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Subscribe to RSSThe TSA announces upcoming changes to its screening procedures for children. KNSD's Mari Payton reports.
Earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that children under 13 years old soon will no longer have to remove their shoes at airport security checkpoints.
Courtesy TSA
That’s great news for families, of course, but also for any traveler who has had to wait in line behind a 3-year-old balking at being parted from his Spider-Man sneakers.
We asked Transportation Security Administration spokesperson Lisa Farbstein to tell us what families, children and general travelers need to know about the new kid-friendly checkpoint procedures.
Q: What will be different?
A: The modification is that we will allow kids 12 and under to leave their shoes on. We will also permit multiple passes through the metal detector and advanced imaging technology by children to clear any alarms as well as [employ] the greater use of explosives trace detection. The idea is that these changes in protocol will ultimately reduce — though not eliminate — pat-downs of children that would have otherwise been conducted to resolve alarms.
Q: Will there be exceptions?
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Do you agree with the TSA's new kid-friendly policy?
A: Yes. Children may be required to remove their shoes, and could still undergo a pat-down, if anomalies are detected during security screening that cannot be resolved through other means. These changes will allow officers to better focus their efforts on passengers who are more likely to pose a risk to transportation while expediting the screening process.
Q: When will it start?
A: The changed procedures will begin in some airports as early as today, with full implementation expected by Sept. 26.
Q: Weren’t some airport already doing this?
A: In August, we tested the new procedures in a pilot at six airports: Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Houston (IAH) and Denver. Those pilot sites were selected based on airports that had a higher volume of travelers in the desired age range to allow for a better overall sample during our testing.
Q: What tweaks were done in response to the testing?
A: For security purposes, we can’t get into that. But here’s an interesting factoid: Children in the 12-and-under age range represent about 3 percent of all passengers, although during peak travel seasons at certain airports, children may make up about 8 percent of the passengers.
Send us your travel-related questions.
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Find more by Harriet Baskas on Stuck at The Airport.com and follow her on Twitter.
Leave a Comment:
If anything, the poster they are showing is just so cheesy!! Stereotypes anyone?
OMG security loophole! The terrorists are going to send in hundreds of exploding children's shoes now! What have we done???
This must be a major bummer to all the child molesters who work for the TSA. They won't be able to sexually grope children as much as they did in the past.
no matter what they say in this article they will still do it. When TSA first went into airports they said they wouldnt go in the pants and they do it anyway.Welcome to Nazi Germany and now even at NFL games you get searched.
Here's an even better idea for a safety method for kids,Let'd throw all the GARBAGE OF THE AIRPORTS, THE TSA THAT IS, and come up with other safety methods that are even better than all the SAFETY Bogus Crap going on at the airports now.See people that way we won't have to risk maybe traumatizing the HELL out of kids and let them know that when they grow up in this country,that they will still have civil rights left and are able to travel without all the Bull Crap harassing, groping, and scanning the Hell out of them.
Yeah I say let's do that keep the kids safe from the GOONS and MOLESTERS,save the tax payers from wasting all this money on this TSA Bogus Bull Crap Circus, then maybe just maybe everyone including kids can travel in PEACE, and be safe from the real TERORRISTS, the Clowns from the TSA.
"Kid-friendly"? Does your copy editor work for the TSA?
Yeah, no problem, now that kids only MIGHT get groped. But only, of course, if the blue-shirted goons spot an "anomaly" that must be "resolved" -- the magic words that trigger a grope. All of this, though, is still obscure, because "for security purposes, we can’t get into that."
Keep sending them through the scanners, too, multiple times, despite the fact that the machines' safety is in doubt. What's a little radiation exposure among friends?
And hey, we can still grope 13-year-olds! And 14-year-olds, and 15-year-olds, and . . . . Because A Scary Terrorist might still be hiding up their butts!
Gee, what an improvement, TSA.
Dress the TSA Agents like clowns.
Now if we can all just leave our shoes on.
a daddy baby snatcher runs to piss n @!$%# on infant behinde dumbster thats a classis sick ass native should of kept there ass locked on Reservations....
I'm still shaking my head over the TSA agent who held a big stick and asked my (then) 7yo daughter in 2002, "Is it OK if I wand you?" I had to tell my child that she wasn't going to be hit with the stick before she would nod her head and agree to be "wanded". I hate to think what parents have to explain to their small children these days at the security line.
How benevolent, so they'll get to keep their shoes on while TSA strip searches and feels them up. They already looked like pedophiles and this just makes it worse.
According to Napolitano, we should be thankful that they will feel up fewer children than they do now. This implies that child molesters who only assault a few victims are somehow more acceptable than those whose attacks are more frequent.
Pistole said this in November, then in February after they strip searched a 3 year old boy in Kansas City, again in April after the 6 year old girl was groped in New Orleans and again in July. Don't hold your breath waiting for this one.
The agency has repeatedly lied about their procedures and the level of the personal invasion and arrogantly dismissed victim complaints as either exaggerations or necessary to assure aircraft security. TSA is now a criminal agency staffed by de facto child molesters.
TSA Crimes & Abuses http://www.travelunderground.org/index.php?threads/master-lists-of-tsa-abuses-crimes.317/
Kid friendly check points?Bwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!What a crock of Sh it!Kid Friendly Molestors,hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!What a riot!
Our children are world travelers and even now after years of travel still get anxious at the check points. Our youngest is 9 and she has been pat down, something she now dreads. Our oldest is 17 and he had a hard time watching his sister be pat down.
On our way back home from a trip, we were in Florida trying to get through one of the security check points and were disturbed to see a boy (about 10 or so), in metal leg braces attached to a wide metal band around his waist, be escorted to a corner for a pat down. The boy was wearing shorts, a tshirt and no shoes. He used a rolling walker to support himself which was on its way to the scanner. Meanwhile his mom was trying to get his younger siblings through, while yelling at the TSA agent that the boy needed his walker in order to safely walk. To no avail, they forced this boy to "waddle" to a metal chair, while the idiot agent kept telling him to have a seat. The mother kept yelling that he could not sit until she adjusted the hardware around his lower body. All this time this poor boy was just standing there, with his legs at a wide stand trying to keep standing.
We were already on the other side, just waiting for our teen boys (they will not wear anything but tennis shoes), to get their shoes on, so my husband told the lady that we would get her stuff so she could head to the corner of the hallway, were they had her young son. She nodded her head ran and held him up, until one of our boys grabbed the walker which had finally made it through and gave it to her.
I was heartbroken for her, she readily accepted help from strangers, which included us helping the two youngest siblings get their shoes on, because she was desperate. We gathered her carry on luggage and the two children and met her at the corner, and watched as the TSA agent stuck his hands all around the wide metal belt around the boy's waist after waiting for mom to adjust the hardware so her son could sit (wouldn't let him hold the walker for "safety reasons" and finished by asking the mother to remove the shoes, which she said would take another few minutes.
We waited until they were all done, to which my husband said it took over 25 minutes for this mom and her children to get through. We thought for sure this story would end up on the papers, but speaking to her a couple of weeks late she just wanted to put it behind her. She and her husband, sent us flowers and told us that they were on their way home from her parents and that at their home airport, TSA treated her son with compassion, it also depends on the agents working, something we have experienced as well.
I wouldn't attribute this small change (while I do welcome any improvement) with making the check points "kid friendly" not even close.
Why is it that we never hear about bombs being found or weapons being found through these great TSA checkpoints? We do hear about the underwear bomber slipping through, etc., but never have heard of a single threat being STOPPED or FOUND at the checkpoint...... makes you wonder about their claims that "it's a small inconvenience to keep you SAFE". Yeah, right.