The screening processes at airports

Privacy

Since the advent of advanced security measures in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, there have been complaints that the measures violated privacy rights. The removal of one's belt, pat downs, multi-view x-rays tested the limits of our privacy rights further than had previously been experienced at airports. Today, full body scanning has been added to the mix of security techniques. The use of full body scanning has become a flashpoint for privacy activists. The scanners, it is argued, violate the most basic tenets of personal privacy rights and do not offer a benefit sufficient to compensate for this violation.

The concept of privacy rights is often viewed to be a strictly Western, or even Anglo-American phenomenon. Unique aspects of our culture, including views about the human body, about freedom of thought and speech, and about protection from government intrusion, are intrinsically linked to our sense of individual identity. Geert Hofstede developed a model for understanding cultures. In his model, the United States scored highest among all nations for individualism -- the concept that the individual is the most important unit in society. Our Anglo-American compatriots in Australia, the UK and Canada comprise the members of the top four most individualistic nations. This sense of individualism gives rise to our strong concept of personal privacy. The United States scores low on the power distance scale, indicating that in our culture there is little perceived separation between strata of society (Hofstede, 2009). This is often extrapolated to a view that includes government and authority. The strong concept of privacy rights in our culture derives from the intersection of these two cultural dimensions. We are individualistic, to the point where we prefer to remain private and separate even from authority. Any invasion on the part of authority into our individual world is annoying, suspect or even offensive.

In legal terms, the bulk of United States privacy law derives from the 1974 Privacy Act and subsequent legal decisions that have interpreted the provisions of this Act. The Act itself is comprised of a number of parts. These include the maintenance of records on individuals, the sharing of these records and the legal remedies available in the event of a violation of these laws. The law also covers the exceptions to the above. Amendments have addressed the issues surrounding computer matching of records and citizen access to records (Privacy Act of 1974). One notable exception to the Privacy Act is the Passenger Name Record agreement signed between the United States and European Union, which hints that the relevant authorities place airport security on a different legal dimension from standard privacy practice.

Indeed, security techniques at airports have become progressively more invasive during the 21st century. Personal searches have become more thorough, including metal detection, x-rays, pat-downs and these searches have included the removal of clothing items ranging from jackets to belts to shoes. The reason body scanning has become a flashpoint for privacy issues at airports is because of its added dimension. Each individual has his or her image recorded, and this image is saved on an electronic file.

Full body scanning has become the new trend for airport security in the wake of the bombing attempt on Christmas Day 2009 on a Detroit-bound plane. By the beginning of 2010, the Transportation Safety Administration had already increased the number of scanners in use at American airports from 40 to 190, and had ordered a further 300 of the machines for installation in early 2010 (Rucker, 2010). Similar measures are being implemented in the UK and in the Netherlands, where the Christmas Day would-be bomber boarded his plane.

Passengers pass through the machines fully clothed. The images appear on a monitor in another room. Faces and private parts are concealed in the virtual image. The image has been likened by the TSA to wearing a bikini at the beach. The objections are natural -- not everybody would be so scantily clad. That the images are on computer files that could then be saved and retransmitted only adds to the threat of privacy violation. The TSA clams that the images are deleted after the passengers clear the checkpoints. There is reason for skepticism with regards to this claim, however. If an incident occurs, it is likely that the TSA and investigators would want to review the screens of the passengers involved. Moreover, previous incidents were government agencies have claimed to delete records have been demonstrated as false.

While the TSA claims that privacy rights are not violated by the use of full body scanners, many passengers disagree, as do many in the human rights community. A United Nations special rapporteur on the protection of human rights points out that recording details of private parts was an especially egregious human rights violation. In particular it was noted that women, people of certain religions and certain cultural backgrounds would likely find the procedure and the notion of their bodies being recorded to be offensive (Agence France-Press, 2010).

There are two dimensions on which the privacy issue surrounding airport screening procedures can be evaluated. The first is the legal issue. The Privacy Act itself offers little direct guidance with respect to airport screening. The Act's emphasis is more on the control of information that comes from the activities of government agencies than on collection of the information itself. As such, the Privacy Act does not appear to set any definitions or limitations on what information can be collected. The collection of video or image records, for example, is not governed by this Act. The Act does govern the management of these records, however. The TSA would be subject to specific provisions with regards to the maintenance of any record from the full body screening procedure. The agency would be limited with respect to its ability to share the data. Most certainly, the leak of any image files to the public would violate the Privacy Act. This addresses one concern that exists, but does not address the risk of unprofessional behavior on the part of agents, sharing images among themselves or viewing the images beyond the course of duty.

The other dimension along which airport screening can be evaluated in terms of privacy is the ethical dimension. The TSA's viewpoint that full body scans are harmless and any privacy concerns are outweighed by security concerns is a utilitarian perspective. However, this view is not shared by many Americans. For many, the ethics of the scans are dictated by cultural norms. The protection of one's individual privacy is considered to be a strong American value, the result of the cultural emphasis on individualism.

It is this cultural norm by which most Americans determine the ethics of privacy. In many ethical philosophies, it is the cultural norms that define the ethics of an action. Under these philosophies, the outcomes of the action are subordinated to the ethics of the action itself. While the TSA operates on a "greatest good for the greatest number" principle, many Americans do not ascribe to that philosophy. They place individual privacy ahead of the greater good. For those people, airport security techniques, in particular the use of full body scans, represents a gross violation of the cultural norms with respect to personal privacy.