Are We a Nation of Sheep?

Or, are we going to stand up and fight against this latest affront to our personal dignity?

It is with grumbling compliance that we Americans accept the need for airport screening. So for the most part, we placidly put up with all the irritations and small humiliations that are part and parcel of the process. We shuffle through the Disney waiting line maze with detached annoyance, but resigned to do our part to keep our future flight from harm. The Thousands Standing Around (TSA) for the most part perform their duties with detached professionalism, not wanting to further irritate the masses of passengers who have arrived before them already irritated. So it is with an almost sheep-like acceptance we have come to cope with the realities of the post 9/11 era. Until, that is, TSA unveiled it’s latest technology that I call the Peep Show and Probe initiative. This, somehow, steps over some invisible line in the sand because it invades the very essence of our right to personal privacy. To pose, like a common criminal in a back scatter X-Ray device, knowing that some professional peeping tom is checking out the size of your privates, is a grave insult to our dignity as a human being. Or, as an alternative, to undergo an invasive pat down that ends only when “resistance” is met with a man, and the lack of “resistance” is met with a woman is the ultimate invasion of whatever personal privacy you thought was guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. We have to stop this, and stop it fast. The time for action is now. With this in mind, I offer the following practical plan of action.

Forget individual resistance at the airport. If you refuse the back scatter or the pat down, at the least you are going to miss your flight; at the worst you are going to be detained unlawfully as TSA tries to figure out what to do with you.

First, we need to bring public pressure to bear by writing or calling our Representatives and Senators to make them aware of our concerns. (As an aside, it would be a good idea to require all members of our Congress to undergo mandatory back scatter or pat down screening when they fly).  In addition,  a campaign of writing Letters to the Editors of our local newspaper in order to raise the level of awareness of our objections.

Concurrently, employ that good old American tradition: sue the government in Federal Court to cease and desist a practice that observably violates our Constitutional right against unreasonable search. What better organization to assign this task than the ACLU? They have the power and the funding to carry this into our courts while showing us they really do care about our civil liberties. It would also give them something to do besides suing the Boy Scouts.

Finally, institute the practice of what I call Positive Profiling. Let me explain how this would work. I know who I am. I am not a terrorist. The problem is that TSA does not know who I am. They have their “watch list” of  thousands of potentially dangerous people, but they don’t have a “watch list” of the millions of Americans who pose no danger. May I suggest, that over a period of time, they develop the second watch list that would qualify for minimal airport screening. The key to this list would be a foolproof identification system which is technologically feasible today. This system would consist of either thumbprint or iris matching to positively identify the person on the list. Getting on this list would be akin to the process of obtaining a U.S. Passport--by vetting documentation of one's citizenship, occupation, and background and once vetted, the capture of your unique thumbprint or iris scan to be used at the airport to match the person with the “Go Fly” list. Positive Profiling would have the additional benefit of reducing passenger angst and speeding up the screening process.

I believe that with the application of the three positive actions listed above, we can put an early end to this terrible practice that so clearly violates the personal liberties guaranteed by our Constitution. The time for action is now, before all vestiges of our human dignity is taken away from us in the name of security.

James  P. Morgan
Sandy, Utah

See  http://tinyurl.com/39dpnlv  for a Washington Times article. Excellent.