The recent change in TSA rules subjects airplane passengers to greater humiliation than the terrorists who started the whole thing get if they are captured. At least a terrorist gets searched in the privacy of custody because he’s done something wrong. We get sexually assaulted in public for doing something right.
Rather than keep the terrorists out of our country and away from the airport, we have dropped to a new low level of incompetence and that is to subject ourselves to treatment that should be reserved for criminals.
What is the pretext for all of this? Some terrorist who never should have been allowed on an aircraft in the first place had explosives in his underwear. No pun intended but the last time I went through security I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy or sad as the guy in blue groped my private parts. Now I hope some new guy doesn’t put explosives in his orifice or the future of searches could be very uncomfortable indeed.
We now have scanners that purportedly show anything, including what may be where the sun doesn’t shine. We have to accept this technology and not allow TSA to have the option to grope us like some organized perversion. The scanners show more and protect us better anyway because groping doesn’t really disclose what’s hidden in all the nooks and crannies so it is ineffective anyway.
Decades ago, I offered that there is no way to prevent aviation terrorism unless the terrorists are prevented from getting to the airport.
We continue to disregard that caveat by reacting absurdly to one terrorist gig after another as if the belated reaction would have prevented the terrorist act in the first place or even dumber that terrorists are going to try the same thing a second time.
It has now become so arduous and humiliating to board an aircraft that a parent must decide whether to expose a child to groping that he has warned them never to allow and an adult has to decide whether to suffer the humiliation of being touched inappropriately or denied access to his flight and be searched anyway.
We need preapproved passenger identification, cornea scanners to confirm identities and an outright refusal to allow anyone in our country who isn’t totally vetted by the country that issues his passport.
TSA should keep its hands out of our pies and try something else.
Arthur Alan Wolk
November 2010
