Invasion of the Body Scanners

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport: the American public has finally stopped its docile submission to the ludicrous security measures imposed by the Transportation Security Administration, a division of Homeland Security. The last straw apparently is the new “virtual strip search” body scanning being installed by the hundreds in airports throughout the U.S., at a cost of $173 million, giving new meaning to the term “stimulus spending”. Pilots, airlines, and travelers have all raised massive protests against these scans, and a national opt-out day has been planned on November 24. The alternative to the scan is an aggressive frisk, akin to sexual molestation, which serves no real security purpose, but is intended to frighten passengers into assenting the scans.

Some citizens, finding both the scans and the opt-out procedures abhorrent, have called for a boycott on flying. A public policy research center, EPIC, has filed a against Homeland Security, holding that the scans are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, the Privacy Act, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The last act is cited by a Muslim litigant who holds that the scan-or-grope system is a violation of Islamic modesty. Indeed, it is a violation of any semblance of sexual decorum retained by any culture.

The defense of the scans is predictably crass and utilitarian, with the usual senseless fearmongering about terrorism we are accustomed to hearing from Homeland Security apparatchiks. It is no matter that Americans are far more likely to be murdered by non-terrorists – 15,000 victims a year – but we do not on that account put high-crime areas under lockdown. Terrorism is a convenient excuse for the expansion of the police state. It is not even true that airline terrorism is at its worst in this decade. As airline pilot Patrick Smith points out on Salon.com, the world experienced a horrific sequence of airplane terrorism from 1985 to 1989, yet this did not result in a call for draconian security measures. Even if a 9/11-scale catastrophe happened every year, you would still be more likely to die as a pedestrian in a road accident (over 4,000 deaths per year).

If this were not enough, the scans do not even enhance security as is claimed. Body scans would not have detected the low-density materials carried by the “underwear bomber”, the ostensible reason for implementing the scans. Even if it were so, should we have randomized cavity searches if a single terrorist smuggles contraband in an orifice, as is common practice among prisoners and guerrillas? As Israeli counterterrorism experts understand, effective security requires breaking up the plan before it gets to the airport, or identifying suspects based on behavior. This is why Tel Aviv’s airport doesn’t use the scanners, and a leading Israeli airport security expert has called them “useless”.

That’s right. All the tough-talking TSA fearmongers who talk about needing to counteract “the enemy” aren’t even being effective at doing that. Fortunately for them, their performance can be rationalized as a success no matter what happens. If there are no more successful attacks, this proves that the scans work (“banana in the ear” syndrome), and if there is a successful attack, that will only prove that we need more power in the hands of TSA. Their ineptitude will still be obvious to those who are well informed, and as for their tough talk about the need to sacrifice some liberty in order to win this fictitious war, it cannot mask their craven cowardice, for only a creature somewhat less than a man could allow the fear of death make him seriously consider compromising his dignity.