Lisbon, Portugal – President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there’s a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.
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For now, they’ve told him there isn’t one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.
“I understand people’s frustrations,” Obama said, while acknowledging that he’s never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.
Passengers at some U.S. airports must pass through full-body scanners that produce a virtually naked image. If travelers refuse, they can be forced to undergo time-consuming fingertip examinations, including of clothed genital areas and breasts, by inspectors of the same sex as the passenger.
Obama said he’s told the U.S. Transportation Security Administration: “You have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive.”
At this point, that agency and counterterrorism experts have told him that the current procedures are the only ones that they think can effectively guard against threats such as last year’s attempted Christmas-day bombing. A Nigerian man is accused of trying to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a flight from Amsterdam with nearly 300 people aboard.
Obama said that in weekly meetings with his counterterrorism team, “I’m constantly asking them whether is what we’re doing absolutely necessary, have we thought it through, are there other ways of accomplishing it that meet the same objectives.”
For now it sounds like there aren’t, and travelers will face potential pat-downs and scans.
“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.
The new scans show naked images of the passenger’s body, without the face, to a screener who is in a different location and does not know the identity of the traveler. The U.S. has nearly 400 of the advanced imaging machines deployed at 70 airports, expanding to 1,000 machines next year. So not all airports have them and not all travelers are selected for scans.
The hands-on searches are used for passengers who don’t want those scans or when something suspicious shows in screening, or on rare occasions, randomly.
Gimme a break! He ‘understands’ NOTHING! He lives & has lived a pampered life for far too many years. Typical elitist who claims understanding.
Gimme a break! He ‘understands’ NOTHING! He lives & has lived a pampered life for far too many years. Typical elitist who claims understanding. Does he also understand that at least 18% of the country is under-employed or unemployed because of him???
He doesn’t have enough saychil to understand a blasted thing. Just because his teleprompter told him to say it, doesn’t mean its true.
At the very least, there should be very strict government rules with very high penalties of jail and losing ones job to enforce the following:
The Strict law needs to be that there are 2 separate scanners at each location, 1 line for men and another line for women and each room where the images are viewed are run by men only for the mens line and viewed by women only for the womens line. This means you need to spend twice as much $ for twice the number of machines for separate men women lines at each screening.
Buy most important is the penalty for violation which must include a lifetime sentence without parole for any cross gender viewing – it’s the only way to be sure the law will not be violated.
Such alternatives as the above have not even been considered yet. never-mind “all possibilities existed”.
If a frum women in scanned photographed and viewed only by women and there is a guarantee that this law and trust can’t be violated because it would equal a lifetime sentence behind bars, then there would be no halachic problem for a frum women to be viewed by women only, as long as this can be 100% guaranteed.
Sadly such harsh punishments for violations is not likely
I think Obama is a loser, but the 18% of under-employment and un-employment came before he arrived so thats plain BS
If you really understand then here’s the deal!! Nuke a nother muslim city everytime we’re attacked (even if it failed). If you do that we’ll be able to just walk onto the planes just like the trains!!!
I wonder what is better being touched in your private parts or blown up like Lockerbie. Has nothing to do with Obama but with safety versus those bound on blowing up a plane.
the arabs had this dude pegged the first time he spoke to them:
words without effective action.
and you need not be a prominant lawyer to see thats.
To #6 -Kyzler- You don’t seem to have a clue as to what occurred, in December, 1988, regarding the blowing up of Pan Am 103. A plastic explosive, which was hidden in an electronic device in someone’s luggage, was sent from Malta, to Frankfurt, where it made its way onto Pan Am 103. If Pan Am had screened the luggage (which it said that it would do), its’ screeners (using technology which was available then), could have easily detected the bomb, and saved all of the lives of the passengers. Incidentally, in 1988, I was at the Frankfurt Airport on the way to Eretz Yisrael. I was gently touched in the groin by a screener. However, I was not forcibly groped in the groin, as is the case with the TSA.
I have a great idea for new peanut farmer why; just why not do what Israel does and you do not have to remove shoes, pat down, or xray. Oh I forget it is not pc so the whole country has to suffer. I think the stop leader you suffer. Get rid of obama. Remember til last week soros own 11,000 shares of the new scanners business. Just thought the public would like to know why nothing else is available.
Don’t worry the bomber can hit a train also. Look at the subway in London 7-7-05
They would like to blow a train and blow the tunnel at the same time
Making airline security a Democrat vs Republican issue is not the way to resolve this issue. It has long been recognized that bad stuff can be stuffed into body openings. In the case of illegal drug smuggling, heroin can be stuffed into condoms and the “mule” carrying the condoms swallows them before boarding. When they come to US airports, certain suspects can be made to submit to X-rays of their abdomens. where as much as 3 dozen condoms can easily be detected.. Terrorists may soon be able to devise a method whereby both bomb triggers and plastic explosives can both be swallowed in condoms. The politicians will deny that profiling is an effective way to detect carriers of bad stuff, because profiling is not p.c., but profiling is definitely needed, and in combination with other high-tech modalities.