Showing posts with label airport body scanners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airport body scanners. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Will there be a naked revolt against airport body scanners?

I've been seeing a lot of comments like this:

I am an old man and I don't have any prudish feelings left. I have also been subjected to lots of invasive medical procedures where several men and women were participating and watching. So, I am used to being naked and exposed. So, I am considering stripping completely, totally, the next time I go through TSA screening. I wonder what they will do to me if I stand there dangling in public; I am curious and I expect the reactions will be amusing. I won't care if I miss my flight or get whisked out to detention somewhere. At my age, I don't have lots to lose that I haven't already lost. Provocateurs serve a public purpose, and I am happy to serve my nation.
I wonder if anyone is actually going to follow through on this. That was just a pseudonymous comment on the New York Times' website, so there's no way to verify it. He'd need to be someone who's disturbed enough by the body scanners to want to protest them (at the risk of violating who-knows-what federal law), but relatively comfortable with people seeing him naked. Is there anyone like that out there? He would need to be motivated by a desire to protect the privacy of those who are much more sensitive than he is.

Friday, January 29, 2010

"As soon as a celebrity walks through a naked machine, some creep will want to save the picture and send it to the tabloids."

Jeffrey Rosen argues that the new airport screening device invades our privacy without actually preventing terrorism.

He describes his chance encounter with one of the machines:

Last summer, I watched a fellow passenger at Washington’s Reagan National Airport as he was selected to go through a newly installed full-body scanner. These machines--there are now 40 of them spread across 19 U.S. airports--permit officials from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to peer through a passenger’s clothing in search of explosives and weapons. On the instructions of a security officer, the passenger stepped into the machine and held his arms out in a position of surrender, as invisible millimeter waves surrounded his body. Although he probably didn’t know it, TSA officials in a separate room were staring at a graphic, anatomically correct image of his naked body. When I asked the TSA screener whether the passenger’s face was blurred, he replied that he couldn’t say. But, as I turned to catch my flight, the official blurted, “Someone ought to do something about those machines--it’s like we don’t have any privacy in this country anymore!”
The real problem is that there's no reason to assume that the violation described in the heading would be done only to celebrities.

UPDATE: It's already happened.