If you were watching the news on November 24, 2010 and anxiously awaiting the sight of long lines at the airport security checkpoints and heated confrontations between angry travelers and TSA screeners, you were disappointed. What is normally a very busy and hectic travel day was actually quite calm. In fact, the day was eerily calm.
Most of the footage from the airports showed short lines and pleasant travelers. This is just not a normal atmosphere at an airport on the day before Thanksgiving. Considering it was National Opt-Out Day, this was down right bizarre.
If you noticed, there was very little footage of people undergoing full-body scans or pat-downs on November 24. The news stations showed some stock footage from previous days, but we saw very little, if any, footage of travelers actually being scanned or searched on November 24.
The absence of conflict means one of a few things:
1) The public's aversion to the TSA scanners and pat-downs was grossly overstated.
2) Travelers who did not want to be scanned or groped simply avoided flying all together and traveled by other means.
3) The TSA used the full-body scanners sparingly to avoid embarrassment or attention on November 24.
The first two explanations are possible, but the third explanation raises some serious concerns. If the TSA actually reduced use of the full-body scanners on a major travel day, we can assume either the TSA knows the scanners are not that important to safety or the TSA chose to put public safety in jeopardy for the sake of avoiding an uncomfortable media spectacle. Either way, this is alarming.
Since the full-body scanners must have some sort of security value, we are left to think the TSA just chose to avoid controversy on November 24 so they could go back to using the scanners at-will in the near future. Perhaps the public backlash that has been growing against the TSA has gotten them scared. It would not be surprising if the TSA has decided to back off on the scanner use for a little while until the public calms down and gets distracted by something else. Once the public outcry has died down, the TSA can go back to using the scanners as much as they want.
Regardless of what happened on November 24, the TSA needs to be clear about how they did or did not use the full-body scanners on that day. The public has a right to know if the TSA put public safety in jeopardy to avoid controversy. In the unlikely event the general public actually has very few problems with TSA scans and searches, the TSA should present travel data from November 24 and demonstrate this point with hard facts. The TSA's awkward silence on this issue is very telling.
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