Over the past week, it seems that the American public has finally gotten irritated with TSA and their heavy-handed and unchecked security procedures. Consumer groups, union representatives and associations are all screaming that this new strip-search and radiation madness has to stop.
Even the airlines and airports have gotten into the fight against TSA, but because of more practical issues such as the extra time needed for the new machines and the added space that TSA is requesting to install more whole-body scanners.
A group of travelers has spontaneously been trying to organize a national opt-out day protest to take place on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year. Travelers are being urged to say, “No,” to whole body scanners and opt-out for the “enhanced” pat-down.
Another group on Facebook, Boycott Flying, is collecting a critical mass of travelers who say they have had enough of TSA security rules.
Pilots unions and flight attendant unions are both urging their members to refuse to go through the whole-body scanners and reports from Washington are that TSA is looking at setting up separate inspection protocols for crew members who have to pass through these machines and the security checkpoints multiple times each day.
Maybe common sense will reign.
The Consumer Travel Alliance is floating a possible solution to the consumer outrage and the potential for massive disruption of the nation’s transportation system during the Thanksgiving holiday period by urging TSA to modify their systems and make whole-body scanners an opt-in method of scanning rather than an opt-out program.
Perhaps, a bit more of the carrot rather than the stick might be in order. However, TSA is steadfastly claiming that their systems will be followed to the letter of their rules and regulations.
They have threatened those who opt-out and complain about the pat-downs with fines. They have sent at least one pilot back home who has passed through the same security checkpoint for years because he refused to go through the new security procedures. Whether or not, TSA actually handcuffed a passenger to a chair in an alteration is less important that the fact that the American public believe that TSA would do such a thing. This thuggery taking place in the name of security is beginning to take on shades of a East German Stasi operation.
Plus, it is not only the public and unions who are complaining. Our own government has complained. The GAO has released report after report notifying Congress and the TSA that they are deploying expensive equipment without the proper testing. All to no avail. TSA continues unabated to deploy untested, ineffective and inefficient machines and subject the country’s citizens to unreasonable searches without any probably cause.
With the added layers of security now available through intelligence and the terrorist watch list, this microscopic in-depth security system that TSA is using is an admission that all other government efforts have failed or are worthless.
We all hope that that is not the case.
It is time for TSA to acknowledge that they may have taken a step too far and shift to a process that uses the already deployed whole-body scanners as a secondary screening method and move our travelers through less intrusive and the more efficient security checks that we know have worked so far.
Let’s reach a middle ground where TSA can save face and we American citizens are not stripped naked, radiated and treated like criminals.
Photo: A Transportation Security Administration employee demonstrates a full-body scanner at Los Angeles International Airport. Credit: Los Angeles Times
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
