WASHINGTON - November 22, 2010 - Airline passengers have been subjected to full body scans and pat downs as part of new screening procedures this month but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admits there is a limit to how far they are willing to go.
Director John Pistole told reporters Monday that for the time being the TSA had no plans of doing body cavity searches. "We're not going to get in the business of body cavities, that's not where we are," Pistole said.
"Even if it is a body cavity [bomb], you still have to an initiator, you have to have some external device to cause that initiation," he continued. "There's got to be something external that you can then initiate the device and that's what the advance imaging technology machine will pick up: any anomaly outside of the body."
"We are taking some risk by not doing any screening, but it's the balance of what is the appropriate level of risk versus screening," he said.
