TSA Roundup: The Only Thing Sillier Than Security Theater is National Opt-Out Day
Quite the week TSA has had, huh? Their full-body scanning took a hit when Gizmodo published proof from a courthouse scanner that—contrary to what we'd all been assured—the machines can indeed store naked pictures. As for pat-down searches, a 2009 video of a TSA agent giving a three year old girl an unenhanced pat-down somehow went viral alongside an endless series of newer stories of people refusing pat-downs. Underneath everything was the persistent suspicion that not only does security theater not make us safer, but long security lines are becoming a choice target for future terrorist attacks.
In response, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano published a tone deaf editorial telling Americans that they were getting groped for their own good, while TSA Director John Pistole told Congress that the agency wasn't really concerned with public criticism. He went on to tell Good Morning America that TSA has no second thoughts. All of these statements merged in the public mind with stories of blustering TSA agents condescendingly informing passengers that "flying isn't a right"—as if they're the ones who get to make that decision.
Somehow this brilliant press strategy failed to pay off, and now airports are dropping TSA altogether and there is Congressional legislation targeting the agency.
And yet for all of this, the dumbest idea of the week has to go to opponents of the TSA's new policies. Listen folks; we're on your side almost without exception here, with the caveat being that there's no easy solution to the balance between civil liberties and security.
But this November 24th National Opt-Out Day is aggressively stupid. It can't prove anything, since airports were going to be clogged anyway so TSA will have a ready excuse. What it can do is make the year's worst travel day worse for everyone else. So let's keep things in perspective: just because TSA does silly things without any justification and then gives near-meaningless public excuses doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow their example.
[Photo: Silas216 / Flickr]
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