Hijackers and Body Scanners

Whenever some goober gets the itch to blow up an airplane there is a small flare of public interest in keeping the public safe without much thought to the consequences.

After the attempted blowing up of a plane by a moron over Christmas via an explosive banana hammock, the news stations were all abuzz over ways to thwart terrorists in our planes. Nevermind that most of our security enhancements added to airport security amounted to little more than feel-good measures that added a ton of hassle for innocent people and very little actual effectiveness (ask Bruce Schneier) in preventing attacks.

The latest push I've seen in the news is for the deployment of full-body scanners. A quick Google turns up a number of articles on them, but this was the first time I heard our "local news" covering the idea in one of their typical short-attention-span-friendly broadcasts.

They seem like a wonderful solution. Basically using backscatter X-ray technology you can see through someone's clothes, highlighting hidden objects. They also let the TSA agents see breast and penis implants, your genitalia, and essentially remove anything that before resembled modesty or personal privacy.

More effective than pat-downs? Yes, probably they are.

Preferred over pat-downs? That's probably a personal question. Would you rather have a "freedom grope" or a minimum wage barely trained McGoober staring at your nubbins?

The TSA swears that the images aren't kept; they're erased in a short amount of time. Oddly enough, nipple slips and upskirt glances aren't visible after a short amount of time as well, but there's nonetheless a thrill from those who get to see these passing slips of modesty and for most of those who were on the slip-per side of the equation the embarrassment doesn't get conveniently erased so quickly.

Does the TSA promise that leering glances and/or smirks are going to be suppressed?  Does the TSA mind a nice fat lawsuit when some monkey behind the controls snaps a quick picture with a camera phone and circulates the picture online of the MILF that just went through the line? Or if another passenger gets the image on their camera? And what protection is there for the passenger's privacy? My doctor has seen my gross nudity (lose a lot of weight, you'll know what I mean). My wife's had doctors see her give birth, and she has doctors that explore her nether regions on a scheduled basis with a duck-billed device that I won't pretend to understand. But the doctors and nurses we rely on for care are trusted not to abuse their positions. I don't get that feeling from TSA agents that are hardly considered elite law enforcement personnel. I often worry they're one step above mall security guards in terms of training and professionalism or are recruited from Craigs List.

My parting thought to the news story...my daughter is underage and nearly legal. My son is DEFINITELY underage. What's to keep some pervert from leering at her nether regions as one of my kids go through security? It's that tantamount to child porn? Sounds to me like they're saying child pornography is okay for the government to produce but for everyone else it's wrong. I'd like to know how they're keeping perverts from going through their McTraining program just to get their jollies staring at young T&A in the airport, seeing as they have such fulfilling and upwardly mobile professional options working in those positions.

Hearing these arguments the government entities swore that they would be putting some software graphic-scrambling magic in so that you don't have your junk or nethers necessarily clear in the images. So...doesn't that defeat the purpose of the scan? Shove some of your magic exploding powder up the canal or tape it to your love stick and it'll just be part of a blurred algorithm on the screen (assuming this is actually done, or is actually effective).

I'm not entirely comfortable with this crap anymore. Air travel is becoming a bigger and bigger hassle, and now I have some half-trained halfwits staring at my wiener just to prove that I am allowed to get on a plane. I'm not innocent until proven guilty. I'm a cog at the mercy of a group of ineffectual thugs who get their jollies showing they have power over people who really are trying to get from point A to point B. The vast majority of people are innocent, but thanks to a few goobers that committed a heinous act, the innocent must suffer at the hands of knee-jerk reactions on behalf of the government trying to pretend they're actually making a difference with feel-good measures. The real question is how much more of this are we, the traveling public, going to accept before we give up on the idea that we are a country that values freedoms and privacy?