Everyone’s favorite travel buddy, the Transportation Security Administration, got a little more bad press today as they denied Senator Rand Paul from his flight in Nashville. According to Rand Paul staff members and father, GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, a false positive had set off the airport scanners. Airport security then denied Paul another scan and required that he must go through a pat down procedure. After refusing, stating it was an infringement on his rights, Paul was then made to wait in a security area for an indefinite amount of time and forced to miss his flight. He later rescheduled his flight to Washington and went through another set of scanners without incident.
The TSA backed down the detail of the body scanner since their debut, which had caused a huge uproar as the machines took not only, very invasive images, but had been later found storing these images. Something the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security said was an impossibility with their machines. But, that doesn’t mean it is not done by someone else, as that was later proved in 2010 as the US Marshal Service, a subsection of the Department of Justice, admitted to storing tens of thousands of body images from courthouse security machines. While the agency has stated that these photos will never be released to the public (well no more than those leaked), it makes me question if people should have the right to access to these photos. Are security scans of US Citizens, taken at a public courthouse considered public information? I mean, don’t we have a right to know what information is being gathered on us by our own government on publicly owned property?
With the less accurate images, TSA officers have moved towards a much less popular method of security, the pat down. Huge explosions of outrage flare up every time a new viral video pops up on Youtube with what appears to be TSA agents doing immoral or visually disturbing acts. A video of an agent patting down a mother and her six year old daughter has received almost 2 million views. As more stories surface, such as the man who had his bladder bag broken and leaked all over his clothes or the breast cancer survivor in North Carolina, who was forced to remove a prosthetic breast by airport security, you begin to wonder if there is a solution to all this.
The TSA has been slowly rolling out a new version of the millimeter wave based scanning system, Advanced Imaging Technology, that replaces the backscatter x-ray scanners that posed a radiation risk. The new machines are supposed to increase foreign object detection and increase privacy by completely removing the actual image of the person and replacing it with a standard generic outline. Even without the software update, the image results are much less anatomically detailed than the competing x-ray scanners. TSA states, when given the choice, as many as 98% of travelers chose the new system over a traditional scanner, metal detector or a physical search. While that statistic looks very promising, it’s easy to get good numbers when your alternatives are a good groping and blast of radiation. Even still, it looks like there is finally some sort of progress. All we need is one more really good TSA scandal to push the funding for a complete roll out. Where is a Betty White airport frisking when you need one.
