Airline security checks: passengers have been sounding very militant recently and the blogosphere is full of people saying they are determined to make their protest at Thanksgiving, blogs Sarah Smith.
Trying to travel anywhere in America the day before Thanksgiving is always a nightmare. Remember Planes Trains and Automobiles? I’m not even looking forward to the journey home from work today. And I’m very pleased I decided not to try to fly anywhere for my turkey dinner.
The already long queues for airport security are likely to be made considerably worse by a passenger protest today. It all about new – rather more invasive – security screenings. Lots of airports now have the full body-imaging scanners which basically show a picture of your naked body to a screener in another room.
Large numbers of Americans object to being digitally strip-searched and so have been refusing to take part. If you decline the scan at Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester airports in the UK then you will not be allowed to fly. In America they offer you the option of an “intimate full body pat down” and that is what has got people really riled because the new physical searches deliberately include touching genitals and breasts.
People are being encouraged to take part in National Opt Out Day today – when about 25 million Americans are getting on planes to visit relatives. The idea is that everyone who is selected for the full body scanners should opt -out and make the security agents give them the pat down instead. As the scan takes 20 seconds and the pat-downs take two minutes this will massively disrupt the flow of passengers through the security checks.
Passengers have been sounding very militant recently and the blogosphere is full of people saying they are determined to make their protest today. But as all they are likely to do is cause themselves and other to miss their flights it’s not clear how far people are really prepared to go.
The protests are portrayed as a grassroots movement of angry passengers. The latest national hero is a software engineer, John Tyner, who recorded his experience at San Diego International airport on his iphone and posted it on YouTube.
His line, “touch my junk and I’ll have you arrested”, has become a rallying cry for passengers across the country. But is this really a completely non-political movement?
Some people see a vast rightwing conspiracy behind everything that happens in America and the “Don’t touch my junk” movement is no different. Interestingly the rightwing (Dick Cheney and friends in this instance) spent the first year of the Obama administration complaining that the new president didn’t take national security seriously enough.
Republicans like to argue that by trying to close Guantanamo Bay and try terrorists in US courts Obama is endangering America. Those complaints reached their height with the attempted Christmas Day bombing over Detroit last year when the government was accused of not reaching swiftly enough.
These full-body scanners and intimate pat-downs, eleven months later, are a direct consequence of that failed attack and now the Obama administration is being accused of being too heavy-handed. That narrative fits in with the general Tea Party criticism of this government as being too intrusive in every part of people’s lives and allows them to drum up yet more anti big-government protests.
The Drudge Report headline – all in caps – summed up the political response. Under a photo of hated Homeland Security Sec Janet Napolitano it said “BIG SIS WANTS TO SEE UNDER YOUR CLOTHES.”
Everyone seems to have forgotten the hugely intrusive security measures that were brought in under the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Back then the government was even, illegally, tapping people’s phones and emails. And it was under Bush that the idea of full-body scans was first raised in 2005. Democrats are only reviving an old Republican idea.
The Tea Party and all the other associated anti-government protest groups really got going in response to the TARP – the government bailout to the big banks – although it now feeds on stories like the intimate body pat-downs. And polls show most Americans have forgotten it was Bush who first handed over billions to Wall St, not Obama. So this may be just the latest right wing backlash that’s responding more to Bush era policies than Obama’s – but that won’t stop it potentially damaging this administration and not the last one.
More from Washington Correspondent Sarah Smith.