Has Airport Security Gone Too Far?

In May, Transportation Security Administration screener Rolando Negrin pummeled a co-worker with his government-issued baton. The feud began, according to a Miami-Dade Police Department report, after Mr. Negrin’s training session with one of the agency’s whole-body imagers. The scan “revealed [Mr. Negrin] had a small penis,” the disgruntled co-worker told police. After a few months, he “could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind.”

Now the TSA is rolling out these ultra-revealing imagers across the country. The Agency and the scanners’ manufacturers insist they have installed features and instituted procedures that will make passenger embarrassments impossible. Privacy advocates are not buying it.  But the larger question is whether the TSA’s tech-centric approach to security makes any sense at all.

Read the full article at online.wsj.com »