The head of security at US airports has pleaded for patience as the public outcry grows over the use new full-body scans and more invasive “pat-downs”
John Pistole, chief of the Transport Security Administration, said that the new measures, introduced in response to the failed attack on a passenger jet last year by a young Nigerian with explosives in his underwear, were necessary to improve safety.
The UK Daily Telegraph reported that critics say the measures give intimate images of travellers’ bodies, and include invasive pat-downs that search travellers’ thighs, buttocks and breasts.
“Security is a shared responsibility,†Pistole said. “We are trying to detect the next generation of non-metallic devices used in explosives.
“We need to ensure, for everyone, for all the travelling public, that when they get on that plane they have the high confidence that everybody else on that flight has been adequately screened.
“So that is what we come down to in this balance between privacy and security.â€
Passengers who refuse a scan are given instead a thorough manual check in which an agent runs his or her hands up and down the front and back of the thighs, and in the case of female passengers, over the chest area.
Quoted by the Telegraph, Meg McLain, from New Hampshire, said her experience boarding a recent flight from Florida “felt like it was a violation of my body, my privacy”.
“They have to feel around all your genitals, your breasts, everything,” she said, adding that when she started asking questions about the process, a TSA agent harassed her and ripped up her ticket.
She said, “It was a bit frightening to know that I either had to have nude photos taken of me or to be touched in a way I didn’t want to be touched in order to get home.”
