Roger Ebert’s Take On TSA Pat-downs

By Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times

It appears that not a single TSA agent has declined to perform a full-body pat down of airline passengers. That includes patting down small children. They’re not patted down on a routine basis, but on some occasions they can be and they are. A child under 12, sometimes way under 12, may be required to remove outer clothing and be touched on such areas as the genitals.

Would you take this job? I don’t believe I would. But it’s worth reflecting that employment as a TSA agent is a good job in these hard times of high unemployment. The starting pay is $12.85 an hour, better than Wendy’s for an employee who needs only a high school diploma. It goes higher. The 40 hours of training are paid for by the government. Agents are given uniforms, badges, “a choice of health care plans,” and power.

When they were first hired, the job consisted of looking at x-rays of hand luggage, passing a wand near a passenger, and watching them walk through a metal detector, and sometimes performing a non-intimate pat down. Now they have to look at x-ray scans of the bodies of every passenger boarding an airline. Those who refuse the scanners or otherwise raise questions are given a full-body pat down. Until recently this involved using the backs of the hands. Now it involves what can only be described as a tactful grope.

I don’t want that job. I don’t want to stand there and look at a man walking toward me whose genitals I must touch, however vaguely. I don’t want to see a little boy, bawling his head off, whose parents have raised suspicions with the TSA and who therefore must have his wee-wee area checked. I would hate that job. It would be a torture.

Read Ebert’s full column here.