Plane Conversations

Last Sunday, prompted by the attempted bombing on Christmas, I shared with you two stories of passengers bringing banned items through security and trying to board the aircraft with them.  I posited that “(t)otal aircraft security means body scans, Tyveck suits, no carry-on or checked luggage.” I was half kidding, but only half.

A reader offered arguments supporting the use of body scanners, pointing out that if she is not wearing anything metallic: “I am able to walk through the MAGNETOMETER with the plastic explosives or liquid explosives secured to my waist. WHY, because I did not beep.” She goes further to point out that even if she is manually searched, the agent would not find any explosives because the “agent first runs the hand wand over her watch to ensure the wand beeps and is properly working; she then runs it the proper distance over my entire body. She is only allowed to physically touch the area of my body sets off the hand wand. And to ensure she does not OFFEND me, she must touch the beeping source with the back of her hand to ensure it is not a weapon.” Because of the obvious weaknesses in the present system, the reader volunteers: “I want to be body scanned! I do not care if a TSA agent anywhere in the world knows that I am lying about my weight!”

On December 29, John Schwartz noted in The New York Times that the use of body scanners raises serious privacy issues.  Schwartz quoted Representative Jason Chaffetz as saying: “The big question to our country is how to balance the need for personal privacy with the safety and security needs of our country…..I’m on an airplane every three or four days; I want that plane to be as safe and secure as possible,” Mr. Chaffetz said. However, he added, “I don’t think anybody needs to see my 8-year-old naked in order to secure that airplane.” Perhaps, but that is applying the American ethos to other cultures.  That hasn’t worked before and I don’t see it suddenly working now. We  might not use a child as a soldier, but, look in the news.  It happens every day.

So, the question that comes to mind for me is, “How much privacy can individuals expect when traveling on a public transport?”  I’m a utilitarian, a big believer in “the greatest good for the greatest number,” and I don’t think that giving up some privacy is necessarily a slippery slope and a danger to American civil liberties.  I don’t think that a body scan necessarily leads to martial law, unrestrained wire tapping and fascism.  Admittedly, the scans could conceivably be posted to the internet; however, technology and policies are already in place to preclude those occurrences.  Schwartz’s article quotes Kristin Lee, a spokeswoman for the TSA, as saying that: “Depending on the specific technology used, faces might be obscured or bodies reduced to the equivalent of a chalk outline. Also, the person reviewing the images must be in a separate room and cannot see who is entering the scanner. The machines have been modified to make it impossible to store the images,” Ms. Lee said, and the procedure “is always optional to all passengers.” Anyone who refuses to be scanned “will receive an equivalent screening”: a full pat-down.”

This reminds me of travelling through the Orlando International Airport with my mother who, in the last stages of lymphoma, was confined to a wheelchair.  We took the wheelchair through security, with the agents performing all of the appropriate pat-downs.  As it happened, Mother ended up being the random person selected for further scrutiny.  A fellow passenger saw the inspection and expressed outrage that such an obviously ill woman should be subjected to this somewhat invasive search.  Mother didn’t mind; however, the passenger’s comments made me wonder who would be a better bomber than my mother?  Already terminally ill, what did she have to lose?  But what good did that pat-down really do?  Not much.  The agent who checked Mother was afraid of hurting her; so, although we lifted Mother out of the chair, the inspection was cursory, at best.  A scan would have allowed her to stay in her chair, but would have performed a far more thorough search.

If someone is intent on causing harm, they probably will, but that doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for them.  Security already x-rays or hand-searches our luggage,and as I discovered much to my dismay at the Santa Barbara Airport, some of those searches are conducted in full view of anyone who cares to watch.  We don’t object to that “invasion of privacy” because we don’t see it; it doesn’t make us uncomfortable (unless you’re in Santa Barbara).  But the idea of a stranger looking at the shadowed outline of our bodies, which to me seems no more an invasion of privacy that handling my knickers, we object to.  I don’t see the big deal, honestly.  I have nothing to hide in either my luggage or on my person.  Like the reader, I don’t care of a random TSA agent knows that I lie about my weight.  I’d rather be a little bit embarrassed than a whole lot dead.

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