Debate has sprung up over a video on YouTube that features a 6-year-old girl receiving an "enhanced pat down" from a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. Watching the video, many people have thoughts of inappropriate touching come to mind.
The agent searches in the gentlest possible way and explains every step of the process, including when she needs to pat down the girl's "sensitive areas." Most of the debate even forgives the agent since she was doing her job, but many question the TSA for having policies that put a small child in this situation.
The girl in question is named Anna, and her family was on its way home to Kentucky after a vacation when it was chosen for a randomly assigned enhanced screening by the TSA in Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans.
Anna's entire family went through the full-body scanners, and everyone but Anna "passed." For undisclosed reasons, Anna was then subjected to the enhanced pat down. Though she remains stoic during the video, Anna started to cry afterward, according to her father, Todd Drexel.
This is sickening because children as young as Anna cannot fully comprehend why a stranger is touching them in their swimsuit zones. Even though the TSA agent was as professional and gentle as possible in this situation, there is never a good way to feel-up a young child.
At the end of the video, the agent explains that they now have to take Anna to a "drug test." The TSA has said that this was misspoken and the agent meant the explosive test where a puff of air checks for any explosive residue. So we are left to wonder why this young girl is exposed to all three of the ultra-invasive tools that the TSA has at its disposal.
We at The Spectrum realize that there are certain sacrifices to be made in the name of security. We do not want to see terrorists use a loophole such as a child to sneak an explosive device onto a plane. Some of us have stories of using younger brothers to sneak beer into stadiums because security does not check kids. But in this case, TSA went way too far.
Anna had already gone through the full-body scanner with her family. We would like to know why she was further chosen for the pat down. Two reasons come to mind; either the scanner is 100-percent effective and there was no reason to give the pat down, or the scanner is not 100-percent effective, which causes us to wonder why it has been implemented in the first place.
Our final issue is what to do in this situation. What would you do if your child were getting a stranger's hand in her pants in the name of overzealous security? Assuming the Drexels are not rich enough to eat the cost of leaving the airport and renting a car back to Kentucky, their only option is to risk getting put on the dreaded no-fly list for arguing with a TSA agent. Neither option is very appealing.
There are no guarantees in life and certainly none in air travel. There are many questions in what happened to Anna Drexel and very few answers. But in the end, excessively patting down a child is no way to ensure security in the air, especially with the full-body scanners.
