Ok, these things are CREEPY.

I spent the last couple of days in south Florida in some customer meetings.   I normally fly into KFLL, pick up a rental car, go to our corporate headquarters to visit my amigos, then go do what I need to do with the Latin American regional offices of my clients that are based in Miami.   This is all quite normal and regular business for me.  

On the return to Atlanta tonight, going through TSA security at Fort Lauderdale, I noted that they had a new (at least since the last time I was there) scanning unit in terminal 2.  It is a backscatter body imaging machine.  These are the units that can see through the clothing of scanned passengers, though said not to either store scans nor compromise the modesty of the scanned passenger. (see for yourself here.)

Since I work with customers who produce some of these kinds of security devices,  I figured I would go through the body imaging line.  No big deal really.  You take off any and all metal, then you proceed to hold your arms up and get scanned.  The TSA officer then tells you to move along.   However, I will say watching a young lady in front of me get scanned, then subsequently get frisked, gave me the willies.  The TSA officers did nothing unusual and were perfectly professional in the examinations. Standing in the unit, then holding your arms up to get scanned, was somehow just a little unnerving.   After a few times, I'm sure it will seem quite normal, but I can think of a few things that might seem normal if you did them enough.

Here is what the TSA says about those who observe these screenings:

"For additional privacy, the officer viewing the image is in a separate room and will never see the passenger and the officer attending to the passenger will never see the image. The officers have 2-way radios to communicate with each other in case a threat object is identified."

Why is this even more unnerving?     I do not want to even know what those people could be doing in the observation rooms, though I can pretty much assure the traveling public my image won't incite anything weird.

I really think it's time to go to a US domestic passport along with some kind of bio marker that says it's me.  Maybe a retina scan or a fingerprint scan, but something that shows I am a safe traveler and something that expedites travel through security. I am convinced that at least one true cost of 9/11 is being borne and costed out on the traveling public by the inefficient use of security measures.   

Politically, I am a center right independent.  Mostly I just want to be left alone by government to pay my own way, take care of my responsibilities and do my own thing.  Most conservatives rail at the idea of any kind of domestic passport on the grounds that it is like Nazi Germany "requesting your papers" just to travel in your own country.  

On a defacto basis I think we are already there.  We are just using technology to verify who is safe and who is not.

Stop screening my shoes and my underwear.   Neither of which is really that interesting.

Eric

Comments

[Kathrin]

Hi,
I fully agree with your article about "Body Scanner". I have just listened this morning to the German radio and they will install now a body scanner @ Hamburg airport.

I am very concerned about this and feel not happy about body scanners at all. I can't believe that Germany is installing them.

Who can ensure that the pic's made from a scanned person are truly not accessible from third-persons?