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On the upside, if everyone could see what you looked like naked then just maybe we could gain some headway into stopping the obesity trend in America.

I've long said, in response to "but this will only make the police's jobs harder!" complaints about court rulings, etc... that that is precisely and specifically what the Bill of Rights was intended to do - make the police's job harder.

They can go through all your data, they can "mistakenly" put you on a danger list, they can force you to leave random stuff behind, and the one thing the politicians take issue with is the one device that might actually make security FASTER because OMG BOOBIES.

This is a farce, not a victory for "human dignity".

In Iraq, we used to make our homophobes sit in front of the scanner when we checked personnel requesting entrance to base. It was actually quite amusing to see them squirm.

Of course, when a woman would come through, we were required to find a female Marine to search/scan her. Though this would only happen once every month or two.

This deserves further analysis. We need to remember that, whatever else happens, it's humans who are the ones who finally decide whether something's a weapon or not. Whether something can be used to hijack/destroy and airplane is fairly objective; fingernail clippers cannot, a handgun can. Whether or not a human decides whether it can be is entirely subjective and dependent on many factors.

First of all, there's the training. They spend at most a few months learning how to foil every single method to get something through security. There's no way they'll catch everything. The x-ray scans of bags moving through the conveyor belts are hard to read and easy to foil. Anyone remember the guy who hid lockpicks in his luggage without any extra scrutiny?

Second, these people aren't paid a lot of money. There's nothing magical in the amount of money that somebody earns, but it is a fairly good indicator of how much they're valued and trained and the ability to retain talented people. In this case, a talented person is one who can provide thorough security while still making the process run smoothly for all the people involved. With how little they're paid, I'm guessing that TSA agents are by and large not a talented and eager group.

Third, humans are subject to a lot of biases. Something as simple as how long they've been staring at x-rays can affect how attentive they are. By the 3000th bag, they're not checking as thoroughly as they were with the first one. If they're having a bad day, they're more likely to single out bags or people for additional training and be more strict. If they have an ax to grind against a group for whatever reason, they're going to treat members of that group worse while treating members of groups they like better.

There's no way around these fundamental problems. Humans are always going to be humans, and as anyone knows who deals with digital security, humans are the weakest link 95% of the time. Most security measures don't take this into account. Nor do they take into account that the system is only as strong as the weakest point, which in this case is probably the x-raying of the bag. Very few people are going to carry a weapon on their person when they can pass it through in their carry ons more easily. The sooner this topic becomes less political and falls into the domain of people with aims towards security instead of publicity, the better.

Sure, the scan was "painless," as the parent says. As in, I didn't feel my skin tingling or anything. But "relatively quickly" is pretty goddamn relative.

Here's how it worked: As usual, I put all my metal items into the front pocket of my carry-on, took off my shoes, passed urine and blood samples to the TSA officer (just kidding -- or am I?), and put my bag onto the conveyor belt. Then I waited.

Station One was a line of three people (at the time). The front person in line was instructed to keep his or her feet behind a yellow line. Directly ahead was a big booth of clear plastic. We each waited our turn to get to the front of the line and wait for a TSA officer to instruct us to proceed to Station Two.

Station Two, you step up and into the booth itself. There are little feet marks on the floor of the booth that instruct you where to put your feet. You stand there, and you wait.

Station Three, after a minute or two, a TSA person comes along and instructs you that you may now put your hands on two hand-marks on the wall. Basically, you're now in a position not unlike how you stand when you're being frisked by a cop. Once the TSA officer is satisfied that you're doing it right (it isn't hard), the officer walks away, and you wait.

After another minute or two and a couple of thumping sounds, the officer comes back and tells you that you can now step down out of the booth ... and over to Station Four. I now notice that I am AGAIN standing in line behind the three people who were in line ahead of me. AGAIN we have to stand behind a yellow line, and all of the officers are acting like that yellow line is a Really Big Deal. Each person waits a minute or two until the TSA officer reappears and instructs them, individually, that they have passed the test and may collect their belongings.

Except I didn't pass.

In my case, the TSA officer approached me and informed me that they would need to see what was in my left front pocket. What was in my left front pocket was, not totally without precedent, my wallet. As it turns out, while the old scanners required you to remove all metal objects from your person, the new scanners now require you to remove EVERY object from your person, no matter what it is. They can tell if you're circumcised or not, but apparently they cannot tell that an oblong, slightly curved object of porous, nonmetallic material carried in the pocket of a man's trousers might possibly be his wallet.

I was escorted to Station Five -- yes, that's right, YET ANOTHER high-security yellow line where I needed to position my feet -- where I was told to wait for a different TSA officer. No doubt this one had a higher security clearance of the type that would allow her to examine the mysterious object. I was instructed to remove the object from my pocket. I did so using my left hand, then rotated my hand slowly so that the object was visible in my palm, revealing that the object was some kind of flat, oblong device made out of black leather. Visibly alarmed, the TSA officer informed me that she would need to open the object for inspection. Disassembly of the device revealed a number of very thin, flat, rectangular plastic objects. Some of them were printed with the logos of major financial institutions. At least one of the rectangular pieces of plastic had my photograph printed on it. In fact, this was the same flat, rectangular piece of plastic that I had showed to a TSA officer about fifteen minutes ago, at Station One. Satisfied, the officer told me I could collect my things.

So all in all, my experience is that this form of security theater is not only LESS secure than the old system -- because it yields even more, and stupider, false positives -- but it takes longer. Compare to my flight home from Mexico on the same voyage. This was for a flight FROM Mexico TO the United States, mind you -- and yet the officers on the Mexico side practically waved us through the metal detectors. I swear I saw it beep once or twice and the officer just gave the pa

Actually, the problem is, that extra security makes you less secure.

You see a line of people, waiting to go through security as a hassle; A terrorist sees a few hundred people, all confined in a location, and in a point where explosives are not yet checked.

In this country, one suicide bomber at a security checkpoint line would completely shut down our air travel. What would you do to add additional security without making people bunch up?

Amen brother;

I was recently watching the news, and they were showing how children are being killed in record numbers by gun violence in Chicago.

And the reporter asked "If these deaths were caused by the swine flu, the media, government, and the public would be be all over it. But because it's just urban violence, nobody cares about these deaths."

It seems to me that this country has it's priorities backwards. NOT ok to have 2 people die of Swine Flu, but OK for 30 kids to die from guns. OK for tens of thousands to die from lack of affordable healthcare EVERY YEAR, but billions and trillions spent because 3000 people die from ONE isolated incident of terrorism.

Yeppers, makes me proud to be an American. I'm gonna throw up now.

It stops when people are so fed up with this nonsense that they won't fly on airlines any more. When that happens, the airlines, desperate to be able to do business again, will push for the security theater to be ramped down a few notches - and since something that matters would then be on the line (i.e. money, as opposed to abstract "human rights") then those with the ability to make this crap stop would finally be motivated to do so.

I'm taking not one, but two trips halfway across the US or more this year, I won't be flying on either trip. I'm sick of all this TSA crap.