The TSA pats down a 3-year-old

Nothing is more fun than
flying with the TSA! (Image
courtesy of the TSA)

Normally, I would direct my wrath at Transportation Security Officer Yamagata. He, after all, was the offender who groped my 3-year-old son at Los Angeles International Airport on May 9, 2009. But Mr. Yamagata was just following procedure when he subjected my son to a pat-down search without apparent cause, or so the nice folks at the Transportation Security Administration desk told me. And I have to take the nice folks at the desk at their word, because the woman who answered the phone at the TSA office in D.C. had no idea what the proper procedure is, or even if there is one. Unfortunately, that's about par for the TSA when it comes to rationalizing its activities.

Security hassles are an unfortunate part of modern life for anybody who chooses to fly these days, which is why I've minimized my time in the air. As annoying as airport checkpoints were ten years ago, they've degenerated to the point where we now shuffle shoeless across filthy vinyl floors, prepared to surrender corkscrews and soda bottles and to permit the occasional copped feel to uniformed security guards who assure us that it's all for our own good.

So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when my wife carried my tired, verging-on-grouchy, son through the metal detector while I wrestled our carry-ons onto the conveyor belt, and was promptly confronted by TSO Yamagata, despite the absence of alarms or flashing lights.

"Ma'am, do you mind if I search your son?"

"Why?"

"He's bulky." (No, he's not. I'll get to that in a minute.)

"I do mind."

Yamagata then grabbed my son's arm and tugged.

"Ma'am, put him down."

And my son got his very first pat-down search.

Naturally, I wanted an explanation. I went to the TSA desk, explained the situation, and asked a better-phrased version of "WTF"?

The woman looked a little perplexed.

"Was he unusually bulky? I mean, like a lot of clothes."

"He was wearing a light sweatshirt."

"Was he carried through the detector?"

"Yes, my wife carried him through."

"Oh, that's it. The officer can pat him down if he's carried through."

Really? That's news. True, the TSA Website does advise:

If your child can walk without your assistance, we recommend that you and your child walk through the metal detector separately. If you are carrying your child through the metal detector and the alarm sounds, our Security Officer will have to additionally screen both you and your child.

But the alarm never sounded. So is an additional search of small children carried by their mothers unadvertised policy even in the absence of apparent cause?

Well ... maybe. I called the TSA in Washington, D.C. to find out for sure. The woman who answered the phone was friendly enough, but she first told me there was no written policy for when officers can search children.

"So they have the leeway to search children at will?" I asked.

"Well, I'm sure there's a policy somewhere, but we don't have it here."

All of this might be marginally tolerable if there was any assurance that random searches of drowsy toddlers were gifting us all with greater safety to go with our outrage, but the fact is that the screening procedures to which we glumly submit at the airport are largely seat-of-the-pants ordeals, implemented in reaction to news headlines, with little or no effort made to determine their effectiveness. A 2007 paper published in BMJ reported:

A systematic search of PubMed, Embase, ISI Web of Science, Lexis, Nexis, JSTOR, and Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost) found no comprehensive studies that evaluated the effectiveness of x ray screening of passengers or hand luggage, screening with metal detectors, or screening to detect explosives. ...

Even without clear evidence of the accuracy of testing, the Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year. Most of these illegal items were lighters.

The U.S. government is aware of the problem. A Government Accountability Office report, also issued in 2007, agreed with the BMJ paper's point that the TSA was throwing policies against the wall without even bothering to see if they stick.  Said the GAO:

TSA officials acknowledged the importance of evaluating whether proposed screening procedures would achieve their intended purpose, but cited difficulties in doing so, including time pressures to implement needed security measures quickly.

Reflecting on the total lack of evidence that the TSA is doing anything worthwhile, the GAO recommended:

[T]he Secretary of Homeland Security should direct the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for TSA to develop sound evaluation methods, when possible, that can be used to assist TSA in determining whether proposed procedures would achieve their intended result, such as enhancing TSA's ability to detect prohibited items and suspicious persons and freeing up existing TSO resources that could be used to implement proposed procedures when operationally testing proposed SOP modifications.

So, is the TSA getting any better at evaluating its policies and procedures? Will we soon learn that frisking tykes is an effective deterrent to terrorism?

Don't hold your breath. In March, the GAO reported (PDF):

TSA has taken some actions but has not fully implemented a risk management approach to inform the allocation of resources across the transportation modes (aviation, mass transit, highway, freight rail, and pipeline). ...

Without effectively implementing such controls, TSA cannot provide reasonable assurance that its resources are being used effectively and efficiently to achieve security priorities ...

We're still -- well, the TSA is still -- groping in the dark.

Oh ... A couple of you alert readers may notice that my wife actually declined the search of our son. According to TSA guidelines, "If you refuse to be screened at any point during the screening process, the Security Officer will deny you entry beyond the screening area. You will not be able to fly." I later found out this was my wife's intent -- she preferred to leave the airport rather than submit our son to a pat-down. Instead, TSO Yamagata yanked the boy to the floor.

Well ... maybe that's another unadvertised policy.

After his encounter at the security checkpoint, my son said, "I want to kick that man."

You and me both, kid. But we need a big enough boot to handle a whole federal agency.

email J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com