Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow.com / The Rutherford Institute has sued two federal agencies on behalf of pilots who object to newly implemented security measures at airports.

The lawsuit was filed for a male and a female pilot who were willing to undergo routine security, but not image technology “body scans” and enhanced, full-body “pat downs.” The two pilots, with more than 50 years of experience and thousands of flight-time hours combined, refused to be subjected to either of those security techniques and were prevented from passing through security, and therefore were unable to report to work.

John Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Institute, tells OneNewsNow the basis of the lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Agency.

“[It is] based on constitutional grounds — the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures,” he explains. “Both of these pilots want security — both would go through metal detectors, [and] both would have…and did have their luggage x-rayed. But they feel that virtual strip searches and pat downs, where [security personnel] touch sensitive areas of the body, violate the Constitution.”

Whitehead also believes body-scan machinery — the “virtual strip searches” to which he refers — may be hazardous to a person’s health.

“A number of medical experts now have come out and said that…the intense radiation [is] 20 times more powerful than what you get in a doctor’s office when you go through these scanning devices,” says the attorney. “They are medically unsafe, especially for small children and pregnant women. So there are a lot of problems with these scanning devices that have not been revealed to the American public.”

Whitehead is asking the court to declare the searches unconstitutional, and he hopes there will be quick action because of upcoming holiday travelling.
Read Whitehead’s column:
‘Invasion of the Body Scanners‘

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