Opt out of TSA Opt-Out

PHILADELPHIA - I flew out of Philadelphia International Airport on Friday. No naked pictures, no Magic Fingers, no problem at all.

What, am I not dangerous?

For all the increased chatter about the Transportation Security Administration running amok through airports, what I experienced was a surprising nonevent, like what happens to the millions of people each year who pass through checkpoints.

But I had coaching. Since I started harping in January on travelers' bad experiences with the TSA, I've been getting calls from a screener who will have to remain unnamed because he'd be fired in an instant if it got out he'd been talking to me.

Make eye contact, he said. Relax. And don't wear clothing so baggy you could hide a rocket launcher.

Mostly our conversations have to do with his wondering when I'm going to write something nice about the TSA. I'm not going to go that far.

I haven't changed my mind about the actors in what has been best described as "security theater." There's a reason they keep making headlines.

But their critics are calling Wednesday "National Opt-Out Day," urging citizens to refuse full-body scans, which they find too intrusive, and to submit instead to the new "enhanced pat-downs," which take significantly longer and are intrusive as well.

And they want to make this point on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Are they nuts?

My pal at the TSA has three words for the protest:

"Bring it on."

Screeners get paid (not much) by the hour, he reminded me. They are in no hurry, as opposed to passengers. Screeners will win this contest. Every time. It's a stupid protest.

I'm suspicious of anything popular, so I have resisted following the bandwagon led by a passenger named John Tyner, whose used his iPhone earlier this month to record his Patrick Henry moment.

He told a San Diego airport screener: "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."

Watching that exchange on YouTube I sided with the screener; I thought he was polite and helpful, explaining new procedures that make everyone feel uncomfortable.

I've been getting lots of e-mail, pro and con, from passengers who have endured unwelcome advances at the gloved hands of the TSA, and since the new rules went into effect complaints break down this way:

There are people like Vickie Goldsmith, a Winston-Salem, N.C., grandmother, who felt that during a Nov. 11 screening in Philadelphia "the TSA official did an invasive pat-down and wanding - roughly touching all parts of my body. It was humiliating and painful."

I don't doubt it, given that the screeners here aren't known for their bedside manner.

Then there is Robert Prince of Philadelphia - no fan of the TSA - who received a Nov. 2 pat-down after his mechanical heart valve set off alarms.

"Yes, as part of the process," he wrote, "the young man's forehand passed over the briefs I was wearing under my trousers (crotch) and back (butt). That whole part happened so quickly and so lightly I was barely aware I had been touched. . . . I felt safer knowing all passengers were getting the same attention."

My point all along has been that we need the TSA to be great. The discovery a month ago that al Qaida's Arabian Peninsula franchise had sent explosive toner cartridges on two planes bound for this country reminds us how dedicated our adversaries are to our destruction.

Which is why I am willing to put up with the pat-downs and full-body scans. But they're not enough.

Why is so much attention given to screening passengers when they're packed onto planes loaded with mystery cargo?

Legislation to screen every package traveling on U.S. jets is stalled in Congress. The problem is money. It's too expensive to screen every box and envelope flown into this country on cargo planes. Homeland Security doesn't even screen every piece sent on international passenger planes, although it will have to as of Aug. 1, thanks to a bill written by U.S Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

The TSA told Markey that it is screening only 80 percent of cargo on inbound overseas flights and won't be able to get to 100 percent for two more years.

This is what we ought to be protesting, not feel-ups or full-body scans, which are arguably the best defense available for the sorts of gels and plastics that current machines cannot detect.

As for National Opt-Out Day, I think Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has the best idea for making a statement while not letting turkey dinner grow cold.

Kilts.

He recommends that men wear kilts Wednesday, and if they really want to make a statement, they should consider going commando.

That should keep things moving.

Contact Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5917 or drubin@phillynews.com