Airport screenings raise privacy concerns

By Russell Grantham and Kelly Yamanouchi

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After being scanned, groped and delayed while her bags were searched during a European vacation last week, Valencia Johnson was visibly tired when her long flight arrived in Atlanta.

But, in the wake of a passenger's attempt to bomb a plane on Christmas Day, she's willing to go through even more intense scrutiny to assure safety.

"I feel it's great. I mean, if you can smuggle bombs in your butt ..." Johnson said as she waited to claim her bags at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport after returning from Paris.

Indeed, more intrusive screening — physical searches and full-body scans by machines that see through clothes — are already in use for international flights. Some travel industry experts say those measures are expected to become commonplace before domestic flights around the U.S. as well.

That prospect raises concerns about travel delays, passenger privacy and economic impacts on carriers such as Delta Air Lines and AirTran Airways, the two largest carriers in Atlanta.

More screening could force passengers to arrive at airports more than two hours before domestic flights — a hassle that could lead them to ditch shorter flights, hurting airlines, say industry watchers. They say federal security agencies should first improve use of intelligence and selective screening methods that won't add to travel delays.

Aviation security consultant Charlie LeBlanc said widespread physical searches of domestic passengers and luggage would boost time at the airport "dramatically," making shorter flights impractical.

"If you're president of Southwest Airlines or AirTran, you've got to be concerned," said LeBlanc, president of Houston-based ASI Group.

Delta spokesman Ed Stewart said it's unclear what effect the Christmas bombing attempt and increased security efforts since then have had on bookings. "It's something you'd have to really monitor," Stewart said.

The impact probably won't show up immediately, according to David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a major airline industry group that counts Delta and AirTran among its members. "The most stringent measures that were put in place right after the event affected mostly people who had already purchased tickets and had planned to travel over the holiday," he said.

But he said the trade group is working with the Transportation Security Administration to avoid a repeat of the security hassles that helped drive away travelers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We want to make sure that security is enhanced, but we also want to make sure that those enhancements are done with the least amount of inconvenience to customers," Castelveter said. "We don't want customers to not travel because of the inconvenience factor."

So far, U.S. and overseas governments' reactions have not been as dramatic as after 9/11, when travelers often had to arrive three hours before flights to go through intense screening.

Last week, the TSA announced heightened screening, including physical searches or scans of citizens and travelers flying from or through Nigeria and 13 other countries, mostly with large Muslim populations. President Barack Obama also ordered intelligence agencies to immediately fix gaps that allowed the alleged terrorist, a Nigerian, to board the Northwest Airlines jet that flew from Amsterdam to Detroit. The president also said last week that more aviation security measures will be announced soon, including "aggressively" investing in passenger scanners and other technologies to detect hidden explosives.

Indeed, the TSA has installed, ordered or received funding for nearly 500 airport scanners that will use radio waves or low-intensity X-rays that penetrate clothing to hunt for bombs and other weapons hidden on passengers' bodies. The government said last week that it plans to install 300 scanners in U.S. airports this year and could expand that number. The TSA now has 40 of the machines in use at 19 airports around the country, including three at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.

Until more machines are installed, security experts expect the TSA to resort to more pat-downs of passengers and physical searches of baggage.

Hartsfield-Jackson spokesman John Kennedy said the airport has "discreetly" increased security measures, but he didn't give specifics.

"We have implemented additional security measures in coordination with the TSA," Kennedy said. "We're not sharing everything we're doing, except we're doing more."

The TSA has an array of passenger screening equipment at the Atlanta airport, ranging from metal detectors, liquids scanners and baggage X-ray machines to the full-body scanners that are used for passengers.

Some passengers flying into Atlanta last week said they're already experiencing tighter scrutiny.

Like other Atlanta-bound passengers on international flights last week, Johnson said she had been through additional security measures, including body pat-downs and physical searches of baggage. Before the flight from Atlanta, she also went through a full-body scanner, she said.

Other passengers who flew in from Mexico, the Cayman Islands and Poland last week said they and their luggage were physically searched before they boarded planes returning to Atlanta.

With its extensive international routes, that type of screening will affect Delta more than most carriers, said industry watchers.

"It does affect Delta because of their operations in Africa," said InterVISTAS aviation safety and security consultant George Novak.

Delta is the only major U.S. carrier to Africa and has been adding routes there in recent years. It flies two routes to Nigeria, one of the 14 countries with intense security checks, including a daily trip from Atlanta to Lagos, Nigeria. The carrier also sells code-share flights operated by its partners Air France and KLM to Nigeria or Sudan, another of the 14 countries whose travelers are drawing intense TSA screening.

Airline analyst Vaughn Cordle said the airline industry as a whole could see a drop in demand of a quarter of a percentage point up to 1 percentage point. But if there is a 1 percent drop in demand, over a year it could amount to a $1 billion hit to the airline industry as a whole, he said.

Beyond the potential travel delays and economic impacts, critics say the TSA's heightened screening will invade passengers' privacy and could lead to racial profiling.

The TSA's extra screening of travelers to some Muslim-majority countries means "almost every American Muslim who travels to see family or friends or goes on pilgrimage to Mecca will automatically be singled out for special security checks," Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. "It only serves to alienate and stigmatize Muslims and does nothing to improve airline security."

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups also likened the TSA's increasing use of full-body scanners to "virtual strip searches" that would not only show travelers' genitals but other potentially embarrassing items such as adult diapers and colostomy bags.

The TSA said it is taking steps to preserve passengers' privacy, such as blurring faces and immediately deleting images after they are cleared.

After the Christmas bombing attempt, many travelers seem to be taking the delays, pat-downs and potentially explicit body scans in stride. In a recent poll by travel Web site TripAdvisor.com, only about a fifth of the travelers believed the scans would be an uncomfortable invasion of privacy, down from a third in October.

Travelers interviewed at the Atlanta airport generally said they would prefer the scans over being physically searched.

"Wow. That's a little shocking," said Allison Luka, of Atlanta, wrinkling her nose as she looked over some examples of revealing scanner images. "How many people are seeing you naked?"

Still, she said scans would be better than an intrusive pat-down she went through before her flight last week from the Cayman Islands back to Atlanta.

"To be more secure, I'm OK with it," she said.