John C. Hayes
Chicago Tribune
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
WASHINGTON — – The government has promised
more and better security at airports after the near-disaster Christmas
Day, but privacy advocates are not prepared to accept the use of
full-body scanners as the routine screening system at the
nation’s airports.
“We don’t need to look at naked 8-year-olds and
grandmothers to secure airplanes,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah,
said Friday. “Are we really going to subject 2 million people per
day to that? I think it’s a false argument to say we have to give
up all of our personal privacy in order to have security.”
The balance between privacy and security tilts after each major
terrorism incident in favor of greater security. But in the past
decade, privacy advocates have been successful in blocking or stalling
government plans for more searches.
A conservative freshman in the House, Chaffetz won a large,
bipartisan majority last year for an amendment to oppose the
government’s use of body-image scanners as the primary screening
system for air travelers. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties
Union, which said the scanners are the equivalent of a “virtual
strip search.”
The pro-privacy stand does not follow the traditional ideological
lines; Republicans and Democrats have united on the issue now and in
the past.
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