Things are about to get friskier at America’s airports.
The TSA will have “more intimate contact” when feeling up fliers who elect for the pat-down method before taking off.
Previously, blue-shirted agents had five different ways to frisk someone who opted for the pat-down instead of going through a scanning machine, according to reports.
The new method will be a more “universal” approach to screening, according to media reports.
Agents will begin phasing in the new method over the next few weeks, reports indicate, starting with smaller airports.
Employees at Denver International Airport were told on Thursday the “more rigorous” scans “will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before,” Bloomberg reported.
“I would say people who in the past would have gotten a pat-down that wasn’t involved will notice that the (new) pat-down is more involved,” TSA spokesman Bruce Anderson told Bloomberg on Friday.
Anderson also said the extensive feel downs shouldn’t slow down airport lines, but “for the person who gets the pat-down, it will slow them down.”
A different TSA spokeswoman told USA Today the new screenings won’t involve checking any additional body parts, however.
The new policy is in part because a 2015 study by the Department of Homeland Security found agents had let handguns slip through the system.
Only a few weeks ago 11 travelers reportedly went through a security line at John F. Kennedy International Airport without being screened. The security area, at the airport’s Terminal 5, was allegedly left abandoned and three passengers set off metal detectors.
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