Controversial TSA Move: Security Can Require Full-Body Scans
Passengers pass through a full-body scanner as they go through security at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
In an attempt to safeguard against terrorism, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that it is changing its policy regarding safety screenings. With the new policy, the TSA can require a full-body scan, even if a passenger has requested a pat-down search.
In a statement explaining the move, the TSA defends its decision, saying that the Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT) “improves threat detection capabilities for both metallic and nonmetallic threat objects."
The AIT scanners can detect weapons that might be missed in a physical pat-down might, as was the case with the “underwear bomber,” who hid plastic explosives and tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on a Christmas 2009. In that situation, the device failed, but it underscored the threat of undetectable weapons.
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“Generally, passengers undergoing screening will have the option to decline AIT screening in a in favor of a pat down,” the TSA said on Twitter. “Some passengers will still be required to undergo AIT screening as warranted by security considerations in order to safeguard transportation security.”
According to the TSA, the vast majority of passengers will not be affected. Nevertheless, the new policy has created controversy, with legal experts arguing that the TSA shouldn’t have made a a change like this without allowing the public to comment.
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“We’re in bizarro-world with TSA,” Marc Scribner, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told USA Today. “It wasn’t clear before what the policy was. Now it’s even less clear… I don’t know if they could have done anything worse.”
In July 2015, the Competitive Enterprise Institute — a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government — filed a lawsuit against the TSA for “violating the law by deploying body scanners before following the required rulemaking process.”
Jim Harper, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told the Guardian that the new screening procedure achieves the “function of the strip search, without exposing the person to the cold.”
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