Bruce Schneier has lilnks to everything you could want on the TSA Backscatter X-ray Backlash (now with extra groping!).
I'm scheduled to fly on Nov. 24, which has now been declared to be a day of protest against all this. I had already planned to decline any scanning as I've had all the x-rays I need already this year, and then some. I suppose they'll think I'm part of the protest as indeed, to be fair, I might have been anyway. I'm flying late in the day, lines will be long — it's the busiest air traffic day of the year — and TSA professionalism will be stretched, I imagine, to the breaking point. What fun that will be.
Bonus link: Keeping the skies safe from nail clippers (armed returnees from Afghanistan encounter TSA in Indiana).
I flew in June of this year. Since I have two artificial hips, I always get the pat down search. It didn’t seem any worse than the searches I had in earlier years, but I guess that the searches have intensified since then. I have no idea when I’ll fly again.
PENN, of Penn & Teller had a nice experience with the TSA and a local policeman enroute to his next show. See it all at http://tinyurl.com/2l3ag
Bottom line… Ask for a LOCAL POLICEMAN to be called. They hate the TSA Rent-a-Cops.
Security Theater is now security burlesque, and everyone gets to take the stage.
http://suburbansheepdog.blogspot.com/2010/11/bad-touch.html
If this doesn’t make a difference — and it doesn’t — and if they know it doesn’t make a difference — and they do — then you’ve got to ask yourself the fundamental why.
Conspiracy? Nah. None needed. Just the state naturally expanding at the expense of liberty. (Read your Bastiat.)
Excepy when it comes to Michael Chertoff. There you need only read Adam Smith: The value of a thing is what it will bring.
Immediate past DHS chief Chertoff, the question is answered with a dollar sign. He is now lobbying for RapiScan, the company that makes these things — for which he laid the groundwork while still at DHS, the use of which he has championed every time a credulous press asks his “expert” opinion. For just some reporting on this, try: http://tinyurl.com/y8oxq92