Body scans: Getting naked at the airport

“It has come to this,” said Philip Rucker in The Washington Post. “Already shoeless, beltless, and waterless,” beleaguered airline passengers will now be “holding their legs apart, raising their arms, and effectively baring all” before being allowed to fly. To prevent a recurrence of the failed Christmas Day underwear plot, the Transportation Security Administration will soon equip many large airports with “full-body scan” machines that use high-tech “backscatter” imaging to detect suspicious items, like explosives, under travelers’ clothes. Unfortunately, the resulting map of one’s corpus also reveals bulging bellies, tree-trunk thighs, and other anatomical shortcomings, which has some people and privacy advocates aghast. “I want that plane to be as safe and secure as possible,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. But, he said, “I don’t think anybody needs to see my 8-year-old naked.”

Get over it, said William Saletan in Slate.com. The “backscatter” machine does not provide a photographic image, but a contour map of your body resembling a “fuzzy photo negative,” and the security officer screening the images for hidden bombs will sit dozens of yards away and never see your face. Granted, the officers will be looking closely at women’s breasts and men’s scrotums, “because that’s where bombers hide bombs.” But in a world where loonies would destroy planes with explosives hidden in their underpants, shoes, or bras, we can’t afford to be squeamish about a security official looking at fuzzy images of our nasty bits. As Jon Adler of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association put it: “A bomb detonating on a plane is the biggest invasion of privacy a person can experience.”

Perhaps so, said Jacob Sullum in the Chicago Sun-Times, but the government has a “fetishistic focus” on countering specific terrorist tactics after they’ve been used. That’s why we’ve been taking off our shoes at airports for years. Now, the government will be peering into our undies, as if terrorists won’t find a new way next time to smuggle plastic explosives aboard. This is all a game, said David Harsanyi in The Denver Post, designed to provide an illusion of security. Real security would come from a focus on keeping bad people, instead of bad things, off planes. But that would mean admitting that terrorists “tend to come from certain places and subscribe to a certain religious affiliation.” Too politically incorrect? Fine. Before long, we’ll all have to drop our trousers and bend over, while a friendly TSA officer conducts a full body-cavity search.

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