MSNBC reports that Jacob Jester, a Kansas City pastor getting ready to board a plane, noticed that a woman with a baby behind him had been stopped by members of the Transportation Security Administration. The baby was receiving a pat down by agents. Finding the measures a bit much, Jester snapped a photo of the pat down incident and posted it to Twitter. Along with the photo, Jester captioned: "Just saw #tsa agents patting down a little baby at @KCIAirport. Pretty sure that’s extreme.”If you're looking for the next big controversy -- since you're past the Obama birth certificate and the Osama bin Laden death photos debate -- a revisit to the old TSA pat down controversy might be in order. After a Twitter photo of a infant receiving a pat down at a Kansas City airport went viral, it can only be a matter of time before all that airline-safety-versus-personal-privacy squaring off that occurred over the last year sees the battle lines redrawn in the media once more. And make no mistake. When all the histrionic pundits, politicians, safety analysts, child welfare advocates, psychologists, and civil rights stalwarts have their say over the matter, there will be a controversy -- even if it is one of the media's own making.
The Kansas City airport baby pat down photo went viral.
Jester says he wasn't really thinking of the consequences of his picture-taking. He said, "My thinking was, this is an extreme measure. I wouldn't want that to happen to my own son."
Jester also told MSNBC.com that he wasn't out to embarrass the TSA and that he had a lot of respect for the agency. "But I do believe there has to be a line drawn. I do not believe that an 8-month-old constitutes a security threat."
Jester's beliefs aside, public safety is the TSA's concern when it comes to the security of those that travel in the air. And when that security extends to those who would be helpless against a terrorist attack at 25,000 feet, some precautions that might seem extreme to those who have not thought the situation through might not seem so extreme when viewed from the perspective of a potential victim.
Commonly held sensibilities might not apply when gauging what might and might not constitute a security threat to the flying public. Using children as bombs or to carry bombs is not an unheard of occurrence. In fact, every war has its share of stories where children and women (those that most do not normally think of as combatants or as posing a deadly threat) are used to attack the unwary. In a report to the United Nations Security Council in 2004, The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers noted that tens of thousands of child soldiers (aged as young as 12) were being used in wars in at least 18 countries around the world. And it is not uncommon for babies andchildren to be used as drug mules (even in the U. S.), their harmlessness used to help transport contraband, the perception of their innocence used to shield them from searches.
So how is it that the baby received the pat down?
On its website, the TSA posted a response to the growing debate over the Twitter photo and the incident in Kansas City: "We reviewed the screening of this family, and found that the child’s stroller alarmed during explosives screening. Our officers followed proper current screening procedures by screening the family after the alarm, who by the way were very cooperative and were on the way to their gate in no time."
The TSA website also notes that children 12 years old and younger receive a modified pat down.
Even with parental permission and cooperation, rest assured there will be controversy. Debate over how far is too far when it comes to security measures at airports has been raging for some time. From backscatter machines that show an image of a human body like an x-ray that detractors say are an indecent invasion of privacy to the aggressive pat downs used on passengers that set off security alarms, there is no end to where individuals believe lines should be drawn demarcating areas of privacy and areas of exception for public safety. Recent incidents of children receiving pat downs, an area of safety where many adults become sensitive and uncomfortable, have only served to heighten the debate between the emotional/psychological aspects of the pat down search and the practical application for the safety of those engaged in air travel.
The concern of individuals like Jester is not to be marginalized. An aware and questioning public helps ensure that the civil liberties cherished by Americans are protected, that the government does not overstep its mandated bounds. At the same time, however, it must be remembered that social sensibilities regarding the most innocent-seeming among us can constitute a security threat in itself, whether one is willing to accept the notion or not.
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