Aim to be safe and sensible
Published 4:33 pm Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Now that body scanners are coming to an airport near you (thanks to the would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber), concerns about cost or efficacy have been set aside to focus on the No. 1 worry: How might this inconvenience travelers?
Airline and airport officials say the scanners could lengthen security lines and congest terminals. The Transportation Security Administration disagrees, and rightly notes its top priority is enhancing security and not making the planes run on time.
The scanners take about 15 seconds to check a passenger, TSA officials say, compared with “a few seconds” for a metal detector.
These extra seconds “would lead to significant passenger delays at the checkpoint” Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association, told USA Today. Lott said scans can take 40 seconds for passengers unfamiliar with the machines. Forty seconds for first-timers? Say it isn’t so. Yes, all those 40 seconds add up. But they don’t equal “significant passenger delays” worth whining about.
The real problem is when what should be a 15-second scan turns into a 5-minute ordeal, due to very predictable situations.
Earlier this month on Prisonplanet.com, Sandra Fish wrote about how “My Left Breast Put Fancy TSA Scanner to the Test.” Fish has a reconstructed left breast, which includes an implant, following a mastectomy.
She first went through a metal detector, and then a body scanner. After two scans and whispered conversations between the security woman and the screeners behind closed doors, and what Fish described as “being felt up” by the security woman, she mentioned the implant. The information was relayed to the screeners and Fish was sent on her way.
Airports will, in fact, be brought to a standstill if every breast augmentation or reconstruction, every metal plate, prosthesis, pacemaker, every knee and hip replacement, and every colostomy bag invites extra screening. (Not to mention the ineffective and privacy-busting “pat down” Fish received after being scanned. The security agent was apparently too embarrassed to ask about the implant, but was willing to feel around for it.)
To protect privacy and security, and keep things moving, it seems reasonable to make available a “medical passport” that passengers could carry to alert screeners to the fact the person has a foreign object in/on his/her body, and where. So officials could quickly move from the breast implant and concentrate on the bomb materials hidden in underwear. Doctors would issue the passports, which would follow a national design, to avoid state-by-state differences.
No one is exempt from going through security, but eliminating needless delays due to medical devices would keep the security focus where it belongs.
