The Transportation Security Administration has had to defend its new screening procedures, now in use in 60 major United States airports, from civil liberties groups that say the new passenger screening tests are too invasive. The new policies give airplane passengers a choice: walk through a full body scan or submit to a pat down.
Obviously, more airport security will not be met with much opposition in a post-9/11 aviophobic United States. Indeed, most people will probably feel more assured knowing that the TSA is taking extensive measures to ensure the utmost safety on all domestic airplanes.
It seems even more obvious that people's privacy comes second to airborne safety, as one would probably rather go through a few moments of discomfort and embarrassment than to go down over the Atlantic Ocean in a heap of steel and flame.
Nobody denies the importance of protection from terrorist plots, but what changed that now we need an entirely new and invasive system to prevent terror?
It has been over nine years since the last major terrorist plot succeeded on a United States airline. That, at least, is what we have heard.
Perhaps there were setbacks in airport security or terrorist scares of which American travelers were not informed. It feels weird that, nine years after the last attack, we are only now beginning to use extensive, perhaps excessive, means of assuring complete airport safety without apparent cause.
To be sure, no terrorist attempts have had success for almost the past decade, using the same system. This includes the recent bomb shipment from Yemen and the infamous underwear bomber, who has helped to inspire these more thorough screening tests.
It is also easy for us to say, fully clothed and in the prime of our unblemished youth, that people should not be embarrassed by naked-scans; and if a pat down is the appropriate alternative to a full body scan, you can probably guess that it is far more meddlesome than the pockets-legs-coat frisk that one might receive at the local concert venue.
To ensure privacy, the TSA assures that all photographic images and videos of checked passengers will be deleted immediately.
We should be able to assume that the TSA would keep its word in order maintain its integrity and to ensure a policy that respects its customers.
But the website Gizmodo, a gadgets guide website sponsored by Sony, digitally published 100 of the 35,000 saved images and videos that U.S. Marshals had promised to discard. Though not from the naked-scan machines that the Department of Homeland Security is currently pushing for at 28 U.S. airports, the images are unflattering, showing the passenger under his or her clothing.
If we cannot trust these credible institutions to respect our individual right to privacy, and if they have no justifiable pretext for implementing these new safety policies in the first place, then we should not allow such an intrusive policy pass for "improvements" in airport security.
But indeed, we also cannot wait for the next horrifying act of terrorism to occur before we try hard to prevent it.
