Naked Body Scanners

[royal_archer]

I’m trying to figure it out too.
Is it wrong to have a Doctor give a woman a pelvic exam, or a man a bimanual exam?

You have a relationship with your doctor and the exams are directly related to your health. You can choose your doctor and halt an exam if you do not feel comfortable.

 

[royal_archer]

It is where I found employment after many months of being out of work.
Again, I have not been scanned on my way overseas; only when I return for my yearly vacation=part of the employment package.
As stated earlier, all that shows is a silhouette of the body, no private parts.
There is greater exposure with a one piece swimsuit. .

I’d call that a somewhat unique circumstance.

I don’t wear skimpy swim suits

I am used to electronic scans used at court houses and other public places. For a short period after 9/11, people getting on public transportation (buses) were randomly scanned. There is a city on the Greyhound route through TX that routinely checks the luggage of those on board in an effort to combat drug trafficking.

How long before they start randomly searching people on the streets?

 

[royal_archer]

Thanks Ike. Paranoia can be like that. It’s not like I’m a soldier on combat duty. Yes, soldiers and sailors going TDY have been on the same flights as I. I went home twice this year=once for vacation, and before that for my brother’s funeral.
The scanners are not to be feared.

But children are to be feared? I think the real paranoia is on the part of those who insist on these extreme measures.

 

[DebChris]

I’d call that a somewhat unique circumstance.

I don’t wear skimpy swim suits

How long before they start randomly searching people on the streets?

I don’t wear skimpy swim suits either. Notice my post said one piece, not skimpy.
The scans only last a few seconds. Again, they do not reveal anything that would be embarrassing.

TV shows would say there have been targeted roundups in high crime areas for years that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of an individual. A traveler can be caught when the cheap hotel where he is staying is raided. The big question after 9/11 was exactly what you asked. What is the balance between freedom and security? I’m more concerned about inappropriate pat downs than I am about scanners. A drug sniffing dog is more intrusive than the scanner. Yes, the military used drug sniffing dogs in barracks back in the 1970’s and 80’s. I can’t speak about more recent years. There are intercity schools that have students walk through metal detectors and/or undergo electronic wands as they enter. Lock down procedures are in place to protect students in an emergency. While I might not choose the Ritz-Carlton, I am selective about the hotels where I stay.

 

[Romanova]

I don’t wear skimpy swim suits either. Notice my post said one piece, not skimpy.
The scans only last a few seconds. Again, they do not reveal anything that would be embarrassing.

TV shows would say there have been targeted roundups in high crime areas for years that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of an individual. A traveler can be caught when the cheap hotel where he is staying is raided. The big question after 9/11 was exactly what you asked. What is the balance between freedom and security? I’m more concerned about inappropriate pat downs than I am about scanners. A drug sniffing dog is more intrusive than the scanner. Yes, the military used drug sniffing dogs in barracks back in the 1970’s and 80’s. I can’t speak about more recent years. There are intercity schools that have students walk through metal detectors and/or undergo electronic wands as they enter. Lock down procedures are in place to protect students in an emergency. While I might not choose the Ritz-Carlton, I am selective about the hotels where I stay.

How is a drug sniffing dog more intrusive than a full-body scanner? The test of whether technology is a search for 4th Amendment purposes has generally been whether that technology does something a law enforcement officer could do without a warrant. E.g. a GPS tracking device attached to a car or package is OK, because the police could follow the car without a warrant – it just saves the police time to attach a GPS tracker. But a heat-imaging sensor detecting extreme energy usage and warmth in a house (for purposes of finding out whether someone was growing marijuana w/heat lamps) was found not to be OK, because it gave the police a look “inside” the house that they wouldn’t have been able to get by themselves, unless they got a search warrant.

Courts have repeatedly held that a drug-sniffing dog is not a search for the purposes of the 4th Amendment – it just sniffs the ambient air, something that humans could do but dogs do better, and people cannot have a privacy interest in the ambient air.

A scanner that essentially looks under people’s clothes, IMO, is different than a dog sniffing the ambient air, because people do have a privacy interest in remaining clothed. Whether that difference will prove to make a difference in the court challenges to the policy remains to be seen, but I don’t think it can be dismissed lightly.

 

[mesurman]

However uncomfortable it is, this is where we have come as a nation in order
to fight terrorism, however if profiling were used we wouldn’t necessarily have three
year old girls being patted down or Nuns or Priests. Go through the scanner and be
done with it. It’s all about safety. Get over it! Until a better way is found to prevent
shoe bombers and underwear bombers this is the way it is.

 

[karbear]

I’m trying to figure it out too.
Is it wrong to have a Doctor give a woman a pelvic exam, or a man a bimanual exam?
Is it wrong for an artist to paint a nude?

“the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity.”
"

That was a thoughtful post. The test, then, is wheather or not we are preserving the integrity of a person, of people in general. Maybe it does become a moral issue when we make laws that deliberately go against that integrity.

Everyone here seems to agree that these scans do assault the integrity of a nun or a child . But, does one have to be a nun or child to be chaste, or have dignity?

 

[karbear]

However uncomfortable it is, this is where we have come as a nation in order
to fight terrorism, however if profiling were used we wouldn’t necessarily have three
year old girls being patted down or Nuns or Priests. Go through the scanner and be
done with it. It’s all about safety. Get over it! Until a better way is found to prevent
shoe bombers and underwear bombers this is the way it is.

I don’t know if this will make us safer or not. I guess I was considering the question in isolation because ends don’t justify means.

 

[karbear]

How is a drug sniffing dog more intrusive than a full-body scanner? The test of whether technology is a search for 4th Amendment purposes has generally been whether that technology does something a law enforcement officer could do without a warrant. E.g. a GPS tracking device attached to a car or package is OK, because the police could follow the car without a warrant – it just saves the police time to attach a GPS tracker. But a heat-imaging sensor detecting extreme energy usage and warmth in a house (for purposes of finding out whether someone was growing marijuana w/heat lamps) was found not to be OK, because it gave the police a look “inside” the house that they wouldn’t have been able to get by themselves, unless they got a search warrant.
QUOTE]

Wow, that’s interesting. It seems that, historically, our culture has found that an unwarrented intrusion into the privacy of a person’s home cannot be justified by the probability that it might prevent crime and make us safer.

 

[Miriam1947]

However uncomfortable it is, this is where we have come as a nation in order
to fight terrorism, however if profiling were used we wouldn’t necessarily have three
year old girls being patted down or Nuns or Priests. Go through the scanner and be
done with it. It’s all about safety. Get over it! Until a better way is found to prevent
shoe bombers and underwear bombers this is the way it is.

This is not all about safety. It is about several things. It is about political correctness. It is about looking as if we are doing something proactive when in fact we are trying to make sure that the last terrorist who tried something cannot do the same thing again. They have already moved on to something else that we don’t yet know about. This is also about money.
Michael Cherthoff who was the head of Homeland Security is making millions of $$$$ with these scanners.

Read this article. And yes I know that Israel only has 10 million in population and we have 300 million. The fact remains that 300 million people are not going to the airport today. We can do this the right way. If we want to.

thestar.com/news/world/article/744199—israelification-high-security-little-bother

While North America’s airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.

“It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He’s worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

 

[EvelynEVF]

I won’t fly until all this is figured out. I’m a rape survivor, and cannot stand the thought of either option. What concerns me more, though, is the possibility that I would be expected to restrain my young daughter to allow a stranger to touch her in places she knows nobody but the doctor or her mom should be touching. I couldn’t betray her trust like that.

For those who haven’t read this tip yet–when your boarding passes are printed, they are coded as to whether you have been randomly selected to the more intrusive search. You can ask them to deselect your children. I don’t know whether it would be viewed as suspicious to ask to be deselected as an adult, but I expect so.

 

[runningdude]

Thank you for the replies. They have helped me make the decision. Its a two day trip one way and my car has over 200K miles and probably won’t make it. I can’t get a refund. I’m a poor student. I definitely don’t have the time. But…

I do feel that I owe it to my future children not to give in.

I am interested still in the morality of this thing. I know that new situations in modern life soetimes outpace official answers, but if anyone has any official moral guidance about this I am very interested. I guess if it were just about my convenience, I would probably give in. I’m good at dealing with people and could probably get them to give me a morally neutral pat-down. But I don’t know if that is right (in and of itself…other condsiderations aside).

Good for you in standing up for yourself. I’d recommend calling the airline anyway to get a refund. If refused, keep asking to speak to a supervisor. At some point you might succeed, or if nothing else, multiple layers of the airline bureaucracy will be informed of your dissatisfaction!

 

[royal_archer]

I don’t wear skimpy swim suits either. Notice my post said one piece, not skimpy.
The scans only last a few seconds. Again, they do not reveal anything that would be embarrassing.

TV shows would say there have been targeted roundups in high crime areas for years that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of an individual. A traveler can be caught when the cheap hotel where he is staying is raided. The big question after 9/11 was exactly what you asked. What is the balance between freedom and security? I’m more concerned about inappropriate pat downs than I am about scanners. A drug sniffing dog is more intrusive than the scanner. Yes, the military used drug sniffing dogs in barracks back in the 1970’s and 80’s. I can’t speak about more recent years. There are intercity schools that have students walk through metal detectors and/or undergo electronic wands as they enter. Lock down procedures are in place to protect students in an emergency. While I might not choose the Ritz-Carlton, I am selective about the hotels where I stay.

Revealing anything embarasing is a personal criteria. There are people who routinely expose themselves to large audiences who do not find it embarasing. Many of us have a higher standard as to what we are willing to expose comfortably and an even higher standard to what level of exposure we are willing to subject the loved ones in our lives to.

By the way, violation of rights in one circumstance to not justify other violations.

 

[royal_archer]

However uncomfortable it is, this is where we have come as a nation in order to fight terrorism, however if profiling were used we wouldn’t necessarily have three year old girls being patted down or Nuns or Priests. Go through the scanner and be done with it. It’s all about safety. Get over it! Until a better way is found to prevent
shoe bombers and underwear bombers this is the way it is.

Terrorism is a legitimate problem but it does not warrant a blank check to take away freedom. you could just as easily argue that declaring the US a muslim country and enforcing sharia law would also end the risk of terrorism (probably with more direct effect).

Our society has a problem of using a problem to justify a response with out taking the time to understand if that response actually helps the problem.

It is not all about safety. Many Americans have given their lives, and limbs for freedom. We, after all, the land of the FREE and the home of the BRAVE. Not the land of the SAFE and the home of the COWARDLY.

If you are so willing to forgo human rights, A more effective way to protect the country would be to arm the flight crew and passengers that have passed security checks. Or we just do a background check on everyone before they fly. Or the SS randomly pulls people in and interrogates them with out recourse untill they reveal potential threats.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

If you are so willing to forgo human rights, **A more effective way to protect the country would be to arm the flight crew and passengers that have passed security checks. **Or we just do a background check on everyone before they fly. Or the SS randomly pulls people in and interrogates them with out recourse untill they reveal potential threats.

The Wild West at 30,000 feet? You do know that bullets pierce the walls of aircraft, leading to sudden and catastrophic depressurization, yes? So you’re going to give a handgun to civilian passengers who have passed a “security check” on the chance that - air turbulence notwithstanding - they can effectively shoot a terrorist without hitting any innocent passengers? Imagine a world where large bottles of shampoo are forbidden on aircraft, but 20 or 30 handguns are just fine. Beyond belief.

 

[royal_archer]

The Wild West at 30,000 feet? You do know that bullets pierce the walls of aircraft, leading to sudden and catastrophic depressurization, yes?

That is a completely paranoid myth. Even with several .45 holes, the worse case scenario would be that the O2 masks would come down.

So you’re going to give a handgun to civilian passengers who have passed a “security check” on the chance that - air turbulence notwithstanding - they can effectively shoot a terrorist without hitting any innocent passengers? Imagine a world where large bottles of shampoo are forbidden on aircraft, but 20 or 30 handguns are just fine. Beyond belief.

What is it with the obsession with banning shampoo?

If you are willing to trust an 18 year old kid who does not have a security clearance with tanks, missiles, and machine guns, why not trust someone who does have a clearance?

 

[DebChris]

Revealing anything embarasing is a personal criteria. There are people who routinely expose themselves to large audiences who do not find it embarasing. Many of us have a higher standard as to what we are willing to expose comfortably and an even higher standard to what level of exposure we are willing to subject the loved ones in our lives to.

By the way, violation of rights in one circumstance to not justify other violations.

Put this another way. I find the scanner much less intrusive than other methods that have already been historically accepted. It shows only a silhouette (like a chalk drawing of a body on the pavement). You can not tell how well endowed a person may be. You are not nuzzled as by an overly “friendly” dog.
Yes, I have been through different security systems simply by virtue of traveling and entering government buildings. The last time I was in the courthouse, the security people checked liquids by having the person bringing water or juice into the building drink it in from of them. I thought that was smart.
Again, it is only in America that I have been requested to remove my shoes before boarding a flight. It is only on flights home that I have gone through the scanner.
I see nothing that justifies the proposed pat-downs.

 

[royal_archer]

As a test of reasonableness, one must consider what is acceptable in private enterprise. How would you feel if employers forced young female employees to be xrayed prior to entering work and if they refused, did a full hands on head to toe search? After all should 100 people gathered together in an office have any less safety than 100 people in an airplane? What about a movie theater? Or, a restaurant?

The reason this has taken hold with the air line industry is because many people have few options with air travel. For some it is fly or loose your job and others it is the only way to see relatives. So while air travel is technically voluntary failure to use it can come at great personal consequence. Because of this preasure the TSA has been able to engage in behavior that is otherwise not tollerable and recognized as not warranted.

 

[karbear]

Put this another way. I find the scanner much less intrusive than other methods that have already been historically accepted. It shows only a silhouette (like a chalk drawing of a body on the pavement). You can not tell how well endowed a person may be.

I just did some research. This information is false. I was giving them too much benefit of the doubt. I don’t know which scanner you went through or what they told you but look at the official pictures, the ones that are on the news. I just watched a video of a small child a the airport scanner sreaming and crying and begging them to stop touching her, but they were relentless. I watched a video of Judge Napolitano describing how his friend (who couldn’t go through the scan for medical reasons) had his pants pulled down in public. They dont even take people into rooms, but publicly humiliate them. They are not just patting down above the clothes. Some people are getting felt up inside their pants. I just watched a video of a very believable woman describing how the agent reached inside her pants and used her hands to fell from the top of the back all the way down and forward. She was in so much shock that she couldn’t speak. One witness in a metal detector line described how all the young, good looking woman were being directed and randomly chosen for the scanner line. I really didn’t think it was that bad when I started this thread.

 

[royal_archer]

I really didn’t think it was that bad when I started this thread.

I doubt that those instances that were caught on tape were the worst incidents.

And of course things will probably not get better on their own.