As a follow-up to a previous post on the subject ( A few questions about the airport full body scanners , I’d like to comment on the current dialogue now getting some air play. Thanks to the "Touch my junk and I’ll have you arrested" guy, more air travelers are expressing their outrage over the use of the full body scanners. Recently, some members of the pilots union as well as some individual pilots, most notably "Sully," the hero who made an emergency landing on the Hudson river, have come out against the scanners.
I’ve been listening carefully to the heated discussion over the pat-down vs. peeping process, as I call it. While I can certainly find some common ground with those who would rather endure the indignity of this sort of screening rather than to be blown from the sky, I disagree that the scanners are the solution. I do not believe that the pat-down would have caught the "underwear bomber," presuming he would have opted out of the full body scan. The security agent would have had to run their hands around his pants waistband, possibly even inside the waistband, to have detected the contents he brought aboard.
The body scanners are not going to work as long as we are permitted to opt out. The purpose of the body scanners is to detect what cannot be sensed by touch or other methods, such as the wand. Opting for the pat-down puts us on the privacy slippery slope where the bad guys will use the next logical hiding places…Body cavities. how are we going to search that?
I’m serious. Once we devise a pat-down thorough enough to have detected contraband in our undergarments, menstrual pads, medical devices and ostomy bags, the only other place to go is inside the body. Can’t see it, scan it, wand it, feel it. A perfect example of the aforementioned slippery slope is the fact that the security agents can now use the front of their hands to pat you down instead of the backs of their hands. Well, isn’t that sneaky? What’s next, digital manipulation? that means fingers, people.
Once we have all determined that body orifice scanning is all that’s left us, then what? CT scans? MRI’s and sonograms? Doesn’t it stand up to logic that if terrorists are willing to kill themselves by blowing up a plane, they would have no problem ingesting, inserting or otherwise surgically implanting explosive materials?
I don’t want to be on the plane with the bomber who gets through, either. Nor do I want to be in a shopping mall, a sports stadium or a hotel. I think we need to continue to address the fact that these evil-doers are bound and determined to do what they will, and if they fail in one way, they will seek to succeed in another. All that talk about not allowing them to terrorize us is meaningless though, if they succeed in taking our lives, bit by bit, one flight at a time.
LL
Related link: A few questions about the airport full body scanners
[…] Pat-down vs. peepshow: Outrage over the full body scanners […]