November 19, 2010
As one of the busiest travel seasons of the year approaches there is a public outcry over new airport security measures that include full-body scanners and invasive police-style pat-downs. We speak with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as New York City Councilman David Greenfield, who introduced a resolution to ban the use of the full body scanners in airports within the city.
Ginger McCall, assistant director of the open government program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center
Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.
David Greenfield, New York City Councilman representing Brooklyn residents living in the 44th Council District.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We are approaching one of the busiest travel seasons of the year, but there’s an outcry over new airport security measures that include full body scanners and invasive police style pat-downs. Pilots and frequent-flier worry about the radiation the scanners emit. The ACLU has denounced the scans and the group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC ) has filed a lawsuit to suspend the deployment of body scanners at U.S. airports, pending an independent review. The group alleges the scanning procedures are, “unlawful, invasive, and ineffective.” A national protest is being put together over the Internet, calling on people who are flying on the day before Thanksgiving to opt out of the scans and insist on public pat-downs. The stated goal of the National opt out day is to draw lawmakers’ attention to the new security measures and respect the privacy of the flying public. Here in New York City, City Council members introduced a resolution to ban the use of scanners in the city. This is City Councilman David Greenfield.
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: It is an outrage, it’s acceptable, it’s ineffectual and that is why I introduced legislation with the support of many of my colleagues on the City Council to ban these naked body scanners from the entire New York City, including New York’s airports.
AMY GOODMAN: Some lawmakers like Florida’s Republican Congress member John Mica are pushing for airports to switch to private security guards instead of agents for the Transportation Security Administration or TSA. On Wednesday, Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act, a bill that would hold airport security agents legally accountable for airline screening procedures.
RON PAUL: What we are putting up with an accepting at this airport is so symbolic of us just not standing up and saying enough is enough. Let’s make sure that every member of Congress goes through this. Get the X-ray, make them look at the pictures, then go through one of those groping pat-downs. Then I think there would be a difference. Have everybody in the executive branch—a Cabinet member, make them go through it and look at it. Maybe they would pay more attention. But this does not work. This is not what makes us safer.
JUAN GONZALEZ: For more on the body scanners and the new airport security procedures, we’re joined by two guests from Washington, D.C. Ginger McCall is assistant director of the Open Government program at EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center. And Chris Calabrese is Legislative Counsel with the ACLU. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
I was in Washington at the National Airport, Reagan Airport, and I refused to go to the scanner. This was a couple of weeks ago and I saw everyone going through it. I said to the TSA guys, “I don’t get it. Am I the only one?” They said, “You are the only one to refuses to go through.” I think that’s hardly the case. Ginger McCall, can you talk about the scanners, the electronic scanners and what epic is doing about this and the invasive pat-downs if you refuse? Because boy, you sure get one if you refuse to go through the electronic machine.
GINGER MCCALL: EPIC has been working on this issue since about 2005. We’ve actually filed a lawsuit to suspend the program while it’s evaluated for privacy, health and effectiveness. We have really been working on this because these machines are clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment. They’re highly, highly invasive. It is a procedure that is applied to all American travelers.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the science behind it? I always wondered when your luggage goes through underneath, what kind of scanning does that get? Yet when we go through, what is in those body scanners? What is the level of radiation, not to mention the pictures they are taking of your body?
GINGER MCCALL: There are two different kinds of scanner – there’s millimeter wave and there’s backscatter. The scanners produce a small amount of radiation. It has not really been properly tested. There is not a clear maintenance schedule for who’s going to ensure that the scanners will continue to only put out the proper amount of radiation. There’s not proper testing of the effect of that radiation on children, on pregnant women, on immune-compromised individuals. What happens with the scanners is that you walk through it, you pose, the scanner will scan you and the picture gets sent back to a TSA official in a back room. It is a very, very invasive picture. It shows cellulite. It shows love handles. It is very detailed and very graphic.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And also these scanners are able to store these images as well as to transmit them to other government agencies if necessary?
GINGER MCCALL: EPIC had a Freedom of Information Act request with DHS to get more details on the scanners. We initially made that request. DHS ignored the request. We took them to court over it. As part of that lawsuit, we got documents, procurements specifications documents that were scripted by TSA and this document described everything that TSA require the manufacturers to put in these machines. One of the requirements was these machines be able to store and transmit the images.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined on the line by New York City Councilman David Greenfield who represents the 44th District of the city in Brooklyn. On Thursday, Councilman Greenfield and six other councilmembers introduced a resolution to ban the use of the full body scanners in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now! Councilman.
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: Thank you, good morning.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now why did you take this stand? If this passes, Councilman, this would affect the two airports in New York City, Kennedy and LaGuardia?
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: Absolutely. I took the stand because every American wants to be safe. You trust the government when the government says this is going to make you safe. What’s shocking is that a lot of research has been done with the folks at EPIC that actually indicates that these scanners do not work. In fact, the safest airport in the world, Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv—their security experts rejected the scanners. The former head of security at Ben Gurion said you could get enough explosives through these naked body scanners to blow up a jumbo jet.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the company that manufactures them and who approved? We’re talking a multimillion dollar sale all over the country as they’re put in all over the country.
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: I think that actually is the concern right here. That’s a fascinating question. In fact, last year, right after the Christmas Day bombing, Michael Chertoff, the former director of homeland security ran around and told many news outlets including the New York Times that if only we had these scanners we would have been saved. He conveniently forgot to mention that he actually is the lobbyist for the two manufacturers of this technology. Then they rushed to get a $350 million contract to these two companies.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined by Chris Calabrese, the legislative counsel for ACLU. Chris, your organization has also condemned the scanners. Can you talk about your concerns?
CHRIS CALABRESE: They are pretty simple. The fact is, that the government is giving you an intolerable choice. It’s either take a virtual strip search or endure a really aggressive groping. We do not think either of those options is appropriate.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to play something else. The uproar of the new security procedures really picked up after one cellphone video when viral. The video was taken by a man named John Tyner, 31 years old, software engineer. He was flying out of a San Diego and refused to go to the full body scanner and was subjected to enhanced patdown instead. He recorded the encounter with the airport’s security agent, using his cell phone. Listen carefully.
TSA: Also, we are going to be doing a groin check. That means I am going to place my hand on your hip, my other hand on your inner thigh. Slowly go up and slide down.
TYNER: Okay.
TSA: We are going to do that two times in the front, two times in the back.
TYNER: Alright.
TSA: And if you would like a private screening we can make that available for you also.
TYNER: We can do that out here but if you touch my junk I’m going to have you arrested.
TSA: Actually, we’re going to have a supervisor here because of your statement.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon after he said, "If you touch my junk, I will have you arrested," he was told he would face a fine up to $11,000 and be investigated by the TSA. The investigation onto Tyner is still open, but the head of the TSA told a Senate hearing this week that he did not expect anything to come of it. It is also interesting that this is coming at the same time of this news that the Federal Labor Relations Authority is allowing airport security screeners to vote on union representation, clearing the way for a history-making election among federal government employees. We’re talking about 50,000 Transportation Security officers being allowed to vote on union representation. Remember when President Bush had them all under the Department of Homeland Security and said they could not unionize. That has turned around. I think it’s interesting when we have people like the Florida Congress member Mica talking about privatizing these scanners, the people who are doing this, is this also in response to breaking a possible union? Let me put that question to Chris Calabrese.
CHRIS CALABRESE: One thing that is very interesting, DHS came out, the inspector general of DHS, with a report this week that really faulted TSA for its training of screeners, saying was not giving TSA enough time to train people, it wasn’t letting them train at airports. That clearly contributes to this problem and it is something that unionization might fix. Certainly, a union rep would want to make sure all of its members got proper training before they did their job.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Chris, I’d like to ask you to broaden the whole issue of the government’s invasion of citizens and travelers. Your organization, through a foil request, was able to find out that 6,600 travelers have been subjected to electronic searches of their computers or electronic devices over a two-year period as they were traveling and in one case in particular, that of a French-American citizen who was traveling on Amtrak from Montreal to New York and was stopped at the border and his computer was confiscated. Your concerns about this increasing searching of the electronic equipment of American citizens without any search warrants?
CHRIS CALABRESE: The thing is we carry around our entire lives in our pockets now. What the founders would clearly have considered materials covered by the Fourth Amendment – out letters, records about our lives, our financial information, our pictures, if there had been pictures. These are detailed information about our life and I do not think anyone at the time of the Constitution would consider the government to be rummaging around in that information to be OK. But now, because of the way we live now, we carry around in our iPhones and our laptops and it has become almost impossible to travel without it as a business traveler, so the idea that the government can look at it for whatever it wants, and go through it for other investigative purposes, we think that is completely contrary to the Fourth Amendment.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris, you’re also looking at the issue of Facebook and Google. Talk about with the government is demanding they be allowed to have access to.
CHRIS CALABRESE: Right now, the privacy laws in the U.S. are incredibly outdated. The privacy law that governs the internet was actually passed in 1986, so it’s pre-’www’. So you can imagine it does not track terribly well to our existing problems today. So the government can get a lot more information with much less than a warrant standard simply under existing law. For example, email, which I think most people can think of as being protected by a warrant, which is very personal information. After a very limited period of time, 180 days, the government can get that information basically just with a subpoena. No court order, no warrant. We think the law needs to be updated so the government has an appropriate standard whenever it accesses this information.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the demands? Were you surprised about what exactly they’re asking of Google and Facebook? Can you explain for people who are not aware of this latest request, changing, actually, how the Internet works?
CHRIS CALABRESE: Well, what the government has been asking in its most recent request is really to build in a back door into communications. So the way that the Internet and communications are actually architected would have to be changed so if the Government presented some kind of warrant, or some kind of other order, and as we said they do not need a warrant in many cases—the company would have to be able to flip a switch and present the government with all of that information. I mean, not only does that make surveillance easier, it changes the way the Internet works. It is supposed to be a dispersed distributed system that’s secure because the communications between to the people cannot necessarily be broken. If you create a back door, it’s not just the government, it’s hackers and other individuals that can into the back door.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ginger McCall, your concerns at EPIC about some of these continuing invasions by the government of our use of the Internet as well as our own personal electronic material, whether computers or cell phones?
GINGER MCCALL: Definitely. EPIC we have been following this. We have freedom of information requests regarding the Internet wiretapping proposal that Chris was just talking about. Certainly, if you have an Internet that is constantly monitored, you’ll have a really chilling effect on free speech and.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, David Greenfield is still with us, a councilman from Brooklyn who has sponsored legislation in NYC council to not allow theses scanners to be at LaGuardia and Kennedy, then you would have the patdowns. What is the most effective way to keep people safe at airports?
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: What the Israelis actually do is behavioral profiling. They have a conversation with you. These are trained ex-military officials who after they have a conversation, can pick up things like facial tics and nervousness. That seems to be very effective. The problem we have with the TSA is that they engage in theatrics to try to convince us that were safe when in fact we are not safe. Now they’ve crossed the line to endure a virtual strip search. That is why we are introducing legislation to stop the practice.
AMY GOODMAN: That could of course lead to a whole other discussion about racial profiling which we can’t have right now. This is an important discussion to continue. What should be happening at the airports. David Greenfield, a councilman from New York City, Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union, is this a concern to you?
CHRIS CALABRESE: I am sorry, the racial profiling?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
CHRIS CALABRESE: I think that the problem with the Israeli model is in many ways that it does not scale to the U.S. that doesn’t mean that we should not do as the president said, after the Christmas bombing, more intelligence gathering ahead of time to make sure that we’re catching people before they get to the airport. But the bottom line is we’re in aviation security for the long haul. This is not a short-term thing. TSA needs to turn its attention to developing technologies that not just make a safer, but also protect our dignity and our privacy. I think a good example of that is the swabs that they rub on your hands at the airport that t can detect traces of explosives. That is really what we’re worried about here – someone sneaking a bomb on a plane. I think we should look for explosives. These are much less invasive technologies. They exist. They can be developed. They are much better than a virtual strip or a grope.
COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: I would add that I do not think we are in favor of racial profiling. I think there’s a significant difference between racial and behavioral profiling. But I think it is also important that, as you mentioned, we should start screening what goes underneath the planes. We still do not have 100% screening of packages that go underneath the airplanes. If you are a terrorist, that is probably a much simpler thing to do that put the bomb on your body.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Councilman David Greenfield, of Brooklyn, Chris Calabrese of the ACLU, and Ginger McCall of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center
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