Body scanners give GOP pause

Amid backlash against the more thorough airline passenger screenings recently put in place, lawmakers are taking pains to show they share the public’s irritation — without appearing soft on security.
And it is Republican lawmakers — many of whom have insisted in recent years that privacy concerns take a back seat to national security — who are now most outspoken in complaining that the new procedures go too far.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced a bill Wednesday that he said underscores “that airport security screeners are not immune from any U.S. law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person.”
But few on either side of aisle appear inclined to block the Transportation Security Administration from proceeding with what GOP Rep. Ted Poe of Texas called a choice between “a peekaboo body scanner” or getting “groped in a pat-down search by a federal employee.”
However, Poe and other TSA critics in the House have linked the agency’s use of scanning devices that some consider too invasive to promotion of the equipment by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose consulting firm represented Rapiscan Systems, a supplier.
TSA chief John S. Pistole went before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday, where George LeMieux, R-Fla., unloaded on him. “I’m frankly bothered by the level of these pat-downs,” LeMieux said. “I wouldn’t want my wife to be touched in the way that these folks are being touched.”
Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said he literally feels travelers’ pain and embarrassment after his own pat-down experience, which he said occurred even after he passed without incident through an ultra-revealing imaging device. Pistole promised to look into that, saying a passenger who goes through the advanced scanners normally receives a pat-down only if they trigger an alarm.
But Johanns said he wonders “at what point there’s a tipping point with the American public. You know, take off your belt, take off your coat, take off your shoes, take out your liquids, on and on. And now advanced imaging and, as you acknowledge, very intrusive pat-down, if you choose not to do that.
“Does that worry you,” he asked Pistole, “that maybe we’re at a point here where this is not a vocal minority, that people just think you’ve overstepped?”
Pistole said he is sensitive to the concerns of travelers, but security comes first. “What I believe is that reasonable people can disagree as to the balance between privacy and security,” Pistole said. But he added, “We all agree that everybody wants to be secure on that flight.”
Pistole found more support from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Nov. 16.
“This is unfortunately the world in which we live,” said Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn. “What you’re doing here with the pat-down procedures is difficult, it’s sensitive, but it’s necessary for the homeland security of the American people.”
-- Emily Cadei, CQ Staff