New airport scanners.

[Jrecee]

@#$@#$ rediculous. That's my opinion. What will you do? Radioactive nut imaging? Groin message? Or just drive everywhere?

[dedalusdedalus]

I don't see what the privacy issue is. Have you seen the images that these things produce? It looks like something between a Smurf and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Anyone caught jacking off to that shit should be dragged out into the streets and shot.

Think about it as getting all the security that strip searches would yield, with 1/100th of the intrusiveness. Dunno about you, but I like that cost-benefit calculus.

[GSZX1337]

Hilariously relevant.

[J T]

Yeah, I'm travelling home for Thanksgiving and not looking forward to the airport at all.

Do I want cancer or hand rape? I guess hand rape. I don't know, the cancer's not a for sure thing? Maybe cancer? Can't we just go back to feeling unsure that there might possibly be a terrorist once every few years?

[tbeeghly]

I don't see what the privacy issue is. Have you seen the images that these things produce? It looks like something between a Smurf and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Are you trolling here or what?

http://www.lakedouglasranch.com/blog/wp ... 6/xray.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6WSTYpSuKf0/T ... canner.jpg

[Bikeage]

Do I want cancer or hand rape? I guess hand rape. I don't know, the cancer's not a for sure thing? Maybe cancer? Can't we just go back to feeling unsure that there might possibly be a terrorist once every few years?

Don't worry about body scanners giving you cancer, all the exposure to cell phone signals and Wi-Fi have probably given it to us already.

[Ivo]

I'm just waiting for some terrorist to be caught with explosives hidden in their asses or other orifices... Then maybe every passenger can choose to have even more hand rape (or something else)?


EDIT: thought I should add a couple more points. The goal of the terrorists seems to be achieved if the population is scared enough about it to subject themselves to large inconveniences like these (and still, they will probably think of some other way to sneak explosives on-board).

http://xkcd.com/651/
No laptops for anyone?

Also, I would be interested in letting people choose. Either by being polled about it, or even as far as having a couple of identical flights for each destination during a trial period. On one, you have the extra security measures and on the other you don't (this would be a mess to do in some airports, but in some you get checked just before the respective boarding gate so it would be possible). I also feel like going on a rant about actually big risks like cars or even smoking, and how negligible the terrorist risk actually is when people driving around drunk, or way over the speed they should in some region for example (I don't know in the U.S., but I can tell you for sure how extremely worse it is in Portugal compared to flight risks). Now there I would be more than willing to lose some freedom for added safety, I only wish they had more radars and officers keeping drivers in check.

Finally, the radiation exposure is reportedly small (and I'm trusting that this part was actually checked by serious scientists instead of a lobby to get these machines paid for by the travellers). It is going to be smaller than the exposure from simply flying at high altitudes of course. However, even small exposures has a non-zero chance of giving you problems... I'm not convinced the cumulative risk accrued over years of being scanned would be a smaller percentage against the cumulative risk-loss of the same several years of being "safer" against a very specific method of sneaking explosives in! How likely are you to be in a targeted flight in the first place, and them compound that with being one with a specific method that only such a system would have caught if it is in place.

Ivo.

[dedalusdedalus]

I don't see what the privacy issue is. Have you seen the images that these things produce? It looks like something between a Smurf and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Are you trolling here or what?

http://www.lakedouglasranch.com/blog/wp ... 6/xray.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6WSTYpSuKf0/T ... canner.jpg

I'm not trolling. That's a really low-res image of someone's junk--I'd even venture to say it's 100% safe for work. It's probably no more indecent than having someone wear a really tight Speedo.

[AppleQueso]

Well if someone wants to masturbate to a werid, glowy-white bald version of me naked then uh... horray for them I guess.

I've actually never been on a plane, go figure.

[Hobie-wan]

EDIT: thought I should add a couple more points. The goal of the terrorists seems to be achieved if the population is scared enough about it to subject themselves to large inconveniences like these (and still, they will probably think of some other way to sneak explosives on-board).

Yup. It's all a farcical theater that doesn't really help. People are all scared which is what terrorists want and the bullshit that goes on at the airport doesn't really help all that much. Back when I had to fly a lot for an old job post 9/11 but way before the absolute idiocy that goes on now I had some screwdriver tips taken from me one flight. I had used the bag to go to Quake Con and had taken a cheap screwdriver along with some removable bits that came in one of those little plastic deals that holds 6 flat in a row. Apparently I forgot to take one set out of the bag afterwards.

In retrospect I suppose they might have looked like I had packed some .22 bullets or something. Even though trying to hold a bit and stab someone or something would have been ridiculous, then still confiscated them from me. They were cheapies, but it was still unnecessary. About a year later I flew out on business and back again, only to realize that I had left nail clippers with a little crappy fold out blade in my back pack. That made it through x-ray screenings and I carried it on both flights.

Also, pilots unions are very unhappy too. http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/major-pilo ... d=12100247