gaggggggg…

You know what I’d do if I were a terrorist?

I’d buy a first class ticket (or join an airline’s Gold Membership program, or whatever) and bypass all of this.

*though there is a little part of me that thinks people would have a much healthier attitude to sexuality and the human body, especially women’s ‘beauty myth’ issues, if there were more opportunities to see a good cross-section of humanity in the nude.  this is still totally invasive and meaningless and potentially oppressive, but still, i did have that thought.*

Wouldn’t it be easier and less expensive to just outlaw all clothing? It will also help with the whole global warming thing.

I don’t want to sound like a TSA shill (and trust me, I find plenty of things to complain about when I travel, which has been quite often due to my job), but they’ve specifically addressed that particular image in this post on their blog.  The image you’re using in this post is a raw backscatter image that shows the limits of the technology, but the TSA employs a privacy algorithm to significantly alter the image (by the end, it looks like a black and white drawing of an outline of a body).

From the images they’ve posted on their site, I don’t think it addresses the latter point about preoperative transgender people, which is definitely a concern. 

Also, (again, according to the TSA, so take it with however big a grain of salt you feel necessary), the images are viewed at a remote site, so the person pulling you out of line (even if creepy), is not the one who can see the images. 

As I said, I fly a lot, and have had plenty of problems with screening officers - on one trip, after i got pulled out of line on every leg of a trip for “special screening”, one officer let it slip that I kept getting picked on because I was traveling solo, and it was just too annoying to have to check families with kids.  So that’s their definition of “random”.  Also, the x-ray people have apparently never seen chargers for apple computers.  Because my bag gets “special searched” by hand every time I go through security because they can’t figure out what the image is on their screen.  I know to get there extra early if I’m flying with my computer.  I also have extended conversations with myself while packing about where to pack my dirty underwear.

sam, if the TSA is telling the truth, then they would have no ability whatsoever to preserve images for evidentiary or security reasons. Do you really think that’s how they have it set up?

As for ‘remote locations’, that’s almost worse. The NYT did a story a while ago on the UK’s ubiquitous cameras, and noted that the camera-control rooms were plastered with what we would call downblouse photos. Seems that sitting around watching cameras all day when nothing happens 99.9% of the time is pretty dull, so the lads amuse themselves taking pictures of hotties who have no ability to evade the cameras.

We already have reports of government employees breaking into celebrities’ tax records, which are supposed to be super duper confidential. Think they won’t find a way to spread around “here’s a backscatter shot of Jenna Jameson”? Or of a regular old passenger who they think is hot?

mythago:  I completely agree.  I don’t actually like these things at all.  I was just trying to point out that for two very specific things - the image at the top of the post and the concern that creepy agents were going to pull “buxom” women out of line to leer at their backscatter images, don’t appear to be the way the system is being set up.  As one commenter on the TSA blog points out (and which I didn’t read until after I posed), all of this stuff about not saving images is only applicable for the test phase.  They haven’t set up standards yet for when this thing gets to full implementation.

That being said, If given a choice between this thing and a pat-down by a same-gender security officer?  I’d pick the pat-down every time.  Heck, even in the much “less” troubling privacy algorithm’d images, you can still clearly see the outline of a man’s genitalia, which specifically means that the problem cited with regard to transgender folks is not addressed at all.  This thing is just way too big brother for me, and I support the ACLU’s case.  I just think that if we focus on images and fears that are not actually based on what the TSA is doing, it’s easier for the TSA to sweep all complaints (even the legitimate ones) away under the rubric of people not knowing what they’re talking about.

Some years ago, Playboy ran an absolutely astonishing article by a U.S. Customs agent talking about practices on the job. He admitted that they would randomly search people’s luggage if they were bored or if it was a good-looking woman.

No way do I want one of those $12-an-hour motherfuckers using high-tech devices to leer at my sister or daughter.

This reminds me of a slightly off-color episode at Los Angeles’ Long Beach Airport. This airport is small and less crowded than LAX, so maybe the security guard was bored. He and the woman he was checking through security enacted a kind of burlesque strip ritual, the woman taking off a summer jacket, then a thin cardigan (revealing a skimpy top), then a belt that he claimed was still setting off security. She was young, good-looking and rather expensively dressed, so she may have been playing up, but I imagine one of the perks of the tedious job of being a TSA officer is “getting women to take off their clothes.”

Nonetheless, being asked to take off most of your layers of clothes in succession might be more intrusive than your naked image digitally rendered in gray popping up on a screen where only the TSA officers can see it.

So do people have any ability at all to refuse to be scanned like this, or is that automatic evidence that you’re a terrorist?  Because, frankly, I would absolutely refuse to get into the scanner (but since I never travel on business, only for leisure, I have some power to say, “Fuck you all, then I won’t go.”)

I’d also be concerned about screeners using these things to mock passengers, especially people who are very overweight.

This bothers me a lot. You’re entirely right about not only the implications for trans people, but the implications for those of us who have medical devices. I have a peritoneal dialysis catheter implanted in my abdomen. It is not something I’m ashamed of; it is what it is. Nonetheless, I am not given to taking it out in public and showing it around, and this amounts to the exact same thing. Leave me my privacy and don’t force me to expose my catheter to public view. What’s worse is that somebody at the TSA is going to see it held tight against my abdomen by my PD belt, which is basically another, special piece of underwear, and is going to assume that it’s some sort of bomb. Then I may indeed be forced to take it out in public, or, worse, be taken back into a back room to show my catheter and exit site, and be forced to endure unsanitary hands unwrapping my exit site and poking at my wound.