He had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose “baby” Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.
All of the cases made two very important points,” he continued. “First, any searches must be minimally intrusive on the individual being searched and second, the searches must be effective in screening out weapons and terrorists. I believe it can be effectively argued that neither of these criteria is met by the TSA system of full body scans and pat-downs,” he said.
In a 22-page, science-heavy article, researchers Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson demonstrate why X-ray backscatter units can miss guns and blades but also explosives like PETN, used by last Christmas’ underwear bomber.
There is no just reason for every single passenger coming through the airport to be subject to either an invasive pat-down, or a full body image scanner, that violates people by intruding on their privacy by taking revealing pictures of passengers, which is just as much a violation of the fourth amendment as the pat downs.
The federal government’s latest, more-intrusive screening measures appear more useful in finding drugs and wads of cash than tools of terror, a review of Indianapolis Airport Police records suggests.
Wednesday afternoon, Orlando International Airport officials took their first step toward getting rid of TSA workers. The federal agency would still oversee screening, but a private contractor would conduct it.
North Americans would be better off focusing efforts on “sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis, coupled with observing non-verbal behaviour.”
Airport Body Scanner Truth