Sunday, April 19, 2009

How to Attract Base Airline Employees: Give them a Security Peep Show

Here's a beauty of a scheme to attract new, lecherous employees to the airline industry: see through body scanners:

The naked body scanners are taking over.
When we first checked in on them two years ago, the scanners, which see through clothing, were being deployed at a single airport. A few months later, they were upgraded to millimeter-wave technology, which delivered similar images with even less radiation-"10,000 times less than a cell phone transmission," according to the Transportation Security Administration. At the time, TSA assured us that the scanners would be used only as a "voluntary alternative" to "a more invasive physical pat-down during secondary screening." Only a few passengers, the ones selected for extra scrutiny, would face the scanners. The rest of us could walk through the metal detectors and board our planes.

Surprise! Two months ago, TSA revised its position. It began testing millimeter-wave scans "in the place of the walk-through metal detector at six airports." At these airports, everyone - not just people selected for secondary screening - would face the see-through machines. Anyone who objected would "undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down." You might even get the "enhanced pat-down," which includes "sensitive areas of the body that are often used by professional testers and terrorists," such as "the breast and groin areas of females and the groin area of males." Show us your body, or we'll feel you up.

Now the plan is going nationwide. Joe Sharkey of the New York Times reports that TSA "plans to replace the walk-through metal detectors at airport checkpoints with whole-body imaging machines-the kind that provide an image of the naked body." All passengers will "go through the whole-body imager instead of the walk-through metal detector," according to TSA's chief technology officer, and the machines will begin operating soon after orders are placed this summer.


Now how is it that we are the freest people on earth again when we can't even maintain privacy and dignity boarding commuter jets? Let's hope that high speed rail system gets set up and running soon.

6 comments:

alex said...

"Let's hope that high speed rail system gets set up and running soon."
What if the same type of security will be required at those train sections?

ScienceAvenger said...

Why would there be? When was the last time you heard of anyone hijacking a train and crashing it into a building?

Toaster Sunshine said...

Good thing I like boats; I doubt the TSA will take kindly to cyborgs.

A World Quite Mad said...

Well there were the Madrid train bombings. In Europe they were using dogs and had soldiers with machine guns on the trains after that. So, what would we do? The most illogical thing possible of course!

And unfortunately, I can't take a train to Europe. I don't like the idea of going through one of those machines. I'd prefer to be patted down. In fact, I got the full pat-down treatment at Heathrow last time I was there. I had half a mind to get cheeky with the girl who was doing it and say "Watch where you put your hands, you're making me kinda hot!" but figured I'd get the extra-special treatment if I did, and I wanted to board my plane on-time, so I kept my mouth shut. If I have the choice, they can pat me down LOL

ScienceAvenger said...

Toaster, I'll bet you're hell in the metal detectors.

AWQM, I once got a wand down where the woman doing it insisted on telling me every detail of where she was going to touch me, when I was already running terribly late on a dreadful trip. I finally said, "I don't care if you grab my c*ck, just get me on the damned plane!"

Security was not amused.

alex said...

Concerning my first comment, I had the following in mind:
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/08/nation/na-bombscreen8

New Jersey Rail Station Tests Metal Detectors

February 08, 2006


Commuters heading to work in Manhattan walked through metal detectors Tuesday at a busy train station and fed their bags into X-ray machines at the start of a test of an airport-style security screening program.

...
A second phase of the program at a yet-to-be-named rail station will test bomb-detection technology such as infrared cameras in checking passengers from a distance.

Granted, these aren't full body imagers, but this article nevertheless addresses your question about "when was the last time anyone hijacked a train and crashed it into a building."