Junk Security: ‘Naked Scanners’ Won’t Keep Us Safe [Tsa]

In May, Transportation Security Administration screener Rolando Negrin pummeled a co-worker along with his government-issued baton. The feud began, in line with a Miami-Dade Police Department report, after Mr. Negrin’s work out with one of the most agency’s whole-body imagers.

The scan ” revealed [Mr. Negrin] had a small penis ,” the disgruntled co-worker told police. After a couple of months, he ” could not take the jokes any further and lost his mind.”

Now the TSA is rolling out these ultra-revealing imagers across the country in an try to uncover hidden threats like the so-called underwear bomb found on a Detroit-bound flight last Christmas. The agency and the scanners’ manufacturers insist they’ve installed features and instituted procedures on the way to make passenger embarrassments impossible. But the larger question is whether the TSA’s tech-centric way to security makes any sense at all .

Even essentially the most modest of us would probably comply with a quick flash of quasi-nudity if it will really ensure a safe flight. That’s not the deal the TSA is offering. Instead, the agency is looking for Rolando Negrin-style revelations in exchange for incremental, ineffable security improvements against particular varieties of concealed weapons.

It’s an identical form of trade-off TSA implicitly provided when it ordered us to take off our sneakers (to forestall shoe bombs), and to chuck our water bottles (to stop liquid explosives). Security guru and scanner suit plaintiff Bruce Schneier calls it ” magical thinking . . . Descend on what the terrorists happened to do last time, and we’ll all be safe. As if they won’t reflect on something else.” Which, obviously, they invariably do. Attackers are already beginning to smuggle weapons in body cavities , going where even one of the most adroit body scanners do not tread.

My article in today’s Wall Street Journal has more. And it’s not all gloomy skies. There’s some hope that the TSA might be changing course, a minimum of somewhat.

New TSA chief John Pistole says the agency has to shift from a threat-driven outfit into an ” intelligence-driven” organization. There are some signs that one of these move is also afoot.

On the night in late October that Saudi intelligence tipped the yankee government off to a plot to blow up planes using explosives packed in printer cartridges , Pistole got a choice from White House counterrrorism czar John Brennan. The TSA was then ready to give new marching orders to everyone from air marshals to cargo inspectors. An agency team was even dispatched to Yemen, where the bombs originated. It all seemed shockingly logical for an agency that’s generally appears to be anything but. The short response to intelligence and targeted security features may provide a partial template for future action. The next move can be questioning passengers and employing high-sensors when travelers’ behavior or specific threats warrant – in preference to making us all get digitally nude.

Photo: TSA

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This post is tagged: miami dade police department, police department report, security improvements, transportation security administration, wall street journal