Apparently we in the US are not the only ones experiencing growing pains with regards to TSA employees.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenew...BOMBJOKES-1.xml

Let them give us some real protection and not the illusion of safety and the system might not have as many problems. Its like the drama of having solders with M-16s in airports after September 11th. How are they supposed to protect us there? They can't and neither can rent-a-cops put into government uniforms.

Of course people don't seem to want real protection, which is part of the reason we don't have body x-rays in airports. People don't want a silhoutte of them seen with out their cloths.

"Water landing safety instructions at seven hundred miles an hour, mmm hmm. Illusion of safety." -Tyler Durden, Fight Club

If airports had been routinely x-raying people for the last twenty years or so, Martin Focazio would probably glow in the dark!

There are health issues with repeated x-rays. Although they may not be in the majority, there are people who travel a LOT.

Sue

I wonder if T.S.A. employee's have to have their sense of humor and their common sense surgically removed as a condition of employment?

While I have to admit that some of them are jerks, it would be a rather stressful job, knowing that it is possible that any one of the jillion flyers that they have to screen every day could be a bad guy hoping to blow up the world, or a TSA employee testing how well you are doing your job. What amazes me the most is how hung up they get on underwire bras. A well endowed woman (my wife in this case) sets off the alarm thanks to the wire in her bra, they go nutso, making her stand on the little footprints, arms spread wide, while two or three of them try to see if it is really wire, or maybe a couple of guns, without actually grabbing a handful. Flying naked will come to pass, mark my words...

If they routinely x-rayed people at airports I'd probably have been sterile before I was ten.

But the fact remains that most of the reasons people oppose increased security are far from concrete and the security we do get is more show then substance.

I'm not an expert, so I'm unclear on the safety and efficacy of the body x-rays. But magnetometers and luggage x-rays are decades old. The strategies of terrorists and other criminals have evolved beyond the security they provide.

But the serious issue is that security at airports are a joke; we need effective security, not bandaids and not smoke and mirrors.

The other issue is courtesy and respect. People get angry at airports, they take it out on their fellow passengers and on security and flight personnel. I think part of that is the feeling that the security is just a waste of their time. There are other factors, including, I feel, a general malase in how people interact with each other in society today as well as frustration with how they are treated by the airlines. But how they are treated at security and to little purpose is a large part I think.

I think he might be talking about compton scatter imaging. I don't know too much about it, or the long term health effects of continuous use, but these machines let screeners see everything. And that means everything. From what I've heard, these machines are almost too effective, not only showing what a person is carrying and a silhouette, but intimate details about your anatomy. The machine is basically a strip search without them having to ask you to take your clothes off.

"...intimate details about your anatomy..."

The few images I saw on TV when these things first came out are far from intimate. And personally, one of the things I worry least about in life is someone, who I have never seen before, and will probably never see again, getting a x-ray view of my old worn out bod. If that is what turns him/her on, so be it. Better than the guy in the next seat whipping out a "plastic" knife in flight and sending us all someplace we do not want to go...

Not to mention, people are concerned about being seen naked at the airport but not concerned about the suspension of habeas corpus or warrantless searches. I think there was a disproportionate outcry about the possiblity the machines would show a persons privates then about the Patriot Act or the President's domestic spy program.

"...habeas corpus or warrantless searches..."

Not sure that applies here. No one is making anyone get on those airplanes. If you want to get on one, follow the rules...

The majority of the hubbub was becuase of the number of very vocal prudes. Or people with serious inferiority issues they need to work out. But there is quite a bit of case law to support air port searching- this is painless, the radiation levels are less than half an hour on the beach, it's quick, and it's done to everyone. If I play by the rules, I want to be sure that everyone else is to.

No, the suspension of habeas corpus was happening to terror suspects, even United States citizens. IF you arrest a citizen of the United States they are accorded a fair and speedy trial and the right of habeas corpus, or show us the body. It doesn't matter what crime they are accused of the same rules apply, as set down in the Constitution. And the Patriot Act seems pretty close to warrantless searches. The President's domestic spying program definately applies as warrantless since they aren't even using FISA warrants. Which I feel are already a little scary since they involve secret courts issuing secret warrants. But I'm digressing onto the thin ice of politics (only to clarify what I meant though).

I haven't read the case law as it applies to airport searches, but I think this is an administrative search (?) which means they are searching everyone or selecting people at random to be searched (correct me if that isn't the right category). Its similar to a road block where they search every vehicle such as in pursuit of a fugitive or at a border crossing. They can only be challenged if they are specifically targeting individuals without truely being random and without probable cause.

I don't have an issue with people being scanned at airports, this is an improvement I feel would actually improve security in a meaningful way. I just have to shake my head in wonder at the disparity in reactions people have about their privacy on some issues and not others and their security on some issues and not others. Refering of course to the few prudes who made enough fuss to completely over shadow the security and cost issues with questions of voyeurism.