TSA chief to travelers: Tough security steps are necessary

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

With Thanksgiving holiday travel gearing up, the White House said Monday the government will take into account the public’s concerns and complaints as it evaluates rigid new airline boarding-security checks.

President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the government is “desperately” trying to balance procedures that maximize security and minimize invasiveness. He says the Transportation Security Administration procedures will continue to evolve.

“The evolution of the security will be done with the input of those who go through the security,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs underscored that the president’s highest priority during the holiday season “is to ensure that when you or I or others get on to an airplane, that we can feel reasonably sure that we can travel safely.”

Air travelers are protesting new requirements at some U.S. airports that they must pass through full-body scanners that produce a virtually naked image. The screener, who sits in a different location, does not see the face of the person being screened and does not know the traveler’s identity.

Those who refuse to go through the scanners are subject to thorough pat-downs that include agency officials’ touching the clothed genital areas of passengers.

Earlier Monday, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole urged passengers angry over safety procedures not to boycott airport body scans.

He said that he understands public concerns about privacy in the wake of the tough new security checks but that a relatively small proportion of the 34 million people who have flown since the new procedures went into effect have had body pat-downs.

With the Thanksgiving travel rush less than 48 hours away, Pistole implored passengers Monday not to take delaying actions or engage in boycotts of body scans, actions he said would serve only to “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones.”

Pistole had pledged Sunday to review security procedures in the wake of a public outcry. But he also said the TSA must balance people’s demand for privacy with the need to protect passengers from those who would try to set off bombs on planes.

A loosely organized Internet boycott of body scans is under way, and Pistole said he hoped people would exercise sound judgment over the busy Thanksgiving holiday. A National Opt-Out Day is scheduled for Wednesday to coincide with the busiest travel day of the year.

“Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays,” said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays resulting from the body-scanner boycott. “It doesn’t take much to mess things up anyway — especially if someone purposely tries to mess it up.”

Body scans take as little as 10 seconds, but people who decline the process must submit to a full pat-down, which takes much longer. That could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

Pistole noted the alleged attempt by a Nigerian with explosives in his underwear to try to bring down an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight last Christmas. “We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren’t necessary,” he said, “but that just isn’t the case.”

The statement came just hours after Pistole, in a TV interview, said that although the full-body scans and pat-downs could be intrusive and uncomfortable, the high threat level required their use.

In the Sunday TV appearance, Pistole appeared to shrug off statements by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the TSA would look for ways to alter screening techniques that some passengers say are invasions of privacy.

“Clearly it’s invasive; it’s not comfortable,” Pistole said of the scans and pat-downs during the interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” But, he added, “if we are to detect terrorists, who have again proven innovative and creative in their design and implementation of bombs that are going to blow up airplanes and kill people, then we have to do something that prevents that.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., appearing on CBS, said Congress would hold hearings on the “very controversial” issue of how to strike the right balance.