As we said…
We recently lobbied for Americans to stand forth as courageous and create a national dis-hysteria about air travel and terrorism in general. Air travel is vital to the functioning of the economy. Making it more expensive, more problematic and slower isn’t a national goal.
As a direct result of alarmist cries for more "protection", specifically, new, more stringent rules for passengers destined for the U.S., Europeans have already begun to moan. International news sources report that it isn’t clear what Americans want.
Currently, the millimeter wave full body scan seems to be preferable to the full body pat search; both are seen as intrusive and essentially fallible. An amusing "clash of the hysterias" is occurring in Britain, where child-advocates are protesting that both searches violate the privacy of children, since the full body pat requires the examiner to touch a person all over, and the full body scan essentially looks through clothing to reveal the person nude.
If children are excluded from scans, they will quickly become the favored way of transporting drugs and bombs.
Contrast the view of Americans needing special protection to enter a state of the art wide body airplane with what much of the rest of the world experiences, crowding on to a rickety bus with livestock and fleeing bandits. Just how special are the dwellers in the home of the brave? The chances of the average person dying due to terrorism on a non-stop flight is about half the risk of being crushed by a vending machine. The average person is far more likely to die from drowning, aspirin, bee sting or avalanche. Still, we ask people from all over the world to undergo special privacy intrusions when coming to the U.S.
The Prospect sought to bring its readers some hot millimeter wave full body scan shots, but it turns out, so far at least, there are few available, and those that are, ghostly blue images of tensing gluteals and copious thigh bags, will put you right off your grits. These few shots reveal the real terror: most of us don’t look that great under our clothes, and we’d rather share that fact only with those bound to us by law or monetary agreement.
The millimeter body scan images available are pretty creepy. Instead, we again bring you "Le Verite", from the article on Truth last week. Could this woman be carrying a bomb?
Full body scan, Le Verite.
Still, the internet voyeur potential for full body scans is tremendous, and promises to dwarf both changing room cameras and night vision peeping as the technological jolly of the twenty-tens. Do you really feel safer?
What the government expects from you when you exercise your completely revocable privilege to ride on an airplane, here.
Play Airport Security. Here is a link to a cool "play airport security" site.
