A bladder cancer survivor has his urostomy bag ripped open by a TSA agent untrained to recognize such objects, and the cancer survivor is soaked in his own urine as a result; a TSA representative then insults him on television. A frightened, shy 1o year-old boy resists a TSA screening, and has his shirt taken off in public. An ABC producer reporters that she was groped inside her underwear. Victims of sexual assault report that the aggressive, invasive probes they receive at the hands of TSA agents are bringing back flashbacks of their assaults.Something is deeply broken with our passenger screening process--and this new process does nothing to keep us safer.
According to Isaac Yeffet, former head of security for Israel's El Al airlines, these invasive patdowns are pointless and a waste of time. El Al knows a thing or two about security; Israel faces much greater daily threats of attack than the United States. Yet despite the danger Israeli airlines face, El Al's remarkably effective techniques do not involve "touching the junk" of passengers. We should consider learning from what works.
Flying involves lying to passengers. Every flight begins with a ridiculous video about exit procedures, and the location of floatation devices in the event of a "water landing." A water landing is otherwise known as crashing into the ocean. With the exception of Captain Sully's famous landing, and one other such event in the 1950s, every other such landing has been fatal to everyone on the plane. And in the case of Sully's landing, people did not rely on floatation devices. So untold hours have been wasted on the tarmac listening to an absurd broadcast about a scenario that has almost zero chance of happening.
One of the most pernicious lies, however, is that our checked baggage and shipping parcels have been adequately screen. As we learned from the recent Yemeni bombs, it is relatively easy to get timed bombs on planes In the case of the Yemeni bombs, they were only detected because of an tip from the Saudis--hardly an intelligence resource we can rely on in the future.
TSA needs to consider the needs of sexual assault victims. TSA needs to guarantee that those who are viewing images of naked Americans, including American children, have been screened for pedophilia. As things stand now, it's like the Wild West has taken over our airports, and no one is accountable for the indignities visited upon those with the temerity to want to travel in their own country.
