“I want to be sympathetic to each of the negative experiences. We’ve had extensive outreach to a number of different disability community groups, a number of different outreach efforts to try to say, how can we best work with those in your community to effect security while respecting your dignity and privacy,” [Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole] said…. The statement came just hours after Pistole, in a TV interview, said that while the full-body scans and pat-downs could be intrusive and uncomfortable, the high threat level required their use. “No, we’re not changing the policies,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for security. Like any reasonable American, I appreciate knowing that my plane probably isn’t going to blow up, and/or that the person sitting next to me isn’t carrying a box cutter with a 4” blade. I understand that security checks by definition aren’t necessarily designed to be pleasant experiences. That being said, I can’t help but wonder how we managed to get from security checkpoints to Security Theater to having to choose between having our genitals digitally exposed or being groped by a TSA screener (“Do you want your genitals groped or photographed?”). Granted, I haven’t flown since the new procedures were implemented, but I find the stories disturbing in the extreme. There’s only one person in my life I allow to touch me like that, and even when that does happen, it’s certainly not going to take place in an airport. To think that being granted the privilege of boarding an airplane and being treated like cattle might require me being groped by a TSA screener raises some disturbing questions for me. Jeebus, at least have the decency to buy me a drink first….
When did we agree to sacrifice any right to privacy or dignity in order to travel? When did we cede to the TSA any and all access to our persons that they might deem necessary? Why are such invasions of privacy and assault on simple human decency treated by TSA as if it’s just the normal order of things? How long before the cavity searches are forced on us?
I suspect that Osama bin-Laden is laughing his arse off somewhere in beautiful downtown Waziristan…and I hardly think I’m alone in that suspicion.
