Full-Body Scans and Pat-Downs: A Contrarian View

In her last post, Anita nicely laid out the issues around full-body scans and (should you refuse one) thorough pat-downs. And the commenters are unanimous in despising the TSA for its scan-grope-or-stay-home rule. So I hesitate to say this—and I'm surprised at my own reaction, as I'm a huge proponent of privacy vis-à-vis the government—but I don't have a problem with the scans or the manual searches. (Interestingly, 81% of Americans also support full-body scans, according to a recent CBS News poll.) I should add two major caveats: First, the scans (a) must work better than the current system, lame as it is, or why bother; and (b) they must not be harmful. (The latter is an issue I'll leave to scientists.) Second, the pat-downs must not become inappropriate.

Honestly, I can't imagine how unthrilling it would be to look at nude images of people all the time, let alone near-abstract nude images. (And remember: The worker doing the looking is in another room.) If someone does get a tingle when they look at me, I truly don't care. I'm not hiding anything under my clothes that half the population doesn't have. (People with three breasts or two penises may feel differently.) What I find more annoying is that you have to remove everything from your pockets, even your passport.


As for the pat-downs, you could argue there's no such thing as an appropriate search of the groin area, but doctors and waxers do it all the time. Anyone who has a massage puts him- or herself at the risk of inappropriate behavior, and alone in a room to boot. Obviously, the TSA workers need to be professional, and clearly that's not the case these days—so I'll add another caveat: The TSA must train its workers better. The threat of government action against individuals is, I concede, what makes this different from a massage, and TSA workers have a deserved reputation for overreacting to anyone who so much as asks a question.

I'm not a terribly fearful flyer, but I do think about terrorism every time I fly. (I live in New York City, so I think about terrorism even when I don't fly.) We all hate removing our shoes when we go through airport security, but someone did try to blow up a plane with explosives in his shoe, so it strikes me as prudent to check passengers' shoes. Likewise, someone else tried to blow up a plane by lighting explosives in his crotch—should the TSA not check people's groin areas? For all the objections, I have yet to hear solutions proposed for that particular problem. And in this case, I'd put the safety of many people (including myself) over the potential violation of an individual's privacy.

Most of the time I'm amazed at how lackadaisical security is. (When there's a second round of screening, and they look through everyone's carry-on bags, how come they never open the case for my noise-canceling headphones?). When I look back on times I've felt uneasy during security, the incident that comes to mind wasn't near an airport at all. I was visiting the New York City office of Israel's Ministry of Tourism, which no doubt has good reason to be suspicious. After I passed through a security gate—alone in a room with a very serious guard—he held up my shoes and asked me why one was heavier than the other. The question seemed less relevant to him than how I reacted to it, and I'll never forget how he watched me. I won't say I felt violated, but it was close.

When Anita asked me how I felt about this issue a couple of days ago, I said that people who object had better never fly El Al, or they'll be in for a shock. "Have you ever flown El Al?" she replied. (I think Anita is on the other side of this issue.) Well, no. But I've heard many, many stories, and it's my hunch that that level of security is where we're headed whether we like it or not. The world has changed for the worse, which is a shame for many reasons, but the loss of some personal liberties is not first among them.