The Real Junk with the TSA

Yes, the talk of the country is whether or not the TSA goes too far with its airport scans.

Airline pilots unions and others are calling for a boycott of the new enhanced visual imaging system, the 10-second body scan which renders a “gray-scale” version of the passenger’s body. If it happens this Wednesday, news sources warn, the travel delays will be enormous: anyone who refuses the enhanced digital rendering trades it for an enhanced “pat-down” which caused ejected passenger John Tyner from calling out, “Don’t touch my junk.”

I’m not going to weigh in on whether the boycott is a good idea or not (though if we don’t want our privates touched, boycotting the 10-second system which avoids this invasiveness seems like the wrong choice to me). I’m not going to call Tyner a hero or an idiot (though many have). I’m not even going to ask whether the new visual system is an invasion of privacy (though I am curious why these same concerns are not raised with more vehemence about, say, the Patriot Act). And I’m certainly not going to argue whether or not our security systems are reliable (what does Orange Level mean for a terrorist threat, anyway?).

The issue has caused an SNL parody, several video replays, and dozens of pundits squaring off against each other 24/7 on every network. This along should be a caution for me to avoid the topic, but I can’t help it, because it is just this sort of public outrage which troubles me.

It seems that Americans have finally reached their “reasonable limit” on safety against potential death. Even an Orlando,Florida, airport has considered abandoning the TSA and privatizing its security. Yes, we have decided to argue, terrorists and the risk of exploding planes are bad, but a quick and professional frisk for explosives is too high a price to pay. The Risk Assessment is in, and our “junk” is more valuable than an indeterminate percentage risk of death.

Or is it about something else? Perhaps our memory of danger, our own Fear Factor, is short-lived. If we believed our lives were in danger, we would likely submit to far more in order to protect ourselves and our families. After 9/11, there did not seem to be enough we could do save ourselves from terrorism. A Rand Corporation study suggested that nearly ½ of all adult Americans suffered acute stress following the attacks. Peter Kirsanow of the US Commission on Civil Rights basically argued that if this country suffered another terrorist attack, we could “forget civil rights in this country.” Put simply, under the stress of the horrors of 9/11 and the following years of uncertainty, our public was ready to be irrational. That irrationality from fear fades, but we are trading one irrationality for another.

If the threat of terrorism is real, then we must find the most effective means to counter it. If it is imagined, we must abandon reaction-based policies and practices which seek to provide an illusion of safety. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the threat of terrorism is as real today as it was prior to 2001. That is to say, terrorism (from Al Qaeda and other agencies and rogues) has always been a threat for Americans—it dominated the news through the Clinton presidency—and the tragedy of the terrorist success in New York has only caused a cascade of new practices, both reasonable and desperately illusory.

Serious attacks on Americans occurred over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988, under the World Trade Center in 1993, in Oklahoma City in 1995, on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 (the same year as TWA flight 847 is held for two weeks by the Hezbollah), and in Tehran in 1979. In each case, we respond with an expected level of horror and grief, and sometimes policies change. Mostly, though, the incidents (and the fear with them) are forgotten until the next attack. Are there still threats from rogue domestic militants like Timothy McVeigh? And how is the public handling the enhanced security in such public buildings and on cruise ships? Is John Tyner now, suddenly, today, safe from airline bombers?

The “Don’t Touch My Junk” uprising in protest to invasive procedures carries the same risk as the initial desperate pleas for safety and security in September 2001: the rational weighing of safety and civil rights through mature discourse will not occur. Whether or not the visual scanning is accurate or necessary is a conversation lost amidst the videos and parodies and internet protests. Whether or not color-coded threat levels were accurate or necessary (before or after 2001) was a conversation lost amidst the angst of the public’s discovery of Al Qaeda.

We are a culture too largely motivated by fears (just ask Stephen Colbert). Killer bees, flammable pajamas, lumps in the laundry, underwear and shoe bombers, black UN helicopters, bed bugs, homosexuals, mollusks in Lake Michigan, Lyme disease, terrorist sleeper cells, gangs, Nigerian bank scams, H1N1, Muslim presidents, and genital contact from airport frisks. Some of these are credible threats, some are not. But we barely pause for breath to consider the differences.

This is why I hesitate to write about the topic. My blog, small as it is, adds to the hype and hoopla of today’s nonsense. Find us a space for democratic discourse, where reasoned and well-researched individuals can weigh and argue what we value: a balance between safety and civil justice.

Instead, we get practices which respond to swerving emotional outcries, policies which are designed to alter and enhance our emotions instead of respond to that well-considered threat. If John Tyner is a hero, his banner is today’s fast-changing and fast-fading junk crusade to protect our privates. Dante had a place for these committed-to-nothings outside of Hell, running from worms who ate their feet and from hornets who stung their eyes:

And I, who looked again, beheld a banner, 
Which, whirling round, ran on so rapidly,
That of all pause it seemed to me indignant;

And after it there came so long a train
Of people, that I ne’er would have believed
That ever Death so many had undone.

            —Inferno, Canto III

Obama has said that the searches at airports will continue. We’ll see what Wednesday and the successive weeks bring.

I am only convinced of one key point. No matter what Tyner fears, the TSA agent at the airport is hardly excited about frisking him.