With many of us getting on planes this week to travel for Thanksgiving, there will presumably considerably more descriptions of invasive behavior by Transportation Security Administration agents when it comes to passenger screening.
This story has become the biggest consumer issue in the country over the past week, after more aggressive pat-downs began in the nation's airports at the beginning of November for those who eschew full-body scanners.
Some passenger rights groups are calling or protests this coming Wednesday in our nation's airports, the busiest day of the year in terms of passenger traffic.
House Democrats are unhappy as well. In a letter sent to TSA Administrator John Pistole on Friday by Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee wrote:
"While we agree that security measures should be enhanced in the wake of recent attempted terrorist attacks on the aviation system, we are concerned about new enhanced pat down screening protocols and urge you to reconsider the utilization of these protocols. With Thanksgiving Day marking the beginning of the busiest travel season of the year, this request is timely."
The one positive you could say about all of this angst is that it's the rare issue that seems to be bringing all Americans, Republican and Democratic, together on. On Saturday the NY Times blasted the TSA for their "arrogant, bumbling," ways in an op-ed, and concluded by writing:
The federal authorities need to take customers’ complaints seriously. And while they’re at it, they should be hard at work filling in the really huge hole in the security of air travel: the inadequate screening of cargo.
NBC's Saturday Night Live parodied the issue this weekend, with the tag line of TSA being "it's our business to tough yours"
But TSA head John Pistole told Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union for air flight passengers to essentially, deal with it:
Also on State of the Union was a guy who's been giving anxiety attacks to some officials involved in bringing high speed rail to Tampa, Florida Republican Congressman John Mica, expected to become the next head of the Transportation Committee in the House, followed Pistole on CNN and said that TSA has got to change what they're doing.
MICA: Well, just like the president, and as you alluded to with Administrator Pistole, Secretary Clinton, we've already — we've sent a message and Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives, to the administrator that we want this process reviewed.
CROWLEY: And you have said — I mean, you know, look, he has got a balancing act. We all understand that. But we all have a balancing act. You cannot stop everything. So, to you, what is the most heinous of what's going on, if anything?
MICA: Well, first of all, let me say that John Pistole just came on board. We didn't — and what you're seeing now with the pat-downs and implementation of this new technology is just symptomatic, a slight tip of the iceberg of the problems of TSA.
We didn't have an administrator for a year-and-a-half. He has only been on the job a couple of months. And I think one of the first things I did to John is I sat down and said, John, have you seen these reports of the failures of TSA? And I think he's trying to react to make certain that we have some means in place to detect the threat that we face. Now, I don't think the roll-out was good and the application is even worse. This does need to be refined. But he's saying it's the only tool and I believe that's wrong.
John Pistole
Thomas E. McNamara, a former ambassador at large for counterrorism in the State Department, writes in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that there are better ways to screen passengers:
Instead of focusing on these factors, we need to develop a much broader profiling program that gives primacy to patterns of activities and behaviors. This profiling would not key primarily on race, ethnicity or nationality, but it would not totally ignore them either. Rather, it would rely primarily on intelligence and law enforcement and on consular, airline and other information related to an individual's recent and long-term behavior. Only after those factors were examined would others be considered. We have enough data on threatening activities and behaviors to spot "needles" more effectively. We should put more resources into behavioral profiling.
So we're back to this argument, nine years after the TSA was created after the 9/11 attacks. But if you saw Pistole's comments and you're getting on a plane this week, expect to get your "junk" fondled if you opt not to go through those screening machines.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2010.
