As if airport security hasn’t gone far enough.
When I was in second grade, I got to see the inside of the cockpit on my flight to Florida. In the fourth grade, I got to greet my dad at the gate after he returned from a business trip. Then September 11 happened. Reasonably, airports started cracking down on security.
And cracking down. And cracking down.
Now here we are, nearly a decade later, and the hits just keep on coming.
I have to take off my shoes, because I could be hiding a bomb. I’m waterless, because my Evian bottle could contain some exotic poison. I have to buy special “airplane approved” 3-oz bottles to put my face wash in. And now, I have to bare it all to go through security.
In light of the attempted Christmas day bombing attack of Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implemented 40 full-body scanners at 19 domestic airports, with plans to deploy 150 more nationwide this year, according to CNN.
These full-body scans have raised a number of privacy and health concerns. A Washington-based group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), cited TSA documents published in 2008 that revealed machines’ image storage and sending capabilities. TSA maintained these capabilities were only possible in “test mode,” and all airport scanners have strong privacy protections in place to ensure the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image, according to CNN.
The New York Times said radiation risks of full-body scans are low and unlikely to raise an individual’s risk of cancer. However, the safety of delivering small doses of radiation to millions of people is still an area of national debate.
These “visual strip-searches,” as they are fondly referred to in the media, are the next installment in the epic saga of “Terrorists and How We Deal With Them,” à la mode americaine.
I understand the rationale behind the measures. But in practice, its implementation is a violation of personal and civil liberties. The machines provide a “detailed image” of your body, able to detect anything from the number of coins in your pocket to those distinctly intimate areas. In addition, they have image-storing and sharing capabilities. If this isn’t an invasion of privacy, I don’t know what is. I don’t want my skeleton to be shared across international lines. That’s just creepy. Even though TSA claims that this feature is only applicable in “test mode,” it’s still very vague as to what the “privacy protections” on the machines currently in use at airports actually are.
And then there’s the issue of radiation. Even though cancer risks have been assessed as minimal, it’s still not a risk I’m willing to take. I’d rather take a pat down, thank you very much. Especially for those well-seasoned travelers, even if the risk is minimal, continually subjecting oneself to a small factor will statistically increase the chance of repercussions. Granted, today you can get cancer from just about anything — cell phone radiation, eating too many burned foods and even older, non-BPA free Nalgene bottles. But I’d still like to cover my bases.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t take airport security seriously. Rather, we need to reconcile the need for security with personal privacy. Just because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab shoved a bomb down his pants doesn’t mean that everyone has to suffer. The issue at hand has less to do the security measures taken at the gate and more with our country’s behind the scenes intelligence faculties. Abdulmutallab’s father gave the government a tip; his visa should’ve been revoked.
In light of this attempted attack, the natural reaction is to concede more personal liberties. Make small sacrifices in the name of a greater good, we’re told. But such irrational responses should be more carefully evaluated –- instead of requiring everyone to submit to such invasive searches, why not simply screen those who pose more of a risk?
Say, a Nigerian national on the terrorist watch list. Or those engaging in suspicious activity.
In hindsight it’s clear that something should’ve been done to prevent the attack from (almost) coming to fruition. But virtual strip searches is not one of them.