Backlash grows against airport security scans

How did an agency created to protect the American public become the target of so much public scorn?

After nine years of funneling travelers into ever longer lines with orders to have shoes off, children’s sippin cups empty and laptops out for inspection, the most surprising thing about increasingly heated frustration with the federal Transportation Security Administration may be that it took so long to boil over.

“If you ask what its procedures are, how you screen people, it’s ‘I can’t tell you that because if the bad guys find out they’ll be able to work around the system’,” said Christopher Elliott, an Orlando, Florida-based consumer advocate specializing in travel. “That’s why a lot of what they’ve done has not really gone over well with air travelers. They perceive it as being heavy-handed and often the screeners come across as being very authoritarian.”