One View Against Airport Body Scanners And Pat-Downs

From ROK Drop and CNN:

8:29 PM (2 hours ago)Once View Against Airport Body Scanners & Pat Downsfrom ROK Drop by GI Korea


Here is an editorial posted on CNN about the body scanners and optional pat downs that are being conducted at US airports that is the subject of much recent controversy:



Body scanners that peer through clothes are deployed in airports across the country. Travelers who object are subject to “enhanced” pat-downs. Parents watch as their children are groped before boarding a plane.




The elderly are asked to raise their arms high above their heads so that the body scanners can capture a naked image of a 78-year-old man or an 81-year-old woman.



No other country in the world subjects its air travelers to the combination of screening procedures that Americans are being asked to endure.



“Although the constitutionality of airport screening searches is not dependent on consent, the scope of such searches is not limitless,” wrote a federal court not long ago.



That is the starting point for a case presented by my organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, that the Transportation Security Administration has crossed a line and the airport body scanner program should be halted.



The government contends that travelers are happy with the new procedures and there are hardly any complaints.



But those claims ring hollow in the face of Americans’ real experiences at the airport. In documents obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act, travelers routinely described the body scanner experience as embarrassing and humiliating. Pregnant women worry about the effects of radiation. Men and women liken the pat-downs to “sexual assault.” [CNN]



Read the rest at the link, but I don’t have a problem with body scanners and pat downs in the age of shoe and underwear bombers. Maybe if the underwear bomber was scanned or given a pat down he would have never been able to board the plane he nearly blew up? Anyway my problem with the TSA is that they are really rude and have bad attitudes. This is not all TSA personnel because there are plenty of them that are professional when doing their jobs, but there are some airports with my best example being LAX where they are totally rude. Lighten up and smile a bit, but then again when people are complaining at you all day about security scanners and pat downs I guess that would put you in a bad mood after awhile

 
 
And this, related, from Gateway Pundit:
 
8:26 PM (2 hours ago)TSA Chief Says Agency’s Screening Techniques Don’t Include Body-Cavity Searches… Yet (Video)from Gateway Pundit by Jim HoftTSA chief John Pistole today met with reporters from the Christian Science Monitor. Pistole discussed why his agency’s aggressive screening techniques don’t include body-cavity searches …yet



 
TSA Chief Pistole:




“We’re in the risk management business, being a risk-based intelligence organization. The information that I’ve seen out in public about body cavities for bombs I think is perhaps not accurate. There’s been reporting of one incident involving the Saudi Deputy Administrator of Interior. The forensics on that are not dis-positive and there is stronger indication that it was actually an underwear type bomb strapped to his upper thigh rather than a body cavity. That being, said even if it is a body cavity you still have to be an initiator. You have to have some external vice that cause that initiation such as having the TAPT that is closer to the PA10 that had a modified syringe. There has to be something external that initiates the device. That’s what the advanced imaging technology machine will pick up. Any anomaly outside the body. So we’re not going to get in the business of doing body cavity (searches) that’s just not where we are.”