Dudes to TSA: Don't Touch that Junk!

So where were you all those years we women were getting groped?

By Jen Phillips | Tue Nov. 16, 2010 1:24 PM PST

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This week, I was hit by the social media onslaught of this man's trouble [1] with the TSA at the San Diego airport. Would-be traveler John Tyner of Oceanside, California, wasn't too happy about the new "enhanced" pat-downs the agency rolled out nationally on November 1 [2]. The new guidelines let TSA officers feel passenger's genitals with their hands if they refuse to go through the high-tech body scanner. Tyner told the agents he was fine with going through the metal detector, but he didn't want to be groped, especially as the man in front of him in line had been allowed to opt-out of the scanner without receiving a pat-down. Exact words: "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested." After arguing with the agents, Tyner decided not to fly after all—but they wouldn't let him leave the screening area. He was allegedly told that he would have to submit to a pat-down or be subject to a $10,000 fine and a civil suit. Despite the threats, Tyner eventually did leave the airport unmolested—and took his tale to Fox News [3]. The TSA has said it is now [4] investigating Tyner. "He's violated federal law and federal regulations, which states once you enter and start the process you have to complete it," San Diego TSA security director Michael Aguilar told CNN [5].
Tyner isn't the first person to object to the creepy pat downs, but he's one in a string of men whose stands against on TSA groping have stirred up a lot of anger. The New York Times' Joe Sharkey and the Atlantic's Jeffery Goldberg also went through the process, which some observers consider a punitive measure. Sharkey's opt-out request resulted [6] in loud, embarrassing shouts of "opt-out!" by the agents—and despite TSA claims that the new body scanners do not produce graphic images, Goldberg discovered that [7] agents at the Baltimore airport refer to it as a "dick-measuring device."

It's great to see these men taking a stand against what some have deemed TSA-sanctioned sexual assault, but I have to wonder why their indignation was so long in the making. For years, women have complained about agents copping a feel: in 2004 (when the TSA first experimented with gropey pat-downs), there were already hundreds of women who'd complained about the TSA's invasive procedures [8]. But now that a bunch of guys are calling foul, the media is suddenly paying attention and people are outraged. Tyner's story went viral, but what about the stories of women—and children—that've stayed relatively quiet? Here's a sampling of some recent stories about TSA getting overly frisky from women:
• Dayton, Ohio: While traveling solo with her baby, one woman blogs [9], she was given a gropey pat-down without first being told which areas the agent would touch in advance, a violation of the protocol. Her baby waited in a carrier, she wrote, while the screener touched her labia and left her feeling violated and shaking. This pat-down was not an alternative to a scanner, because Dayton doesn't have a scanner.
• A female staffer for Alex Jones' radio show described how [10] she was given the ridiculously thorough pat-down by a male screener. When he moved on to do the same to the woman's 20-month-old and eight-year-old daughters, she had to stop him and request a female TSA agent. Afterward, she had to explain to her daughter why she had been touched in such a matter.
• Amarillo, Texas: A woman sued the TSA [11] after an agent pulled down her blouse, revealing her breasts, during a pat-down. TSA employees laughed and joked about the incident, even after the woman started crying.
• Minnesota: A woman who is a rape survivor got an enhanced pat-down from a male TSA agent [12] after opting out of the scanner. She says her breasts were cupped and squeezed, but she started breaking down when he began moving his fingers over her face and hair.
Public backlash to the "submit or we'll grope you" policy is growing, and that's good news—especially for parents, since nude body scans of children would likely be considered kiddie porn in any other setting. The consumer privacy group EPIC has been fighting the TSA in court over its pat-down procedures, and two New Jersey state senators announced [13] that they intend to ask the feds to cease and desist.
The TSA has claimed repeatedly that the scans are not graphic, cannot be stored, that there is "no fondling [14], squeezing, groping, or any sort of sexual assault taking place at airports," that pat-downs will be conducted by same-sex [15] officers, and that they improve passenger safety. All of these claims have been proven, at one time or another, false.
Although you are much more likely to die in a car crash en route [16] to the airport than die in a terrorist attack, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano insists that [17] the pat-downs are key to a "multi-layered approach" needed to fight terrorism and that (basically) Americans should submit to being scanned or groped or face being blown up. Finally, finally [18] it appears that the public has had enough of this bull-honkey—pilots [19] and flight attendants too [20]. No one wants terrorists on airplanes, but there are plenty of ways to fight it that don't include a policy of grope-y until proven innocent. The TSA tried out a touchy-feely policy once before [21], back in '04, that was recalled due to public outrage and the implementation of whole-body scanners. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley told Congress [22] that "The better answer is millimeter wave or backscatter, which will have privacy protections and will allow people to go through without enhanced pat downs." Hawley may not have anticipated so many people would opt-out of the scanners, but he DID know that the public had a huge level of resistance to the advanced pat-downs. So why did the TSA think that people would be any more accepting of those same pat-downs just a few years later?
Actually, if it hadn't been for the critical mass of angry dudes, they might just have gotten away with it.

Israelification

— By Kevin Drum

| Mon Nov. 15, 2010 9:01 PM PST

So what would a better security system look like for our airports? Several readers suggested "Israelification" — which initially struck me as problematic. It's pretty intrusive, isn't it? According to Rafi Sela, president of a global transportation security consultancy, no it's not. The following summary, in an interview with Sela in the Toronto Star, describes the 6-layer security protocol Israel uses:

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. (1) All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from? "Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said. Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling.
....Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters. (2) Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. (3) At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.
....You are now in the terminal. (4) As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side? "The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.
....(5) At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area....The screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive [and] all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.
....(6) You now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with [U.S. and Canadian airports] — the body and hand-luggage check....It's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

Of course, Israel has one smallish airport to worry about, not dozens of huge ones, and it's possible that their system can't be scaled up adequately to work in the United States. Also, although Sela doesn't really mention it, Israel engages in unapologetic and intrusive racial profiling, which simply wouldn't pass constitutional muster in the United States. I don't know how much of a difference that makes, or whether you could import the Israeli system without it. (It's worth noting too that TSA does use behavioral profiling in a program called SPOT — Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques. However, it got a pretty negative review from the GAO earlier this year. Whatever it is that SPOT is doing, either it's not the same as what the Israelis do or else we just don't do it very well.)
Anyway, I'm not endorsing anything in particular here. But I asked earlier for a better airport security plan, so I thought I'd pass along one possible answer. At least if we have the alternatives on the table we have something more to talk about than just the idiocy of the 3-ounce container rule.