To become a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent fully empowered to aggressively pat down passengers — even inside passengers’ underwear — applicants need not pass any psychological testing despite having full federal backing.
I spoke to TSA’s Human Resources department to find out what is required to become an officer. “Cynthia” (no last name, though TSA requires callers to supply spelling of first and last names before anyone will speak to you) told me that applicants must pass a background check and credit check, and then they interview with the hiring office. “No psychological evaluation?” I pressed: “Absolutely none?” Absolutely none.
The background check currently required of TSA applicants merely clears TSA applicants from the possibility that they might be friendly with terrorists themselves or blackmailable. They might include questions like: “Do you love your country?” and “Do you have a history of violence?” Background checks do NOT include such questions as: “Do you have a history of sexual assault?”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has defended the invasive pat-downs as “necessary” and “private” in a USA Today op-ed. Yet security officers have flooded the internet with leaked photos leaving nothing to the imagination.
And ABC News reports on just how invasive these pat-downs have become. It is not enough to use x-ray machines to view the contents of passengers’ pants; TSA officers have discretion on groping inside passengers’ pants, and even inside their underpants:
If TSA officers want to be given authority similar to exercise discretion like police officers can, they should also face the same screening process we use for police. Nearly every police jurisdiction requires officer applicants to undergo psychological screening.
Lawsuits against police officers also take place in the jurisdiction where the cop lives, before a jury of his or her peers. Liability for police exists on both the city, county, and state levels. Not so for suits against individual TSA officers, which contend with the legal morass that is federal indemnity, granting federal TSA officials even more procedural protections.
Cops are charged with doing what they deem necessary to stop alleged criminals from bad behavior and can face penalties if they violate the privacy of innocent citizens without cause. Meanwhile, TSA officials may do whatever they deem necessary to treat passengers however they want, including fining innocent Americans and ejecting them from airports should they refuse to comply with TSA’s determination to treat them like criminals — a consequence of merely entering an airport.
When the TSA was authorized to deal with airport security, the government wondered whether federal agents or private security would do a better job. It turns out that a test program revealed that private security keeps passengers safe better than do federal agents:
…[F]ive airports were allowed to use private contractors. A number of studies done since then have shown that contractors perform a bit better than federal screeners, and they’re also more flexible and open to innovation. (The federal government pays the cost of screening whether performed by the TSA or by contractors, and contractors work under federal supervision.)
In any case, such extreme, invasive searches are forbidden even for soldiers in Afghanistan searching citizens there, unprotected by the presumptions granted Americans in the US Constitution. TSA officials are not above the law, and they should not have full discretion to decide when they can violate American’s constitutional rights. Writes a US Army staff sergeant at The Atlantic:
At no time were we permitted or even encouraged to search children or women. In fact, this would have been considered an extreme violation of acceptable cultural practice and given the way word travels here, been a propaganda victory for the Taliban.
Many absolute individual rights have been bent to accommodate federal safety precautions but why is government permitting the TSA to exercise search authority without ever even asking whether the officials are emotionally fit for it?
