Invasion of the Body Scanners

Ken — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:20:27 +0000

So have you experienced the body scanning machine at the airports yet? I've been through them a few times... and if you hadn't heard or read about these machines, you might find them to be pretty innocuous. You stand there with your hands up, the machine waves around you, and then you're cleared to go through. Simple and painless, right?

But of course, being the well-informed netizen that you are, you know that these things are pretty much the 21st century version of the X-Ray Goggles from the comic books... the person viewing the image can see your hoo-ha or wee-waw in all its glory. It's essentially a digital strip search.

How have we come to this? How have we become so terrified of terrorists that we're willing to subject ourselves to such indignities? Doesn't this mean that the terrorists have won?

Some are now calling for a mass protest on November 24th; everyone is supposed to opt-out of the body scan and choose the manual pat-down instead. (There's an interesting story about a guy who decided to do that.) Oh, by the way, November 24th is the day before Thanksgiving... the busiest travel day of the year. If people are really going through with this, I'd be tempted to just sit at the airport to watch the carnage.

For those of you who are inclined for to be a little more subtle in your subversion, consider putting some large metallic alphabet stickers on your body, and send a personalized message to the TSA guy. Perhaps something like "ENJOY THE SHOW, PERV."