TSA Scanners May Be Discriminating Against You
Jennifer Billock April 23, 2019
In case you thought discrimination was just a man-made construct, you should think again—new reports show that the Transportation Security Administration’s body scanners at airports are more likely to give a false alarm for African American and overweight passengers going through the security lines.
Have you heard of a hair pat-down? It’s something many Black women have to endure on a regular basis, thanks to mechanical discrimination by the Transportation Security Administration’s full-body scanners at airports. The scanners frequently show false alarms when Black women go through them, requiring an agent to run their hands through the passenger’s hair.
“It happens with my natural Afro, when I have braids or two-strand twists. Regardless,” Dorian Wanzer told ProPublica. “At this point in my life I have come to expect it, but that doesn’t make it any less invasive and frustrating.”
Black women have been complaining about these invasive searches for years, and reports of hair pat-downs are continuing to rise.
“With black females, the scanner alarms more because they have thicker hair; many times they have braids or dreadlocks,” an anonymous TSA officer in Texas told ProPublica. “Maybe, down the line, they will be redesigning the technology, so it can tell apart what’s a real threat and what is not. But, for now, we officers have to do what the machine can’t.”
The same false alarms trigger when passengers are wearing turbans and wigs, or when they’re overweight. Passengers with a normal Body Mass Index tend to get stopped substantially less than passengers who are classified as obese, Business Insider reported.
[Image Source: Shutterstock]
I might add that I am no stranger to terrorism. I grew up in the suburbs of London during the IRA's worst terrorism campaigns (much of it financed, incidentally, from the US). My father's office was destroyed by an IRA bomb. I was sitting in my office (and my wife was sitting in the car outside) when that bomb went off, and we both remember seeing the plate glass windows bowing from the shockwave. I was just trying to finish off some work before the weekend, and one of my former colleagues was having his leaving party in a meeting room on the other side of the building (my office faced the blast) and I popped in on my way out and was asked (very matter-of-factly) if that very loud bang had been a bomb, and answered that it had. That was all that was said. We Brits are pretty phlegmatic! I also recall on another occasion having to clamber over rubble and broken glass to get to my office - again, thanks to the IRA. My mother narrowly escaped the horrific IRA bombing of Harrods, having left shortly before it went off. The thing about terrorism is that it is supposed to be DESTructive, but most of all DISruptive. When we allow terrorists to disrupt our lives, they have won - a battle at least, if not the war. When they force us all to arrive at an airport more than an hour before our flight in order to go through security procedures that achieve little, if anything, they have won. When we accept intrusive searches for one form of transport that aren't required for others, they have won. It's all terribly sad...
snidely, from all the reports I have seen, the answer is "No". The TSA has never captured a single terrorist. Not one. In fairness, that isn't a bad record. Airport security generally doesn't catch terrorists, in the US or anywhere else. The TSA is no different in that regard. What the TSA *do* achieve, like airport security worldwide, is reduce the number of dangerous items onboard aircraft. Whether that is a sensible use of resources is a separate question. I personally think it's disproportionate to the risk. I don't get checked for knives or guns when I get on a train or bus or ferry. I realise there is a difference in that aircraft can be taken to places (thinking Twin Towers here) that they shouldn't be, and can cause catastrophic damage. But then car bombs can do the same. A strategic derailment could cause a huge number of casualties. Scuttle a ferry and the loss of life could be huge. But only on aircraft are we subjected to hugely intrusive searches...
As the TSA fail in 95% of all tests, no https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851
I get pulled over every time. As a tall white older aged white male, it happens because I theorise that I won't complain or give them a hard time, wheras my wife has never been checked
I'm scanned often - white and retired.