iReporter Asa Thibodaux says you shouldn't fly if you don't want to be screened. We want to hear what you think.
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- In response to a video of a California man's dispute with airport security officials, the Transportation Security Administration said Monday it tries to be sensitive to individuals, but everyone getting on a flight must be screened. The video, in which software engineer John Tyner refuses an X-ray scan at the San Diego, California, airport, has sparked a debate over screening procedures.
Tyner told CNN on Sunday that he was surprised to see so many people take an interest in his refusal and the dispute with airport screeners that followed it. But he said he hoped the video will focus attention on what he calls a government invasion of privacy. "Obviously, everybody has their own perspective about their personal screening," TSA administrator John Pistole told CNN. "The question is, how do we best address those issues ... while providing the best possible security?"
Tyner, 31, said his hunting trip to South Dakota was cut short before it even started Saturday morning -- when TSA agents asked him to go through an X-ray machine.
"I don't think that the government has any business seeing me naked as a condition of traveling about the country," Tyner said. Pistole said the agency is "trying to be sensitive to individuals issues and concerns," but added, "the bottom line is, everybody who gets on that flight has been properly screened."
The cell phone video Tyner recorded of his arguments with security screeners over the scan and pat-down they proposed had garnered than 200,000 hits on YouTube by Monday afternoon. Tyner said that after he declined the body scan, a TSA agent told him he could have a pat-down instead. Once the procedure was described, Tyner said he responded, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."
The dispute that followed, Tyner said, included police escorting him from the screening area and a supervisor saying he could face a civil lawsuit for leaving the airport before security had finished screening him. In fact, Tyner could face a civil penalty as high as $11,000, according to Michael Aguilar, the TSA's federal security director in San Diego, who defended the behavior of his officers during the confrontation.
"He's violated federal law and federal regulations, which states once you enter and start the process you have to complete it," he said.
Tyner called the whole incident ridiculous and said he will not fly "until these machines go away." "Advanced imaging technology screening is optional for all passengers," the TSA said in a statement released Monday. "Passengers who opt out of [advanced imaging] screening will receive alternative screening, including a physical pat-down."
But anyone who refuses to complete the screening process will be denied access to airport secure areas and could be subject to civil penalties, the administration said, citing a federal appeals court ruling in support of the rule.
The ruling, from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, says that "requiring that a potential passenger be allowed to revoke consent to an ongoing airport security search makes little sense in a post-9/11 world. Such a rule would afford terrorists multiple opportunities to attempt to penetrate airport security by 'electing not to fly' on the cusp of detection until a vulnerable portal is found."
The TSA's advanced imaging technology machines use two separate means of creating images of passengers -- backscatter X-ray technology and millimeter-wave technology. At the end of October, 189 backscatter units and 152 millimeter-wave machines were in use in more than 65 airports. The total number of imaging machines is expected to be near 1,000 by the end of 2011, according to the TSA.
The agency has previously said that the new technology is safe and protects passenger privacy. "Strict privacy safeguards are built into the foundation of TSA's use of advanced imaging technology to protect passenger privacy and ensure anonymity," the agency says in a statement on its website. Images from the scans cannot be saved or printed, according to the agency. Facial features are blurred. And agents who directly interact with passengers do not see the scans.
But Tyner isn't the only one with concerns about the new security procedures. Grass-roots groups are urging travelers either not to fly or to protest by opting out of the full-body scanners and undergoing time-consuming pat-downs instead. Industry leaders are worried about the backlash. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano met with leaders of travel industry groups to discuss the concerns.
"We certainly understand the challenges that DHS confronts, but the question remains, where do we draw the line? Our country desperately needs a long-term vision for aviation security screening, rather than an endless reaction to yesterday's threat," the U.S. Travel Association said in a statement after the meeting. "At the same time, fundamental American values must be protected."
During a press conference in which Napolitano announced the expansion of a security awareness campaign, she also reiterated the need for hand searches should a passenger decline electronic screening. "If you refuse the [Advanced Imaging Technology] altogether, then you can go to a separate area for a same-gender pat down," she told reporters on Monday. "If there are adjustments we need to make as we move forward, we have an open ear," she said. "We will listen."
November 15, 2010
Passengers go through full body scanners, center, at O'Hare International airport on Monday afternoon. At far left is a more traditional metal-detecting device. ((Phil Velasquez/ Chicago Tribune) / November 15, 2010)
If you could put three faces on the emerging public reaction to new government procedures for screening airline passengers, they'd be anger, resignation and confusion. Next week, Thanksgiving travelers who haven't flown recently will for the first time encounter full-body scans that can see under clothing or "enhanced pat-downs." If it seems intrusive to these occasional passengers, they can join a frustrated and sometimes outraged crowd of travelers who aren't necessarily feeling more secure than before.
Growing numbers of frequent fliers are protesting loudly, challenging the propriety and the outright effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration's latest security precautions. The TSA officers who are required to run their hands over the genitals of same-gender passengers to look for hidden objects say they aren't thrilled by the new rules either. The TSA officers "have to deal with nasty comments all day long," said Steven Frischling, an aviation blogger who covers TSA and security issues. "These people don't like being called 'dirty' or 'disgusting' or 'Nazis.' ''
Combine the intrusive searches with holiday stress, baggage fees and the large numbers of infrequent fliers this time of year and the result could be a toxic stew, travel analysts warned. "People are showing up and they're stressed, they're paying more for their seats," said travel writer Joe Brancatelli. "I could see where this really gets ugly." Ed Hummel, for instance, fumed all the way from Philadelphia to O'Hare International Airport on Monday.
The Philadelphia resident, who travels 40 weeks a year as a baking instructor, had been patted down by TSA screeners like never before, in a procedure he called "very intrusive" and "humiliating." "They were up and down my leg, my groin, my crotch," he said after landing in Chicago. "In front of everyone. No closed doors." "I'm very angry," said Hummel, 59, who planned to file a complaint against the TSA. "I thought we lived in the U.S. It's a police state now."
What's new here
At O'Hare and other airports across the country, traditional metal detectors are rapidly being replaced by full-body scanners. The devices will soon be introduced to more airports, including Midway Airport, according to the TSA. Passengers who opt out of the controversial new security checks can expect to be patted down across every inch of their bodies, under new screening methods the TSA rolled out over the last month.
Even the TSA's menu of holiday foods that are approved for carry-on travel has changed. Cakes and pies are OK to carry on flights; gravy, cheese dips and other dense edibles that detection devices might flag as explosive materials are banned as carry-ons. (A list is available at http://www.tsa.gov.)
How scanners operate
Body scanners are becoming the primary screening method at airports, replacing decades-old walk-through magnetometers that detect guns and other metal objects, but not explosives. At the checkpoint, a screener motions passengers to step onto shoeprints in the unenclosed body-scanner and tells them to hold their arms up. The passenger's image, which looks similar to an X-ray and is blurred to hide facial features, is viewed by a different TSA screener in an enclosed room. The image is immediately erased and cannot be retrieved, the TSA says.
In most cases, the procedure lasts 30 seconds or less and the traveler continues on. However, if a potential foreign object is spotted on the person's body, additional screening is required, including a hands-on pat-down.
Rules for pat-downs
The TSA says pat-downs are done as a last resort, in cases where travelers decline full-body screening, or to resolve alarms that go off when someone walks through a metal detector or scanner. "Only a small percentage of passengers need a pat-down,'' said TSA spokesman Jim Fotenos. Children under age 12 are not subject to the enhanced pat-downs, according to the TSA, and anyone else who is eligible has the right to request that the procedure be conducted in a private room and in the presence of a travel companion.
Harry Donaghy, a traveler at O'Hare on Monday, said his knee replacement always sets off airport scanners. So he wasn't surprised when he was pulled out of the line at Las Vegas-McCarran International Airport. In the past, the TSA officer might have used a metal-detector wand to scan Donaghy's body. This time, he used his hands.
"It was more than patted down," Donaghy, 79, of Las Vegas, said while waiting for his flight home Monday at O'Hare. "They grope-search you. It seems excessive."
And for some travelers, a pat-down can be especially disturbing. "Look, there's millions of people, kids as well as adults, who were molested," said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. "This more aggressive pat-down, it just brings it all back to them."
'National Opt Out Day'
Despite the outcry, many travelers are willing to give up a little privacy and convenience in exchange for better security, especially in the wake of bombs disguised as printer ink cartridges that terrorists in Yemen shipped aboard jets in a thwarted attack last month, and an "underwear bomber'' who came close to blowing up a plane near Detroit last Christmas.
"We ask the American people to play an important part of our layered defense,'' Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote in Monday's USA Today. "We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy." Airport officials say passengers generally accept the hassles as necessary. "I'm a little concerned how negative some of the rhetoric is right now. The vast majority of fliers I speak to are grateful for the security,'' said Jim Crites, vice president of operations at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.
But public patience is growing thin. Lines at security checkpoints are longer even before the holidays, much of it the result of passengers taking everything with them on the plane to avoid paying new fees to check luggage. The increase in carry-on items creates headaches for TSA screeners.
One sign of a rising, orchestrated tide of complaints is "National Opt Out Day." Consumer advocates opposed to full-body scanning have designated Thanksgiving Eve, one of the busiest travel days of the year, as a day for people to boycott flying or, if they do travel by air, to decline the body scanning. "Jam TSA checkpoints by opting out until they remove the porno-scanners,'' urges the Web site wewontfly.com.
Travel could be disrupted if thousands of people request the pat-downs, stretching TSA staff thin. "People are going to opt out," said Mitchell, of the Business Travel Coalition. "If they do so in large numbers, flights are going to be stuck at the gates."
Are rights violated?
The new measures go so far beyond what travelers are used to, civil liberties groups said, that they have prompted a flood of queries to groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. John Whitehead, president of the civil liberties-focused Rutherford Institute, said the procedures violate the Fourth Amendment, which guards against strip searching or frisking people unless there is a reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in criminal activity.
Legal scholars say there are two questions that likely must be answered: Do people have a constitutional right to fly, and when they do, is there a reasonable expectation of privacy? The answer to both, they said, is no. "Most courts would say you consent to the conditions of flying, and if you don't want to go through security, don't fly," said Ronald Allen, a professor at Northwestern University Law School. "These are safety measures that are being used to grant access to this good."
Allen said the Fourth Amendment focuses on reasonableness. "You have to compare the intrusiveness of the process with the risk you are trying to deal with," he said. "In this context, the risks are quite real and serious. There are people who still would like to blow up airplanes."
Health concerns
Leading the outcry are airline pilots and flight attendants, who've been advised by their unions to avoid the scans over concerns about daily doses of radiation. United Airlines' Captain Garry Kravit says he even cuts down on dental X-rays out of concern for the level of radiation he faces in the cockpit at high altitudes. "I think it's ridiculous," said Kravit, vice chairman of United's pilot union. "If we refuse, we are then subjected to intensively intrusive body searches — and that is just before we get on an airplane to fly 350 people from Chicago to Hong Kong."
Physicists and medical experts have questioned the safety surrounding the X-ray body scans. In an April 2010 letter to Dr. John Holdren, assistant to President Barack Obama for science and technology, faculty members from the University of California at San Francisco noted that even though the scanners use a relatively low-intensity beam, "the dose to the skin may be dangerously high."
But scientific research doesn't support this claim, responded John McCrohan of the Food and Drug Administration and Karen Shelton Waters, TSA's chief administrative officer, in an Oct. 12 letter made public by the White House. They said that the dose to skin for a screening is at least 89,000 times lower than the annual limit.
What to do?
People who are troubled by the full-body imaging yet don't want to face a pat-down are better off staying home this Thanksgiving — or flying out of an airport where the new scanners haven't been installed, said aviation blogger Frischling. "If you're going to make your stand against the TSA, don't do it there in the airport," he added, noting that security officers threatened to fine a San Diego man who declined both screening methods. "Go fly Southwest Airlines out of Midway. They won't dabble in your business."
At least not yet.
United States
Washington, DC
San Diego, CA
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