TSA
The latest ham-fisted outrage from the Transportation Security Administration occurred February 8 when officers manning the security line at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport demanded that three-year-old, wheelchair bound Lucy Forck, who suffers from spina bifida, submit to a complete body pat-down and have her wheelchair screened separately. This was Lucy’s first flight, and she and her mom and dad were on their way to a long-anticipated trip to Disney World. First thing the officials did was take away her stuffed animal and make her cry. The reason we even know about this is because her mom Annie Schulte shot cell phone video of the incident and courageously posted it online. A TSA official at the scene told her it was illegal to tape the event. It is not.
The entire to-do lasted about thirty minutes and ended with Lucy not being patted down but carried through the screening device by her father.
There is no justification in police and aviation security experience, profiling or logic for the Forcks or anyone else to be treated this way. And if you’re going to say that if we don’t manhandle little children like this in the screening line, terrorists will effectively be able to use them to smuggle bombs or weapons onto a plane, you don’t know much about either terrorists or security.
The Transportation Security Administration has been in business since shortly after 9/11. When is this agency finally going to get its act together?
It’s not just the inconvenience and stupidity of stunts like this that should get our collective blood boiling. This is actually harmful in three distinct ways.
First, and most obviously: Actions like this divert precious time, attention and resources away from real threats. Guess what? For all the ranting about how discriminatory it is or can be, profiling does work! So do other techniques that have nothing to do with subjecting innocent people to needless and senseless indignities. And if you don’t believe me, ask El Al.
The TSA brags about how many zillions of small knives and other potential weapons its agents have found and confiscated over the years. But if none of them would have been used in a hijacking or other terrorist incident and they were taken from normal, law abiding people, then they haven’t accomplished much.
Second: This kind of activity borders on child abuse, plain and simple. Many of us remember images of another video, taken at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in April 2011. There, a distraught six-year-old girl was subjected to a public “intense pat-down” – a term of art similar to “enhanced interrogation” – by a female TSA worker who actually ran her rubber gloved fingers inside the child’s waistband as well as along other parts of her body. Now, you tell me, how are we supposed to teach our young children the distinction between “good touching” and “bad touching” when a uniformed authority figure is allowed to probe inside her underpants? How do we even know what kind of emotional trauma this experience will plant in her formative brain? This is not only bad policy, it is an inexcusable violation of childhood trust and dignity.
As Lucy’s dad Nathan Forck so eloquently told CNN, “I don’t want strangers to lay their hands on my child. That’s not going to happen unless there’s a really good reason.”
Bravo, Nathan!
Third: When the public is regularly exposed to nonsense like this, it undermines and calls into question the entire aviation security system. When we witness incidents of this sort, when we see a group of uniformed American soldiers returning home being told they each have to unlace and remove their combat boots (as I witnessed in Salt Lake City), when we are told that three ounces of toothpaste is okay but four is strictly prohibited (Los Angeles, after it was okay in Washington and Boston – same trip), when we hear about a cancer patient forced to partially strip and have his urine collection bag spill all over him, we tend to lose faith that the system is really trying to protect us. And once the public loses faith in the intentions, methods and competency of a law enforcement institution, that institution can no longer be effective.
What we are getting, in large measure, is not real security but what Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz and others have referred to as “security theater.” For example, why is the airport security line the one place in America where we are all treated as if we are presumed guilty until we prove ourselves innocent?
In a February 21, 2013 statement published on its website, TSA apologized for its handling of Lucy’s security:
“TSA regrets inaccurate guidance was provided to this family during screening and offers its apology. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. While no pat-down was performed, we will address specific concerns with our workforce.”
But this kind of thing has been happening too long and too often to just chalk it up to a mistake by the poorly paid and trained TSA line officers.
As Nathan says, “If it’s to the point where it’s acceptable to pat down three-year-old girls in a wheelchair just so that everyone feels a little better, I personally don’t feel that that’s worth it.”
The “trusted traveler” programs now underway are the first sensible move toward real security. Anyone in law enforcement should know that while it is pretty difficult to profile a bad guy within the time and space confines of a security line, it is pretty easy to profile a good guy ahead of time.
But not until those charged with our public safety in the air come to terms with the difference between security and security theater will we start to see meaningful and effective reform.
Update on March 5, 2013: “Washington (CNN) — (CNN) — Small pocketknives and an array of sporting equipment — banned from aircraft cabins in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will once again be allowed in U.S. planes, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.”
Is is possible the TSA has finally realized that taking small blades away from people who pose no threat is not making planes safer? Of course, most of the time they’re still banning those four deadly ounces of toothpaste, so “security theater” still has a long way to go.
The whole thing is a sorry affair.
In my mind, we don’t need any of these invasive security measures for anyone. We just need real locks on cockpit doors so the doors cannot be opened between takeoff and landing.