Full body x-rays, hands-on pat-downs, demands
for ID, bans on liquids, gels, nail clippers, hair spray, knitting needles and now
ink cartridges – the new TSA security regime.
Travel safety specialist at WorldNomads.com, Phil Sylvester,
sifts fact from fiction and asks – does it make us any safer?
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I’m as sick as the next person at taking
off my shoes and belt!
In 2005 I was part of a TV crew travelling
the world for 7 weeks. 4 unrelated people aged between 25 and 45, travelling on
the same newly issued American Express card, with 14 suitcases of electronic
equipment (with industrial-looking batteries). We got special attention
everywhere, but by the time we reached the U.S. we’d been to The Netherlands,
Finland and the United Arab Emirates, so you can imagine the security hoops we
had to jump through every time we boarded a plane in the U.S. (and we took 6 US
flights in 14 days!).
Like I said, I’m as sick as the next person
at taking off my shoes and belt.
Since then there’ve been other attempts to
attack planes. Security is tighter than ever. Now we have Full Body Scanners
and “enhanced” pat-downs. I can’t contemplate making that same trip.
That’s the thing about security – as soon
as you harden one weak point the
attacker will move on and look for the next. Once identified a hole in the
defense can never be left open. This game will never end, but is the TSA
playing the right game?
Secure
Flight.
You have to hand over your full name, as it
appears on government issued ID, date of birth, gender and address. Small
differences between the name on the boarding pass and the ID should be okay. The TSA says, “should”.
Duke Johnson better start letting his friends in on the secret he’s really
Marmaduke Johnson if he wants to board that flight.
(Mind you, this is not new. Prior to 9/11 I knew a man who
called himself Ric, and used correction fluid on the Frede part of his real name - Frederic - IN HIS PASSPORT. He didn’t
get on his flight that day.)
So will the Secure Flight information stop
a would-be terrorist boarding a plane? “I’ve got the semtex cleverly sewn into
my shorts, I’ve secretly activated a terror cell which has lay dormant for a
decade, but d’oh I forgot to get my fake ID!”
Times Square would-be bomber, Faisal
Shahzad, was a US citizen – no need to fake his government issued ID.
The TSA must have its reasons, but for me,
Secure Flight is a waste of time.
Full
Body Scanners.
They’re going to show everyone what you
look like naked (especially after the pictures have been leaked onto the
internet), and hit you with unacceptable doses of radiation, right? Wrong.
The dose from a backscatter X-ray full body
scanner, according to the President’s science advisor Dr Holden, is 86,000
times lower than the annual safe dosage. You’d have to take 235 body scans A
DAY for a whole year just to reach “safe” dosage.
You’ve seen this image of the body scan
which has been manipulated in Photoshop to reveal everything?
It’s a fake. It was an illustration by a
German magazine of what it thought might
happen when the scanners were introduced.
The real TSA body scan images look like
this.
Sorry, but I don’t see
hotbackscatterimages.com being a hit.
Full body scanners – a success. Scan me,
and let me know when I can keep my shoes and belt on while you do it.
“Enhanced”
pat-down.
The hands-on, crotch area body search which
so upset John Tyner at San Diego the other week could be embarrassing, more
embarrassing than you expect.
The officer’s fingers touch every part of
your arms, legs and torso, there’s even a gentle parting of the butt cheeks according to one account.
It was Kate Hinni of FlyerRights.org who
first likened the search to “foreplay”.
I don’t know anything about Kate’s love life, but unless they were
playing Barry White music with the lights down low, I think “foreplay” is an
exaggeration or at least inaccurate.
One traveller recently posted on another
forum “For those who fly, TSA foreplay, get ready to be violated!” to which
another traveller replied “or you could go through the machine.” I’m with him.
Manners,
please.
It’s not the security measures; it’s the
way they do them. The lack of respect, the do-it-or-you’re-a-terrorist
attitude. Someone needs to give the TSA a handbook on customer relations.
Would we all feel better about a crotch
search if the officer said “please”, and “would you mind”, and “excuse me”? I
think we would.
And as John Tyner argued, most people will co-operate if
there’s an alternative. If the TSA is allowed a multi-layered security
procedure, can we be allowed a multi-layered response: “No body scanner, thank
you. No pat-down, either, but I’ll go through the metal detector and explosives
sniffer as many times as you want.”
What’s
the alternative?
Do we have an alternative? Terrorism attempts haven’t been
detected before hand, it was only when Richard Reid started lighting his shoe,
and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
started burning up his under shorts, or an insider tipped us
off about the ink cartridges, that we had any idea what the terrorists next
move would be. Still, the number of terrorism deaths on planes in the US since
9/11 – zero.
So, does the new TSA security regime –
awkward, rude and annoying as it is – make us safer?
Ask the 147 people on the planes on 9/11.
Give them the choice of being touched in the groin area or dying in the most
horrible terror attack the world has ever known. Ask the 2605 people in the
twin towers if they would object to passengers in Boston being put through a full
body scanner. Ask all 2976 innocent victims if they’d swap a lifetime of hassle
and delay at the airport for one more hour with their loved ones.
I’m as sick as the next person of taking
off my shoes and belt, but I do it.
