Nate Silver has some stats about air travel and the demands of the TSA .
In general, surveying Americans on issues related to airport security is problematic because most Americans fly rarely, if ever. A Gallup poll conducted in 2008, for instance, found that just 44 percent of Americans reported having flown at least once in the past year. In fact, this is probably an overestimate. The Gallup poll reported that American adults had taken an average of 1.7 round trips by airplane in the past year. Statistics compiled by the Department of Transportation, however, found a total of about 800 million passengers boarded flights offered by U.S.-based carriers in 2008. Since a typical round-trip consists of either 2 or 4 flights (depending on whether there is a layover or not; a round-trip might also involve as many as 6 or 8 flights when there are multiple layovers), this implies that there were something on the order of 250 million round trips made by airplane in 2008, which would be fewer than one per American, rather than the 1.7 trips that the Gallup poll found.
Not that many Americans are about to stand up and complain about the "security" procedures required for flying. Plenty of us have a "bah humbug" attitude about "national security." Most Americans, though, appear to go along to get along. They shrug off full body scans -- or seem to, according to Silver.
Just as we were posting this item, a new poll came in from CBS News showing 81 percent of Americans supporting the full body scans. So, it does not appear that the high levels of support were an artifact of the timing of the previous surveys, most of which had been conducted shortly after the Christmas Day bombing attempt.
Nevertheless, I would guess that only somewhere between 1 and 5 percent of Americans have so far traveled through a security line where such machines were in use; it will probably take some time before we know where public opinion settles in on this topic.
As for the alternative offered to those who want to avoid too much exposure to radiation, there's the handjob -- the "patdown." Women (and perhaps some men) who have lived in Mediterranean countries are used to going through "patdowns" in "intimate areas" just about every time they walk down a busy street. It would be interesting to get their points of view about official goosing committed by the US federal government in our airports.
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Looks like the TSA may get a putdown rather than a patdown from Congress. Jordy Yager writes at The Hill that the TSA chief will be testifying today.
John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, is expected to be hit with questions about new pat-down techniques that air passengers have complained are invasive. He is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee about air-cargo security measures put in place since an attempted terrorist attack from Yemen.
Senator Joe Lieberman is defending the procedures. He is candid about his point of view. "I come down on the side of the pat-downs," the shifty senator admitted, according to the Hill report.
Nuff said.
