Stupidity, Security, Freedom, and a TSA Alternative

By now you've heard about Gizmodo's sensational acquisition of 100 full-body scans held (likely illegally), along with 34,900 others, by U.S. Marshals in Florida. These are the same sorts of images the TSA is now taking of travelers at dozens of U.S. airports, and which it is planning to take of all U.S. airline passengers within a few years. I got my first taste of the process earlier this year at Richmond International. Physically, it was painless. Morally and logically, it was intolerable. At least to me. Judging by the giggles of the two people who went through the scanning machines after me — and judging by this poll — I'm not speaking for the masses. But I challenge anyone with reasonable regard for their own privacy and reasonable distaste for intrusion upon it to go through one of these machines and not find themselves choking down some serious bile. Under the watchful eye of a bunch of two-bit federal deputies, you — for no reason except that you are trying to travel — turn, face a wall, and raise your hands to the sky like a shoplifter caught by the cops.

Then you're strip-searched. Welcome aboard the land of the free.

The head-pounding idiocy of the TSA, which assures us that these scanners are fundamental to maintaining safety in the skies, has been ably demonstrated by (among others) Wired's Noah Shachtman and The Atlantic's James Fallows (the latter in multiple recent posts; see here and here for a taste of the ludicrous real-world results). But simply put, full-body scans don't eliminate any threat at all. They just shift the threat to other venues — like body cavities, which the scanners don't penetrate. Yet.

Think I'm exaggerating? It's already been tried. And so I won't be a bit surprised if body scanner 2.0 turns out to plumb the colons of wheelchair-bound grandma, simple Uncle Andy, and baby cousin Jane. I also wait with bated breath for...

Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/full-body-scanner-images-saved-3776419?src=rss

politics and religion political commercials politic politic data cold war political cartoons