The jury is still out over whether Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, instigated a spat last week with a Transportation Security Administration employee at Salt Lake International Airport or whether a TSA agent was harassing him over not wanting to step into a whole-body imaging machine.

Regardless, we wish the confrontation would open a public debate over how airport security does its job. The chief question should not be whether whole-body scans are intrusive. It should be whether the entire airport routine, from taking off shoes and belts to turning in nail clippers and bottles of water, is effective.

TSA officials no doubt would cite the many prohibited items they have confiscated over the years since 9/11. Some of these have indeed been dangerous firearms and other weapons. But an economist a few years ago calculated that the overwhelming majority of these have been the types of prohibited items that wouldn't be thought of as dangerous in any other setting.

Meanwhile, the most effective protection against the kinds of attacks that occurred on 9/11 has been taken by the private sector. Airlines now have installed bullet-proof doors that separate cockpits from the rest of the airplane. As long as these are in place, passengers are protected from a hijacking. A terrorist still could blow up a plane, however, and that makes passenger inspections an inconvenient necessity.

But how can these be made as thorough as possible? Does it make sense to compile an ever-growing list of potentially dangerous items? Detonators can be made of plastic. The president of an aviation consulting firm recently told the Chicago Tribune that common foods even could be made into explosives. His point was that terrorists always will strive to be one step ahead of the people working to protect the public. And as soon as authorities learn of another one of these schemes — a shoe bomb or the use of liquid explosives — passengers inevitably are faced with more restrictions and inconveniences.

Meanwhile, periodic undercover inspections always seem to manage to sneak a few dangerous items past the check points, despite all the machines.

One answer may make a lot of people uncomfortable, because it involves profiling. But this kind of profiling should not be based on race or national origin. It should be based on actions, appearances and mannerisms. TSA employees already receive training in this regard. Our suggestion is to give them more training, to supplement the normal X-ray process with more subtle inquisitive techniques.

But beyond that, someone needs to do a cost-benefit analysis.

Chaffetz and others in Congress are pushing to outlaw whole-body scans, which produce unclothed outlines of passengers and reveal anything a person may be hiding. Instead, they should demand a thorough accounting of the current inspection process to make sure what passengers endure is actually effective and enhances their security.