TSA Security

South Park's episode, "The Entity" from November of 2001 proved to be quite prophetic. TSA is completely and totally out of line. Mr. Garrison questions the efficiency of the airlines and rightfully points out that they asked the government for a bailout so they wouldn't have to fire employees, and after being granted the bailout, the airlines fired the employees anyway. In another sequence, Kenny is discovered to be carrying nailclippers and is shot on sight.

Our newest reign of terror from TSA is the nude scanner which takes pictures of you underneath your clothes in order to prevent another threat like the underwear bomber from last Christmas. The fact of the matter is that it is proven that the underwear bomber's powder explosive wouldn't have been picked up by the nude scanner, so why do we have them? TSA promises that they will usher in much better security than we already have and that they will not harm us.

Let's think about this for a moment. The nude scanner was said to pick up guns, knives, and other dangerous materials passengers were concealing (including a syringe), but wouldn't these materials be picked up by the metal detector? We are given the option to opt out of the nude scan, but if we do, we are given a more 'personalized' examination of our bodies. Which is worse- having nude pictures taken of you and stored on archives or being felt up in a manner that goes beyond what the police would do if you were arrested? As a matter of fact, I seem to remember one officer molesting a woman in the movie "Crash," but what he did in that movie seems normal compared to what TSA does nowadays.

My mother recently went through TSA. A female TSA employee directed her to go through the nude scan. My mother declined. The agent then made her stand at the other end of the metal detector as her bags were for around a half hour while they got the necessary employees to give her an examination. This eventually led to the employee making her stand with both legs spread and her arms pointed outward for ten minutes while the employee lectured her on how these scans weren't a big deal. TSA claims that they do not discriminate against people who decline to take the nude scan.

Where do we draw the line? It is clear in this instance that TSA is way out of line. As a matter of fact, I would like to be given the exact numbers of how many people were caught solely because of the technology that they seem to be constantly developing. For instance, After metal detectors were installed, we had the metal detecting wands. After the wands, we had to take off our shoes. After our shoes, we were given intrusive pat downs. After the pat downs, we are told that we have to have nude photos taken of us. Where are the numbers that show the numbers for the nude scans above the pat downs? The pat downs above the shoe removal?

I'm strongly against forcing people into situations where they would be uncomfortable. I don't understand how airlines have more intrusive scans and security measures than most government buildings. Regardless, the solution to these problems is never to react after the fact but to pre-empt the threats. Why don't we convert these resources to doing research on people before they even reach the airport? How many of those that we have caught would have been easier to catch if one had simply looked into their lives slightly? Yes, it takes time and effort, but so does having one man look over hundreds of nude pictures every minute with respect to different clothing, body sizes, etc. If the threats are as horrifying as we are led to believe (one blogger who is quite pro-TSA wrote that one in 10.8 million who fly would be subject to a terrorist effort. Those numbers seems quite good for us), then why do we keep endorsing past efforts rather than looking into the future?

Let's face it- it's only a matter of time until TSA has to answer to the sum of a class action lawsuit that would make the producers of Inception squeamish. I can hardly think of a jury in the US that would be dissuaded from finding for the plaintiffs because like it or not, we've all been exposed to horror stories about innocent people being unlawfully searched in the name of liberty. All it takes is for someone who is much more qualified than I to explain how these scans and searches are unnecessary. Or, better yet, we could make an alternative to flying. Then the TSA employees who blindly corral thousands of people into machines daily and follow routines that seem out of line (such as feeling children in their crotches while their parents have to watch) will have to answer to pissed off people for future work. I remember how embarrassed I was when I had my first physical examination; I can only imagine how mortified I would be if I had been flying at that age.

This is not about people wanting to get through security faster but about sheer logic. If our nude scanners wouldn't have prevented what we claim they would have prevented and aren't more efficient than what we already have in place, then they are a waste of time, money, and pride. I would be embarrassed if I was a TSA employee and required to feel up other people and/or look at nude pictures of them. I would quit my job on the spot if asked to do something that intrusive. That people still work those jobs baffles me.