LOS ANGELES — The Transportation Security
Administration has decided that children 12 and younger are less of a
terrorism risk — at least as far as airports are concerned.
The
agency, charged with anti-terrorism security at the nation’s airports,
will no longer require children to remove their shoes before they go
through airport scanners, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
told Congress this week. The policy change will also curtail pat-downs
of children.
“We do want to move, and are moving,
to a more risk-based approach to screening passengers,” Napolitano told
Congress on Tuesday. TSA wants to “try to streamline procedures for
those passengers who are low-risk, which enhances our ability to focus
on passengers who either we don’t know or who are high-risk,” she said.
Napolitano
spoke during a hearing at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee. The new policy is expected to be implemented soon.
TSA,
part of the Homeland Security Department, already has used a modified
pat-down for children 12 and younger as part of a pilot program to speed
up security searches. Still, the agency is not abandoning all such
searches or the requirement to remove shoes at times.
“There
is a need to keep security precautions unpredictable,” Napolitano said.
“There will always be some unpredictability built into the system, and
there will always be random checks even for groups that we are looking
at differently, such as children,” she said.
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