America XXX: Security Theater

Drudge has been highlighting stories about the brewing revolt against the TSA's full body scanners, which were pressed into service after last Christmas' abortive underwear bomber nearly brought down a Detroit bound airliner. A guy in San Diego was kicked out of the airport for refusing the proffered choice of either a full body scan, or a pat-down that included genital manipulation. (to get on an airplane??). He wrote about his experience here in great detail. There is also a video going around showing an outrageous TSA body-search of a three year old girl.

There is also a brewing showdown with TSA involving pilots and other flight crew members, who desire neither repeated exposure to the scanners' radiation, or the degrading experience of having your private parts touched, all so we are not accused of the dread racial profiling, even though we all can list the five characteristics common to virtually all plane-borne terrorists.

As you might expect, Free Will was on this issue last year, but since my analysis appeared on New Years Eve, it kind of got lost in the shuffle. Here's a refresher. I think it still holds up.

I think there is a bigger problem with whole body scans: they are completely degrading. Call me old fashioned, but the idea of some TSA time-puncher watching hundreds of Americans pass by everyday in a state of x-rayed undress is not something that society should consider acceptable. Is TSA going to be looking at naked images of nuns? Little kids? My wife?

Security experts swear that "if only we had been able to full body scan the Pants Bomber," he would have never gotten on that flight to Detroit. Oh, bulls***. Airport security is the second to last line of defense (passengers are the last line). Our expensive security services are supposed to be doing everything they can to make sure bombers can't get on the plane in the first place. How's that working out? Not well, as it seems a half-dozen security services knew about this guy, and yet he could still get a visa to enter the US carrying no luggage. Before subjecting civilians to full body scans, could we at least subject our intelligence community to brain scans to see if there's any activity upstairs?

We've spent the last eight years standing in long chaotic lines at the airport. We no longer can indulge in the old ritual of greeting our loved ones at the gate. We've been taking off our shoes. We've been taking off our belts. We've been emptying our pockets, and then elbowed by jerk screeners retrieving their gray plastic bins. And, of course, we've been pulled aside for extra screening, regardless of race, age, nationality, or travel history. Why? All so certain people, say, young Nigerian Muslims who travel to Yemen, won't be subject to "profiling." And, so no TSA employee ever has to use their brain.

If it really is our fate to have full body scans, can we at least subject only the 500,000-odd people who are on the government's various watch lists - which no one seems to consult, anyway - to that sort of screening? That would be a lot more rational than making all 300 million Americans go through an increasingly degrading process to no good effect.

I still can't believe that scans have been rolled out without the government - especially one that is run by the sort of ACLU types who are forever searching out new unreasonable searches and seizures - considering whether people would accept them as legitimate. At the very least, they should be limiting the full body scans to the people on the government's watch list, simply as a matter of efficiency and conserving resources, but TSA seems intent on potentially scanning everybody.