The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ushering in a new policy that makes U.S. airport security screening transgender-friendly.
The federal agency is implementing the policy backed by what it calls a new “gender-neutral algorithm.”
According to the agency, it has invested $18 million into the new screening system, which it has dubbed Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT), but it will not provide any details about what’s behind the technology.
“For security reasons, we cannot provide changes to algorithms or specifics on how the technology works,” Daniel Velez, a TSA spokesman told The Epoch Times in a written statement on Jan. 4.
Velez did confirm for The Epoch Times that under the new algorithm, the TSA has eliminated its long use of blue buttons for males and pink buttons for females to trigger gender-based scans.
While the TSA refuses to explain the new system, statements by the agency suggest it is designed mostly to prevent transgender females who are biological men from being flagged for a strip search.
“This change will benefit all travelers, including transgender, non-binary, and other gender-nonconforming travelers who previously have been required to undergo additional screening due to alarms in sensitive areas,” the TSA said in a statement last May in announcing plans for the new process.
A group of Republican lawmakers call the new policy “insanity” and introduced a bill in that namesake.
Called the Securing American from Transportation Insanity Act, the measure seeks to block the removal of gender-based airport security screening and the use of any federal dollars to fund its use.
“The new so-called ‘gender-neutral’ TSA screening policies are yet another example of the radical gender ideology being pushed by the Biden administration,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said in a statement on Jan. 4 to The Epoch Times.
“President Biden stops at nothing to undermine the values that make our nation great.”
Good is one of the co-sponsors of the Transportation Insanity Act proposal.
Its prime sponsor Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times about the issue.
In a previously published statement, Boebert, who was recently re-elected to a second term, has described the new trans-friendly airport security as “practically inviting terrorists to take advantage of a weak and woke security system” in U.S. airports.
“Decreasing pat-downs and identity validation measures for people identifying as transgender might validate delusional leftists, but it does nothing for passenger safety,” Boebert has said.
Velez told The Epoch Times that the TSA spent several months testing the new transgender-friendly AIT to make sure it was working properly.
When the TSA announced plans for the new policy, responses were mixed.
Many men identifying as transgender women posted on social media about the humiliating experiences of having to reveal their penises to TSA security officers to prove it wasn’t something else in their underwear after they were screened as women under the pink versus blue button gender-based screening.
Gay media digital outlets have written extensively about the woes of traveling by air as a transgender saying it has been going on for a long time and has worsened in recent years.
In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality published a survey showing that more than 40 percent of transgender airline passengers complained that they were patted down for wearing transgender-related devices such as binders or packers and that they were patted down by TSA officers of the wrong gender.
They also reported having to remove or lift clothing to show the transgender devices they were wearing. Some said they even experienced what they called “unwanted sexual contact beyond the typical pat-downs.”
The survey also reported that transgender people have frequently complained airport security officers often use the wrong pronouns when speaking to them and that sometimes their bags were searched just for being transgender.
They were also offended by TSA agents’ use of the word “anomaly” in describing the causes for them being flagged for additional screening.
As part of the new trans-friendly policy, TSA agents are expressly prohibited from using the word anomaly when screening transgender passengers in order to avoid any appearance of gender discrimination.
However, many heterosexual women have posted on social media that the new policy seems to only make airport screening less invasive for transgender people.
One woman posted on Twitter that there appears to be no provision in the new policy for large-chested women who are often subject to humiliating strip searches when an underwire bra they are wearing triggers security alarms while going through airport security scans.
Other women have reported undergoing humiliating screening for outer garments.
As captured on video, Aundrea DeMille, traveling to a Christian retreat, was ordered by a TSA agent to strip down to a sports bra at a security checkpoint at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport due to a zipper on her jacket.
Republicans behind the counter legislation of the new policy also express concern that it will be used as a cover in an attempt to smuggle weapons in those “sensitive areas.”
TSA admits the new screening is based on an honor policy or what the agency referred to as “self-attested claims of being a transgender passenger, but Velez indicated that the new technology is gender neutral, implying that it doesn’t matter if a passenger is lying about their gender identity.
Underwear smuggling has long been a concern at airports.
In 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, known as the “Underwear Bomber” was able to make it past the screening process with a mix of high explosives he hid in the frontal pouch of his briefs.
Fortunately, when Abdulmutallab tried to detonate the explosives, they caught on fire instead. He is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
The Nigerian native told authorities his plans were to down the plane. This past Christmas marked the 13th year anniversary of the Christmas Day incident.
