Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officials have experienced an uproar in recent days over reports that three elderly women were stripsearched at airports, but the TSA announced a series of holiday travel security policies last month — such as a promise to “reduce” child pat-downs — designed in part to allay public irritation at the security officers.
Concern about public opinion drove the TSA to enact “new procedures that reduce, though not eliminate, pat-downs of passengers 12 and under that would otherwise have been conducted,” TSA explained, “to resolve alarms while also ensuring effective security measures.”
The agency also upgraded the screening machines “by eliminating the image of an actual passenger and replacing it with a generic outline of a person.”
Perhaps most interesting of all the new changes, TSA expanded a Behavior Detection Officer (BDO) pilot program, stationing officials in Detroit Metro and Boston’s Logan Airport who will “have casual conversations with travelers to determine if the traveler should be referred for additional screening at the checkpoint.” In theory, the BDO’s should be able to tell who is a terrorist and who isn’t.
But two of the old women who say they were strip-searched flew out of John F. Kennedy International Airport; there was no behavior detection officer there to help with the judgement calls.
