Strip Search Machines Already Causing Problems

An airport security worker at Miami International beat up another for making fun of him for having small genitalia. During training to use the new virtual strip search machines, the man walked through the screening device and from that day on became the victim of daily jokes from fellow workers. He reacted by taking a security baton to another screener beating him up in the airport parking lot. (Read more here... ) Doesn't this make you just really eager to be scanned by one of those machines? You too can be the subject of jokes or lustful thoughts.

What about the health impact? While the backscatter X-ray machines are being called safe by the manufacturer (What else would one expect?), others say even the minimal radiation is a health risk, especially to pregnant women and children. The technology is still experimental. There have been no clinical trials or long-term studies of the safety of millimeter wave scanning machines.  A few studies indicate that such devices can damage DNA. (For more information read this.)

And then there are those who proclaim that the privacy of those scanned won't be abused and that the machines can't make printouts. Not true. The machines are capable of full color photographs although at present they are blurring the images, a PR tactc one suspects. But in a case at Heathrow Airport in London, female security guards printed out the nude pictures of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan which he autographed for them.

Frankly, if the only way I can fly is to submit to this degradation, I choose to ground myself. The last time I flew I watched security spend a long time with two elderly people in wheelchairs taking off their belts and shoes, etc. I stood there with my mouth open over the luncacy of it. Meanwhile, groups of turbaned men are passed right through for fear of "profiling." So instead of sensible solutions, the government goes to a totally invasive, expensive, and, in my opinion, unconstitutional search of every law-abiding citizen who wants to fly. It's one more way for government to control every aspect of our lives and for some people to make big bucks in the process.

Somebody needs to cut off the government's supply of hallucinogenic drugs. They aren't living in the real world, but a virtual world where political correctness and making money trump everything.