Yet again, a problem with the Transportation Security Association has reared its head due to “sketchy” conduct by the security officers.

In this incident, a 6-year-old girl was given a pat-down, as per the procedure for checking folks for security reasons.

But this time, due to the girl’s age, the parents were up in arms about the touching involved. Part of the touching confused the girl, as it is not generally the touching a stranger is supposed to do: running fingers along the top lining of pants, patting down the thighs and having the girl spread arms and legs for other running along of hands on her body.

Procedures such as this have made people weary for years due to the possibility of the security agent “copping a feel” or just the dislike most have for being touched in sensitive or intimately associated areas by strangers.

This time, as has occurred before, a child is involved and as such, there is outrage that a child should be subjected to screenings in this manner.

Could the process be improved? Very likely. Should a child be subjected to the same screening procedure an adult is? Maybe not, but there has to be something in place.

Terrorists or drug smugglers and anyone else committing illegal activities are unlikely to care about the means by which they accomplish their goals; a child is just as possibly a smuggler, even if unwittingly, as any other person.

In this day and age, innovative means of crime are really the only means left of succeeding at crime. Means of discovering potential terrorist plots or otherwise are effective.

Yes, mistakes have been made and tragedies have occurred. But the number of successful preventions of crime are not heard about because that’s how the system works; if the criminals know that a tactic is doomed to fail, they likely won’t try it.

Whatever your anger might be toward TSA for their procedures past and present with young children, they are doing what they are funded to do, and in the current situation of the 6-year-old girl, the procedure appears to be in order.

Parents can be outraged at anything affecting their children, and rightly should be, as a parent’s job is to protect their child.

But some groups, al-Qaida for example, are more than willing to utilize children; children can be taught and trained, perhaps even easier than, as can any potential agent of terror.

The TSA takes a lot of heat for what can be construed as invasions of privacy, and have a fair amount to answer for based on some examples provided in the media. But realize they are working for the safety of all, and some things, no matter how much you don’t like them, are necessary.