'I don't want to go to Disney World anymore': Parents' fury as TSA agents detain their crying

[markpkessinger]

77. Here's a blogpost I wrote a couple of years ago . . .

. . . addressing the question of whether or not these intrusive TSA procedures were, in fact, keeping anybody "safe."

[font size=1 color=gray]NOVEMBER 24, 2010 5:12AM[/font]
[font size=5]My response to Ruth Marcus[/font]

In her Washington Post column titled, "Don't touch my junk? Grow up, America" (Nov. 24, 2010), Ruth Marcus scolds:

The uproar over the new procedures is overblown and immature. The marginal invasion of privacy is small relative to the potential benefit of averting a terrorist attack.

I think what constitutes "immaturity" is for the country to allow policy to be driven by raw emotionalism and irrational fear rather than by a sober, data-driven analysis.

According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, there are approximately 28,537 flights per day in the U..S. That means in the past nine years since 9/11, there have been over 93 million flights. In the same period, there have been three attempts to carry explosives onto commercial aircraft (none of which were successful): (1) Richard Reid, the "shoe-bomber," (2) the London liquid bomb plot and (3) the more recent "underwear bomber." So, based on three incidents, or 1 in 31 million, hundreds of millions of people are being asked to endure, respectively (1) the absurd ritual of removing belts and shoes, (2) having their shampoo confiscated if its half an ounce bigger than what is now permitted and (3) being subject to a virtual strip search or intrusive pat down, in effect being treated as if they were criminal suspects. Yet people still buy into the line that these things are "necessary to keep us safe."

The right to be secure in one's person is surely at the heart of the Constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The Fourth Amendment stipulates the requirement of "probable cause," which the courts in recent decades have relaxed to the lower standard of "reasonable suspicion." In the case of airline passengers en masse, there is neither. But the TSA, by using the scanners and/or pat-downs, is effectively treating everyone as if they had reasonable suspicion sufficient to warrant a search of their persons.

Given that it is generally accepted (intellectually if not always emotionally) that there is no possible way for the government to provide a 100% guarantee of safety, what, then, is a fair margin of risk? With a rate of occurrence over a nine year period of 1 in 31 million, WITHOUT (prior to) the scanners and/or newly intrusive pat downs, I would say we are doing a fine job already, and that we don't need to go around instituting new procedures every time an incident occurs (and there will, inevitably, be more occurrences). How "safe" do we really need to be?

Finally, the question begs: if a rate of occurrence of 1 in 31 million rises to a level of risk sufficient to broadly abrogate citizens' rights under the Constitution, what, then, can the government not justify in the name of "safety" or "security?" At that point, we've pretty much defined out of existence the possibility of any search under any circumstance being deemed unreasonable.

So, no, Ms. Marcus, the issue is not one of "immaturity" on the part of those who are opposed to the new machines and/or pat downs. But there may well be a maturity issue with those blindly accept anything the government tries to impose upon us (and anything former government officials are getting rich from selling to us) in the name of "safety," when they have never actually remotely made that case.