggests that won’t happen. If you look at every terrorist attack, hijacking or attempted hijacking in the US, it has always been males in their primes.
However, Israeli-style profiling goes beyond age and gender. A lot of it is out and out racism, which we (in the U.S.) claim (at least in polite company) we don’t like as much as they do in most other countries. (In private, I suspect, most Americans are thinking, “Just focus on the Moslem boys and leave us the hell alone.”) Israel’s profiling process, if you dig into it, is very racist.
But Israel’s security system is based on a process of asking certain types of questions and eliciting signs of nervousness in the respondent. The questioners are secretly a lot more interested in certain physical tells in the eyes and breathing and body language than the actual answers.
As much as I might like us to use more of a human focused approach with some profiling and some common sense (like excluding small children and little old ladies), I just don’t think that approach will fly (pardon the pun) in the U.S., given our laws and cultural values.
I think one irony in the post-9/11 world is that the approach of the 9/11 hijackers could not work today. Americans seeing a bunch of Arabs with box cutters would beat the tar out of them before they could ever do any damage. I think when 9/11 took place, the passengers were lulled into a false sense of security, and I think a lot of the security measures we are taking really do less good than a handful of rednecks and hardheads and good-old-boys just ready to kick some ass if called upon. (That is basically what happened with the plane which crashed in PA, but the response of the passengers was just a little late.)
It’s true that “tough guys” can’t stop plastic explosive. But a handful of well trained dogs could.
[quote]Israel’s long experience with airplane terrorism suggests that won’t happen. If you look at every terrorist attack, hijacking or attempted hijacking in the US, it has always been males in their primes.[/quote]
Where does that assessment come from? Seems to me that it has been a big issue in Israel. Enough so that there is an organization called the “Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.” Granted, they are not three, but they are as young as 12. Besides, do you really think they wouldn’t pack explosives around a three-year-old to get through security?
They are not against using handicapped children either:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6889106/
Here are some more links that you might want to consider:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/04/iraq-alqaida-network-child-bombers
http://www.newssafety.org/index.php?view=article&catid=110:afghanistan-security&id=11756:elderly-suicide-bomber-kills-afghan-policeman&option=com_content&Itemid=100106
Clicked submit to soon. Granted, it has primarily been white males in the US. However, if you make it progressively harder for white males (or any other group) to pull off these types of attacks, and ignore children and elderly, it won’t take them long to adapt as evidenced by suicide bombing trends. These people, for the most part, are not dumb (at least the ones drafting the plans).
dgrundler: “Clicked submit to soon. Granted, it has primarily been white males in the US. However, if you make it progressively harder for white males (or any other group) to pull off these types of attacks, and ignore children and elderly, it won’t take them long to adapt as evidenced by suicide bombing trends. These people, for the most part, are not dumb (at least the ones drafting the plans).”
The problem here is that the scanners would not catch the type of explosives carried by the “underwear bomber”. But a well trained dog would have stopped him. And good intelligence passed along in a timely manner from the feds to the airport also would have stopped the underwear bomber. The “porno-scanners” and “gate rape” are lulling passengers into a false sense of security, when in fact it doesn’t work very well. Instead it makes everyone give up treasured freedoms, makes air travel very unpleasant, but probably does not make passengers any safer. In fact there is a good argument that it makes passengers less safe, bc the terrorists will now avoid the passenger route, and target airport personnel, or cargo planes, which is exactly what has happened recently. You have to understand, terrorists love to create mayhem, exist for the sole purpose of causing destruction of any kind to get a reaction. If one way doesn’t work, they will try another…
I’ll opt for airport dogs anyday over the “porno-scanners” and “gate rape”…
Rifkin: “It’s true that “tough guys” can’t stop plastic explosive. But a handful of well trained dogs could.”
Exactly. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if a dog was taken on a plane to check it out just before take-off. Dogs have an amazing sense of smell, and an uncanny sense for what is “not quite right”. I think we highly underestimate the use of dogs – mainly bc it is an old tried and true method that does not require the sale of new equipment…
Also, I would note we are not doing basic sorts of “profiling”, which is simply passing along intelligence information the gov’t already has on known terror suspects – TO THE AIRPORTS FOR SCREENING OUT PEOPLE WHO ARE CLEARLY THE BAD GUYS, e.g. the underwear bomber. Nor is the intelligence community integrating the information is receives on potential terrorists. This is what this country should be focusing on, instead of treating its own citizens like common criminals w frisks…
From voanews.com: “”It was not a failure to share intelligence. Instead, it was a failure to connect, integrate and fully understand the intelligence we had collected.”
Senator Joseph Lieberman said intelligence officials need to find a way to cross-check names of suspected terrorists on various databases to strengthen national security. He said it is “infuriating” that Abdulmutallab was able to board the plane, citing “systemic failures and human errors.” In cases where government employees failed to fulfill their responsibilities, Senator Lieberman demanded accountability.
“In these cases, they should be disciplined or removed,” he said.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano indirectly laid the blame for the foiled attack on the intelligence officials sitting next to her, pointing out that Abdulmutallab was not on the no-fly list.”