The Revolt Against the TSA

It’s been encouraging to witness a growing grassroots revolt against the TSA’s naked-body scanners and “enhanced” screening techniques. The privacy concerns about the new regime are genuine, and the moral case against them is compelling. There are two basic arguments against the TSA’s new regime: moral and prudential.

Nothing in libertarian natural-rights theory says that you have a right to fly without a strip-search, if that’s the condition required by the airport or airline for entry. However, libertarianism as a natural-rights theory is grounded on a robust conception of the dignity of the individual human person. To force largely innocent, non-threatening people to submit to humiliating security procedures is to disrespect their dignity. Such procedures might be justified if there were some compelling reason that would demand the assent of virtually every rational person. But there are no such reasons.

That brings us to the prudential argument against the new screening procedures. The naked-body scanners and “enhanced screening techniques” (which were initially rolled out for some international travelers several months ago) do not allow screeners to determine whether someone is smuggling explosive or weapons within a body cavity. Moreover, the images can be saved and leaked, contrary to TSA claims. Like every governmental invasion of privacy, the procedures are subject to abuse, such as TSA agents’ putting their hands down people’s pants, cupping and squeezing a traveler’s breasts, and traumatizing children. These are foreseeable and inevitable consequences of removing the strictures on public officials’ treatment of private citizens and punishing citizens with fines or jail time if they resist or say no.

Finally, how many lives will be lost because Americans are turning to driving instead of flying? The increased hassles at the airport since 9/11 have already had this effect, and the new regime is likely to push many more over the edge. Driving is of course much riskier than flying. In that case, it’s quite possible, nay probable, that the security regime at airports is taking more lives than it is saving. By one estimate, enhanced security procedures after 9/11 led to 2,300 additional road deaths in two years. That’s not even counting the opportunity costs of the billions of dollars spent on the TSA, dollars which could have been spent on, say, health care or poverty instead. With the TSA, we’re not giving up privacy, dignity, and convenience for safety, we’re giving up privacy, dignity, convenience, and safety for nothing.