Has the TSA finally gone too far?

The recent intensification in US airport security has gone over extremely poorly, and with good reason. Consider what they did to this woman:



Now truth to tell, I'm not sure whether or not X-rays are actually harmful to breast milk. X-rays are a form of ionizing radiation, and not good for living tissue, but I'm not sure how much effect they'd actually have on the milk. Still, I can't blame anyone for preferring to be safe than sorry, especially if it says in the rules that breast milk doesn't have to go through the X-ray. And for trying to point out what the rules actually say, she was put through hell. And I'm sure this is far from the only example of such harassment; if there's anything unusual about this case it might be the fact that the victim was white.

The thing is, even when the rules are followed things are crazy enough. Consider this point raised by Roger Ebert:

It appears that not a single TSA agent has declined to perform a full-body pat down of airline passengers. That includes patting down small children. They're not patted down on a routine basis, but on some occasions they can be and they are. A child under 12, sometimes way under 12, may be required to remove outer clothing and be touched on such areas as the genitals.

This is so high on the WTF scale that it beggars the imagination. All this makes me wonder, though, if there might not be a silver lining of sorts to this very dark cloud. While I'm not sure I'd go so far as the Bishop of London, England in saying that flying is a sin, it is the worst form of travel from a climate perspective, and I suspect that a lot of people will start to think hard about whether they really need to fly after being submitted to indignities like this a few times. It would be interesting to track Greyhound and Amtrak ticket sales before and after the new policies came into place. Of course, if there are signs of a major shift, the airlines will start to lobby for the TSA to be put into the train stations and bus terminals too; can't have unfair competition after all.

And what will happen to tourism? Even if the Americans eventually submit meekly to this stuff, will people whose own countries don't put them through this stuff every time they fly want to visit a place like that? I certainly have no enthusiasm for flying to the US any time soon, that's for sure.

And, predictably, a lot of people are saying that the solution to this problem is to only do it to brown people.

Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

Whatever else you might say about Israel, one thing almost everyone can agree with is that they are second to none with regards to airport security. So this is rather interesting:

OTTAWA -- Boasting he could easily slip through one of Canada's new full-body scanners with enough explosives to blow up a jumbo jet, a leading Israeli airport security expert says the federal government has wasted millions of dollars to install "useless" imaging machines at airports across the country.

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela on Thursday told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

"That's why we haven't put them in our airport."

Sela, former chief security officer at the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security apparatus at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport.

He told MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel, that he couldn't reveal how to get past the virtual strip-search scanners, but said he can provide briefings to officials with security clearance.

Right. So why are we paying for these things again?

Only little people have to go through security

Well, not true, actually, but Helena Guergis seems not to have realized this:

According to the account, Guergis and aide Emily Goucher arrived a few minutes before the scheduled takeoff of an Air Canada flight from Charlottetown to Montreal.

In the pre-boarding area, Guergis refused to remove her boots despite being informed that they might set off the security alarm in the metal detector, according to the letter received by Easter. When the alarm sounded, she was asked to sit down and remove her footwear.

Guergis "slammed her boots into the bin" provided by security personnel and then, according to the account, said to one of the airport staff: "Happy f---ing birthday to me. I guess I'm stuck on this hellhole."

Guergis, the MP for Simcoe-Grey, turned 41 on Feb. 19.

After her boots cleared the X-ray conveyor, Guergis, according to the account, yelled at Goucher: "Get those for me. I'm not walking around here in sock feet."

Guergis then allegedly tried to force open the locked door that separates the pre-board screening room from the area where the aircraft was waiting.

When a few moments later the minister was reminded that most passengers are asked to arrive at the airport two hours before boarding time, Guergis shouted back, according to the account: "I don't need to be lectured about flight time by you. I've been down here working my ass off for you people."

Guergis and her aide were ultimately allowed to board the flight.

Source (my bold). And they let her on the flight after that? If you or I had tried to force a locked security door at an airport, I doubt the outcome would have been the same.