“You try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier.”
—Transportation Security Administration chief James Marchand, explaining the TSA’s new approach to calming children who are subjected to the full-hand, feel-up pat-downs during airport security screening.
Yes, the TSA is now training its agents to present their touching of children in private places as a game—-you know, because this method has proven so effective for child-molesters.
What alarms does this set off?
Well, for child abuse specialists, it set off the “What the heck is going on here?” alarm:
Ken Wooden, who runs an organization dedicated to stopping child sex, Child Lures Prevention, reacted with amazement. “How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game?” Wooden he wrote. “To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years.”
For child molesters, a different alarm is sounding…the “Hey! Now we can tell children that we’re playing “Airport”! alarm.
The rest of us, however, are hearing another Ethics Alarm, and the ethical duties being breached are competence and trustworthiness. We have been told we should tolerate these excessive searches because trained professionals have determined that as invasive and humiliating as they are, they are necessary. Yet the official entrusted with overseeing the security policies has demonstrated, with his shocking disregard for common sense and child welfare, that his judgment is poor and his competence is lacking. A man whose solution to a security problem is to employ the methods of child abusers is not trustworthy.
And his policy judgment, all of it, is suspect.
Ethics Alarms 
Is it fair to hope for a policy that says children are sacrosanct until a child bomb is discovered?
I sure think so. Or until we have our first diaper bomber.
Why do you need a child bomb to occur before it’s a threat? It’s either a threat or not, independent of whether it has previously occurred.
Simply because we can argue about whether it is a threat or not until it actually occurs one, whereupon the argument has been settled. Until a threat is more than theoretical, a cost-benefit analysis tends to favor no action. We can’t take measures against an infinite number of theoretical risks.
Simply because we can argue about whether it is a threat or not until it actually occurs one, whereupon the argument has been settled.
Seriously? If I manage to do something once, it’s a threat that needs to be responded to, but if I haven’t done it yet, it’s not a threat?
By that logic, using box cutters to hijack a plane was not a threat until 9/12/2001. Also, liquid explosives are still not a threat as it never actually occurred successfully. Similarly, Second graders should be allowed to carry guns on planes.
Until a threat is more than theoretical, a cost-benefit analysis tends to favor no action.
So? After an attack occurs, the threat cost-benefit analysis is still often no action; it’s the political cost-benefit analysis that leads to action.
We can’t take measures against an infinite number of theoretical risks.
No, we cannot take individual security measures against an infinite number of risks. That’s why the security at airports is referred to as security theater. It’s just a big show. It doesn’t actually make us safer.
Has any terrorist plot been stopped at airport security? No. Have they been stopped after intelligence gathering and standard police work? Yes. What actions should we take to mitigate the general risk from terrorists?
Essentially, you’re saying there is no value until a result is observed. By the same logic, if a hobbling baseball player (think Kirk Gibson) bunts with 2 strikes down by 2 with 2 outs in the ninth and the bases loaded, we can’t know if that’s a good decision until we see if everyone’s safe.
Professions that enable people to be in a position where child abuse could more easily occur often attract people who want to abuse children – teachers, daycare workers, priests, and now TSA agents.
Whoever came up with this brain dead idea should be fired.
I’d start with the TSA brass and Napolitano, myself.