Your Airline Ticket Comes With a Free Grope

The way passengers are treated by the TSA is getting out of hand and some civil liberties groups are taking legal action:

As federal aviation officials increased airport security measures, civil liberty groups fought back, protesting new pat-down search techniques and the growing use of full-body scanners.

The Transportation Security Administration announced last week that security officers would to perform more aggressive pat-downs and vowed to approximately triple the number of full-body scanners in airports nationwide by the end of next year.

Under the new pat-down technique, TSA security officers use their palms and fingers to probe for hidden weapons and other devices. In the past, officers used the backs of their hands to brush past sensitive body parts, including breast and groin areas.

On Tuesday, TSA Administrator John Pistole told an aviation security conference in Germany that the agency plans to have deployed about 1,000 full-body scanners at airports throughout the U.S. by the end of 2011.

The more than 300 machines now installed at 65 airports use low-level radiation to detect weapons hidden under travelers' clothes, in the process generating images that look like nude photos.

TSA screeners use the new pat-down search on passengers who opt not to go through the full-body scanners or who trigger an alarm from a metal detector. An American Civil Liberties Union spokesman called it a choice between a "virtual strip search" and a "grope."

Also last week, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group in Washington, charged that use of the scanners violates passengers' privacy. The move was part of a lawsuit filed in July against the Homeland Security Department.

The group accused TSA officers of using the scanners on all passengers regardless of levels of suspicion and of not telling passengers that they can opt not to pass through the scanner.

"It's a highly invasive search," said Ginger McCall, an attorney for the privacy group.

TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said the agency would not comment on pending litigation. But, he added, it has held news conferences at every airport where a full-body scanner has been added. He said TSA has also posted signs at those airports, explaining what the machines do and what options passengers have.

Want to know what happens when you refuse to meekly comply with the TSA? Read this guy's account.

This is one of those rare occasions when I find myself supporting an ACLU action. The TSA favors political correctness over real security, choosing to treat everyone as a terrorist rather than use some relatively simple profiling measures to eliminate people from aggressive screening who obviously don't pose a threat (I'll never forget the 3-year old that got a full body search in OKC one time shortly after 9/11).

I have my doubts that the increased level of screening has commensurately increased security.  All it has done is make flying an ordeal that more and more people are trying to avoid.  The industry is obviously hurting.  I just bought tickets for a trip in January that I've made every year since 1999, and the tickets this year were the cheapest ever.  Given how the costs of fuel and other things have gone up in 11 years there's no way the airline would be offering such cheap fares unless they're hurting, and I think the routine we now have to go through just to get in the terminal is adding to their woes.

We are not all terrorists and we do not deserve to be ordered around airline terminals by people who are essentially janitors with badges.