Heeding Congressional pressure, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has agreed to a study of the health risks of it controversial X-ray body scanners — while continuing to ignore outcries over privacy violations.
The TSA will contract with the National Academy of Sciences to see if the radiation released during the operation of the body scanners could be harmful to travelers or TSA employees, according to ProPublica. The contract outline calls for a review of previous studies and an examination into current practices.
Earlier this year, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is on the Senate homeland security committee, introduced a bill asking for health tests to be conducted.
The study of health risks is long overdue, Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at CATO Institute, said. Harper authored a petition on the White House website to get the TSA to release details on their scanners and allow for public comment, a ‘notice-and-comment rulemaking’ ordered by a federal court a year before Harper’s petition. That information has still not been released, Harper noted.
While the health risk study is certainly a step in the right direction, the TSA is refusing to acknowledge the other concerns of body scanners critics. “This study will not address legal, cultural, or privacy implications of this technology,” the contract outline states.
Harper called the use of X-ray body scanners an “overreaction” to the attempted underwear bombing of 2009. Existing security measures at the time caught the would-be bomber, and the full-body scanners were an unnecessary reactionary measure, he said.
The CATO Institute scholar said the two options currently presented to travelers — being scanned in the “strip-search machines” or being subjected to a “prison-style pat down” — are both invasions of privacy because they are “excessive” and “unreasonable.”
Conservatives and libertarians have spoken out against the TSA scanners since their induction into airport security, with a high-profile critic coming in the form of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Sen. Paul’s office did not respond to a request for a comment on the scanner health study. However, in the past Paul has been vocal about his disdain for the machines and has introduced multiple bills in the Senate that seek to eliminate or undermine the TSA’s authority to scan passengers.
“The next time you are in the airport. The next time the TSA asks you to hold your hands above your head. Little bit higher. Hey hun, just a little bit higher. And they ask you to be in this vulnerable pose for seven seconds. Ask yourself, is this the pose of a free man? ” Paul said at a Heritage Foundation event in August.
Earlier this year, the TSA began moving the X-ray scanners from large, major airports to smaller airports. TSA claims this shift in policy was to speed the security process. The scanners were removed from Boston Logan International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago O’Hare, Orlando and John F. Kennedy in New York as of mid-October, according to MSNBC. The full-body scanners were removed from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in the last month.
Harper, who believes that airport security should be conducted by private parties, said the TSA is not the kind of organization that should be allowed to screen passangers.
“It turns a blind eye to privacy; it’s not very interested in controlling costs; it’s being dragged into considering health consequences,” he said.
The TSA will be required by the courts to conduct ‘notice-and-comment rulemaking’ on the scanners by the end of March 2013 at the latest, according to court documents. During that process, the security agency will be forced to explain its practices.
“I suspect that the TSA will fail to explain itself well,” Harper said.
If the courts deem that the TSA has been acting in a ‘arbitrary and capricious’ nature, they could reverse the decision to use full-body scanners and remove them from airports, Harper said.
“The courts aren’t eager to get into the security business,” Harped said. “But with a full public rulemaking where all these issues are aired, the courts might start to recognize that this is a policy that has gone off the rails.”
