![Click to enlarge Travelers, at Denver International Airport](/image/s19/381558/1000x_1.jpg)
© RJ Sangosti/Denver Post via Getty Images
While few have noticed, U.S. airport security workers long had the option of using five different types of physical pat-downs at the screening line. Now those options have been eliminated and replaced with a single universal approach. This time, you will notice.
The new physical touching—for those selected to have a pat-down—will be be what the federal agency officially describes as a more "comprehensive" physical screening, according to a Transportation Security Administration spokesman.Denver International Airport, for example, notified employees and flight crews on Thursday that the "more rigorous" searches "will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before."
"I would say people who in the past would have gotten a pat-down that wasn't involved will notice that the [new] pat-down is more involved," TSA spokesman Bruce Anderson said Friday. The shift from the previous, risk-based assessment on which pat-down procedure an officer should apply was phased in over the past two weeks after tests at smaller airports, he said.
The TSA screens about 2 million people daily at U.S. airports. The agency doesn't track how many passengers are subject to pat-down searches after they pass through an
imaging scanner. People who decline to use this screening technology are automatically subject to physical searches.
While passengers may find the process more intrusive, the new screening procedure isn't expected to increase overall airport security delays. However, "for the person who gets the pat down, it will slow them down," Anderson said.
The change is partly a result of the agency's study of a 2015 report that criticized aspects of TSA screening procedures. That audit, by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General, drew headlines because airport officers had failed to detect handguns and other weapons. An additional change prompted by the report was the TSA's decision to end its "managed inclusion" program, by which some everyday travelers were allowed to use PreCheck lanes to speed things up at peak times.Physical screening has long been one of the traveling public's strongest dislikes regarding airport security protocols. The TSA has all pat-downs conducted by an officer of the same sex as the traveler, and allows a passenger to request a private area for the screening, as well as to have a witness present. Likewise, the traveler can request that the pat-down occur in public view.
The new policy also applies to airline pilots and flight attendants, classified as "known crewmembers" who generally receive less scrutiny at checkpoints. The TSA conducts occasional random searches of these employees, and airlines this week inquired as to whether their employees would be subject to more frequent pat-downs. The number of random searches for airline crews isn't changing and will remain a "very small percentage" of the total, Anderson said. But airport employees may face more random checks.
The random searches also vary by airport, depending on the screening program, Anderson said. "Sometimes it's random, sometimes they're consistent, based on the door you enter," he said of the searches given workers with airport ID badges. "Sometimes, those measures call for a pat-down."
In their notice, Denver airport officials said employees are subject to search at random locations: "If a pat down is required as part of the operation, badged employees will be required to comply with a TSA officer's request to conduct a full body pat down."
In December, a CNN political commentator, Angela Rye, posted an article online describing her "humiliation" during a TSA agent's search. Rye wrote in
graphic detail about the pat down of her genitals during a search at the Detroit Airport before a flight to New York.
TSA officials didn't immediately address whether the new universal pat-down protocol will mandate touching of passenger genitals.
Reader Comments
I'll tell you why this is bullshit. An airline pilot friend told me that he pointed out to the TSA goon squad that as standard equipment he, and every other pilot, had a fire axe on a rack in his cockpit, as mandated by the FAA, so why were they having fits over a pair of scissors?
Needless to say, nowhere in the Little Red Book of Chairman TSA does it ponder whether a pilot might hijack himself with his own Gubmint-mandated axe. Only whether he might hijack himself with a pair of scissors that was too long.
People, this is all bullshit. Stinky, nasty bullshit. They are DELIBERATELY trying to provoke us, you, me, and all the rest of the sheep.
How do we stop this non-violently? Here's how. If all 2 million US airline passengers on one day of the year decided to NOT fly, but instead to drive, take the bus, or go by train, the loss to the airlines, the airports, the shops in the airports, and the TSA would be so catastrophic that the government would at once put an end to this bullshit.
But does anyone think you can get 2 million people in this country to act together and suffer a little inconvenience in their own interest?
Oh, sure - when hell freezes over.
See this whole story line stinks to high heaven. That is, the whole entire raisons d'etre for this security is a complete lie, . After all, the entire gulf war was based on lie. None of it is logical or sensible. The reason you are safe in public is because of the people who are armed. Not the other way round.
What I think is really going on is that these so-called security proceedures are in place for a completely different reason.
They are looking for something and what they are looking for is not human. They are looking for some beings which are not human. Everything that's been put in place, and especially these physical friskings, are not there for making you safer. Far from it. They have to be there for another reason and the only other reason really is they are afraid of something else.
Everything that is in place and everything that they do and have used is designed really to see if you are a human being.