Toward reason in scanner debate
Considering the potential for catastrophe, the intensity of the sudden furor over full-body scans at airports already in use in Canada, Israel and some European airports is a tad puzzling. Do we really have such faith in the previous system which we very well know has been compromised by would-be terrorists with explosives in their shoes and their underwear that we prefer it over letting a stranger in an unseen room have an X-ray-style peek beneath our clothing and, more importantly, that of our fellow passengers?
Given the outrage dominating the news over the past week, the answer would seem to be yes. Clearly the Transportation Safety Administration needs to re-examine the process with an eye toward calming public fears and eliminating any practices that don't directly affect security. That's not to say that critics are correct in their unequivocal rejection of the scanner technology. To the contrary, it seems patently unwise to permit modesty alone especially a well-protected modesty to dismiss a technology that could add reassurance to the safety of a flight against the threat of destruction.
In the early weeks of the use of the scanners in the United States, reasonable questions have been raised about whether their effectiveness justifies their invasiveness. And the excessive conduct of some of the alternative pat-downs, even if in isolated cases, has raised understandable resentment. No one, surely, should have to accept feelings of having been abused as a prerequisite to boarding a jet.
That said, the tenor of the current controversy has itself tended toward unnecessary excess. The growing call for a holiday protest to disrupt the plans of nearly every airline passenger in America during the busiest time of the year, in particular, is an irrational and pointless exercise whose only observable result will be to annoy people who aren't involved in the decision making. The plan, conceived by an Internet blogger, would have every passenger asked to submit to a body scan demand the government's alternative option a full-body pat-down instead. The advent of thousands of five-minute pat-downs instead of 10-second body scans, proponents observe, will clog airports and provide a graphic demonstration of the public's dissatisfaction.
No doubt it would. But is such a massive disruption the best means of sending that message? Hardly. Indeed, from the tone of the political rhetoric that has emerged since complaints began swirling online, government officials already are reacting, if not overreacting.
Opponents like to define the scans in terms of a public cowed by fear of terrorism and a government that can't effectively employ “good old-fashioned investigation techniques” and “intelligence” that is, spying. Experience tells us, though, that intelligence is fallible. It is not cowardice to back it up with technology.
The technology just has to be proven and applied appropriately.