Why they have to touch your junk

By Louis Lombardi

Just in time for the holiday travel season, the Transportation Security Administration has implemented enhanced passenger screening procedures for anyone boarding a plane in America. They require passengers to submit to full body scans, whereby their most intimate details become fully visible to authorities, as well as pat-downs in which every square inch of a person's body is fair game.

Seeing them as an unwarranted intrusion into their personal privacy and dignity, Americans are up in arms over these procedures; we are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore. One passenger's protest has become a rallying cry: "Don't touch my junk!"

Well, these new procedures may be intrusive, but they are warranted. And, considering the stakes, they're long overdue. As we all know, airplanes remain an attractive target for Islamic extremists who are at war with America and the West. To them, nothing would show success like an airline tragedy, so we must be ever vigilant in our efforts to thwart them. These new procedures are part of that vigilance.

One of the most effective means of attacking an airliner is to have operatives breach security and carry out a suicide mission. We saw this on 9/11 and in other attempts since, most notably last year's Christmas underwear bomber, who failed only because his explosive device malfunctioned. And the most obvious way to smuggle weapons and bombs onto an airplane is to place them in an area that someone might hesitate to search - namely, the groin and, in the case of women, the chest.

Having spent 20 years in law enforcement, I have been amazed at the items people conceal in their groins. Many a deadly object can be hidden there. So when it comes to airline security, squeamishness in searching can be deadly. We cannot afford to be squeamish.

Some critics of the aggressive pat-downs argue that the government should be doing more profiling of passengers to determine which ones are most likely to be dangerous. That way, the rest of us could be spared the indignity of being ogled and groped. I agree that the government should be profiling, but that approach is not a panacea.

A proper security plan is multifaceted. The key is redundancy, so if one measure fails to detect a threat, another succeeds. Profiling, though important, cannot detect every terrorist. The Christmas bomber was on multiple terrorist lists and still boarded the plane that he nearly brought down. Profiling has its flaws.

Even if profiling could detect every terrorist, it could not detect every terrorist plot. Remember Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland? That was accomplished without any terrorists aboard. An unsuspecting passenger was turned into a weapon of mass destruction when she carried on a bomb disguised as a radio. Profiling would not have stopped that plot.

Even though the enhanced screening procedures are necessary, concerns about privacy and dignity are legitimate. The volume of searches being performed, however, will afford everyone anonymity. This idea may be counterintuitive, but the sheer scope of the security effort will ensure everyone's privacy.

As I mentioned earlier, I have had to search quite a few people in my day and have seen things one ordinarily wouldn't want to see. And out of all these encounters, nothing unique to any person sticks out in my mind: It's all a big blur. Likewise, although TSA agents will see a lot, it will all blend together to the extent that not one person remains recognizable. Each will be just a drop in an ocean of airline passengers.

In a perfect world, none of this would be necessary. But given that we must take measures to protect ourselves in this imperfect world, the enhanced screening procedures are an important step in the right direction. Adapting to reality will mean subjecting ourselves to indignities we would rather not face.