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"Most everyone got to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving without genital distress."
Gee, that's a grand victory? Columnists and the TSA brass, as well as randomly interviewed airline passengers, have relied on the idea that "most people" would not be rubbed between the legs at airports as a means of reassuring the public. This is a phony argument. It is a bit like saying, "Well, most people are not held in jail without charges, so we don't need habeas corpus or the right to a speedy trial".
Who says the protests against airport screening fizzled? Those who were trying to make a point picked two perhaps unfortunate goals: First, demanding to be groped instead of x-rayed (actually, you don't have to demand it, because the TSA maintains that X-rays are \"voluntary\", followed, if you decline, by mandatory groping). The second goal, not flying at all, would go unnoticed, especially to camera crews watching airports on the busiest travel day of the year. So, the evidence that the protest fizzled is lacking. Many reporters and columnists clearly wanted it to flop before hand, so they are cheering the “results”.
The media have also failed to take notice that the TSA backed down on one of its post 9-11 procedures this week. Since that day in 2001, the TSA screeners would not allow a passenger who set off the metal detector to empty his pockets a second time and go back through. Now, they say that's okay.
There are many other steps the TSA can take to move the lines along and some of them appeared to have been in use Nov. 24th. One step would be to set the metal detectors at a lower level of sensitivity. After 9-11, the airport versions were turned up to max. Now, it seems they have been dialed back to a more reasonable level. It certainly appeared that the word had gone out to lighten up, and thus take the air out of the protest efforts.
By this time next year, the TSA intends to have 1,000 x-ray scanning machines at airports, compared to under 400 now. The purpose is obvious: to make this the new standard of screening passengers nationwide. At that point, America will get a big dose of what many say they want and the familiar refrain
"If it helps with our security
I'm aaaaallll for it"
might not seem such a hit any more.
If the TSA had planned all of this over the last two weeks (and I am not certain they did not), they could not have conceived of a more clever campaign under which they can now deploy a new, invasive and potentially dangerous screening system. First, they spring the x-ray scanners on the public right before a major holiday without announcement or introduction. Then, right on cue, a massive, if somewhat disorganized protest erupts, followed by what, for a few days, appeared to be fair, serious questioning of the procedures. Then, boom, comes the big day and the entire national media pronounces, without clear evidence, that the whole thing was a flop. Now the TSA is, in the word of campaign operatives, inoculated from future protest. The media will ignore future organizing efforts and Internet campaigns because of this example and because they have concluded, incorrectly, that the first round failed..
Major questions remain:
1. What would the long term affect being on children being passed through the x-ray machines? Who cares, besides their parents and those who love them?
2. What would the affect be on a mother's developing fetus?
3. What would the affect be on a fetus only just conceived by a mother unaware she had become pregnant?
4. What will happen if the TSA starts imposing the 11,000 dollar fine it claims it is empowered to use if someone declines further screening and wants to leave the airport peacefully?
5. What will happen if the TSA insists on finishing screening of a peaceful passenger even after that passenger has left the screening area?
6. How will passengers react with the machines fully installed and lines become longer and longer, turning air travel into an hours long process before the plane even takes off?
7. Why did the TSA cave so quickly on forcing pilot's and attendants to take enhanced screening? If the pilot's believe, as their union stated, that the pat downs are akin to sexual assault, why is it alright to impose that on a law abiding, peaceful American citizen?
8. If you were to happen to draw a screener/groper who “oversteps” whatever line the TSA says it observes, to whom would you protest? How would that protest be made and could you expect any redress? (The answer is simple: whatever they say goes and there is almost nothing you can do about it, as in a police state.)
9. How will the public, and the courts, react to the posturing of John Pistole, head of the TSA, when he claims, as they did once in the old Soviet Union, that travel by aircraft (or any means in the USSR) is not a right, but a privilege? Isn’t freedom of movement part of our basic freedoms and, since aircraft are the primary means of longer distance travel, aren’t they, and it, fundamental to our basic rights as citizens?
10. What will be the political fall out from Pistole’s attempt to lecture American citizens, who are equal to and in no way "subjects" of the government, on their right to use the very option he says they must have, not taking the x-ray machine? (Pistole said before Thanksgiving that opting out was irresponsible, as if it were his right to lecture citizens as if they were children.)
The TSA has been off the rails from the start. We have a president not willing to tone it down and make them grow up. We have a TSA which reacts to the most frightened and perhaps unreasonable of the public, a scaredy-cats agency that reacts rather than plans ahead and has no idea what measures it might want to impose, other than more, after the next near miss or attack.
I believe there are simple reasons Obama and his people have not tackled this problem. First, I don’t believe they have a handle on security needs and fully understand terrorism at this stage. Second, they seem to want to avoid any problem that doesn’t force itself on them, as if they are constantly trying to protect the president from controversy. Instead of encouraging Obama to lead, they are conducting a long, careful campaign for his re-election, something their tactics might actually derail. What they seek they might not get, because of the manner of their seeking.
Of course Obama has a lot of other matters on the agenda, but so very many of the Bush policies and procedures have been left in place by Obama that, in many cases, it seems like we have not had a change in administrations at all. If that remains the case in 2012, then the voters will not have a difficult choice to make.
Doug Terry, 11.29.10
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