[New] Airport Inspection Regulations

WASHINGTON – Nearly a week before the Thanksgiving travel crush, federal air security officials were struggling to reassure rising numbers of fliers and airline workers outraged by new anti-terrorism screening procedures they consider invasive and harmful.


"It's all about security," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. "It's all about everybody recognizing their role."


At the San Diego airport, a software engineer posted an Internet blog item saying he had been ejected after being threatened with a fine and lawsuit for refusing a groin check after turning down a full-body scan. The passenger, John Tyner, said he told a federal Transportation Security Administration worker, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."

Concerns about both procedures are not limited to the U.S. In Germany over the weekend, organized protesters stripped off their clothes in airports to voice their opposition to full-body scans.

Douglas R. Laird, a former security director for Northwest Airlines, said it's the resistance to these measures that will cause the most delays. The new enhanced pat-downs, an alternative to body scanners, take more time — about 2 minutes compared with a 30-second scan. Delays could multiply if many travelers opt for a pat-down or contest certain new procedures.

Homeland Security and the TSA have moved forcefully to shift airport screening from familiar scanners to full-body detection machines. The new machines show the body's contours on a computer stationed in a private room removed from the security checkpoints. A person's face is never shown and the person's identity is supposedly not known to the screener reviewing the computer images.

Extracted from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101116/ap_on_bi_ge/us_airport_security

31-year-old John Tyner recorded much of the incident on his cell phone.

When he arrived at the airport early Saturday morning, Tyner had already read extensively about full-body imaging machines and "the possible harm to health as well as the vivid pictures they create of people's naked bodies," according to a posting on his blog. So when TSA agents directed him to one such machine, Tyner refused, prompting one TSA agent to tell him he would have to undergo a pat-down.

"After he described the pat down, I realized that he intended to touch my groin," Tyner wrote on his blog within hours of the incident. "Before he started the pat down, I looked him straight in the eye and said, 'If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested.'"

When another TSA employee intervened, "I stated that I would not allow myself to be subject to a molestation as a condition of getting on my flight," according to Tyner, who said he feels the government took away his rights after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Look, we know the threats are real," said Pistole, who spent more than 27 years
at the FBI before joining Napolitano's department as head of TSA.

"Whether it's 19 individuals with box cutters, an individual with a shoe bomb, whether it's individuals with explosives in liquids, whether it's an individual with explosives in his underwear, or cargo threats, we know that the threats are real. So what steps can we prudently take to make sure that the traveling public is safe?"

Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/15/dhs-chief-says-abandoning-airport-scanners-would-be-irresponsible-ca-man-warns-tsa-not-to#ixzz15PIWXn2V