A Dispatch from Dulles

I traveled by air yesterday to be with my family for Thanksgiving. And to tell the truth I was kind of looking forward to the flight almost as much as I was the turkey and mashed potatoes. I've been dying to find out firsthand what all the backscatter opt-out fuss was about, and I departed for the airport in something of an investigatory mood. My flight left from Dulles, which has the backscatter machines; if there was anything notable about the experience I'd planned to post something about it. All of that said, I also fully expected it to be pretty straightforward and uneventful. But my plans were shortly foiled. After getting my boarding pass, I proceeded down to the security-screening area. Because it was Thanksgiving Day, the lines were pretty short. I saw the backscatter machines, duos of blue boxes set up in a neat row, interspersed unassumingly with the “normal” metal detectors. But there was a problem: there was no one going through them. They weren't even turned on. Was there some recent change in the security screening mandates that I hadn't heard about? No, no official policy change. But that’s right, each one of the $150,000 backscatter machines was sitting completely idle, roped off from use. All passengers were being screened through the normal machines, and no one was receiving any additional pat-down scrutiny. After going through my own screening, I asked a TSA officer why the backscatter machines were just sitting there as though they were set decorations. I didn't write down his exact words, but if my memory serves his response was essentially the following: “Oh, they’ve been up and running for the past two days, but we just went to lunch so we turned them off. We'll have them back on in a bit." Wow, what a shame I’m not an underwear bomber, I thought to myself. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about the new screening program. I hear the "security theater" arguments, and am inclined to think that a truly determined terrorist who is "obsessively focused on destroying planes" will get around the new technology with ever-more creative methods like breast-implant bombs and the like. But I also believe that our policy makers are well-meaning individuals with very hard jobs who have far more information than I do, and so there must be some good coming of the new protocols and regulations. And if that means they decide to ban printer toner cartridges from passenger luggage, I'm actually just fine with that. But I’m also not all that impressed that the new screening program TSA has chosen to implement is so unnecessary as to be completely cast aside for so routine a reason as a lunchtime staff shortage. Sure, the very possibility of being subject to the enhanced screening will likely deter some would-be terrorists, and the fact that the machines are at the airports and used even sometimes will achieve that goal. But the 9/11 Commission found that the 9/11 hijackers studied airport security and conducted casing flights, and any future terrorists will probably study this new program--and its vulnerabilities--just as carefully. Those vulnerabilities should be minimized. If TSA believes this program is so very necessary, then I simply don't understand a lunch-break shutdown. I also don't understand why any implementation program would give TSA agents the discretion to just forego the backscatter-or-pat-down protocol when a group of passengers starts opting out because some guy standing in line with them convinces them to. Then again, of course, it's possible that not even TSA believes in the necessity or efficacy of the new program--and that I find frightening. UPDATE: An earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to the metal detectors as "'normal' X-ray scanners."