Getting the newest and best is a good thing for the airport

Controversy about airport secu- rity procedures appears to be inevitable. The Transportation Security Administration has had to battle accusations that it was profiling passengers on one hand —— and that it should be doing more profiling on the other.

Parents have accused TSA agents of groping children, sons have taped what they consider inappropriate attention given to their mothers and a few people have gotten 15 seconds of fame by demonstrating their distaste for what they consider an invasion of privacy by stripping to their underwear as they approached security checkpoints.

Clearly, the TSA is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t, and we suppose there will be those who see what we consider a positive step at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport as a bad thing.

The TSA announced last week that Youngstown-Warren is one of the airports slated to receive the latest in body scanners, something called advanced imaging technology.

TSA Administrator John Pistole announced that $44.8 million will be spend on 300 millimeter wave AIT machines for airports nationwide, with one of those being Youngstown-Warren.

Congressional response

The deployment of these machines was order by Congress as a response to complaints received about an earlier generation of body scanners, which were characterized as producing strip-search images that were too graphic and represented an invasion of privacy.

The machine that will be used locally does not produce a realistic outline of the person’s body, but rather what is reassuringly described as a “stick figure.” Still, the technology is designed to pinpoint on the generic body outline any anomalies that are covered up by clothing.

The TSA maintains that radiation levels are well below doses that are considered safe, and even says that a person receives more radiation while flying than while being screened.

Some in the scientific community agree; others disagree. Which is why any traveler has the option of bypassing the scanner for a pat down.

Opting out of security, however, is not an option. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, probably the most liberal appeals court in the land, has upheld TSA’s authority to subject passengers to security measures and to detain them if they refuse and attempt to leave. The court wrote that allowing a potential passenger to “revoke consent to an ongoing airport security search makes little sense in a post-9/11 world. Such a rule would afford terrorists multiple opportunities to attempt to penetrate airport security by ‘electing not to fly’ on the cusp of detection until a vulnerable portal is found.”

Whatever the debates about airport security may be, we are encouraged that the TSA is investing money in the local airport, which we continue to see as a vital cog in the Mahoning Valley’s economic development machinery.

Having the most modern equipment available in your local airport is certainly better than the alternative.