The New Fear of Flying

There's been a lot of uproar over the new TSA security measures now in place at airports across the country.  Your choice is now between a full body scan that essentially gives you an electronic strip search or a more intensive enhanced patdown search, where not even children are spared from being groped and touched in places that would have the inspector arrested anywhere else.  We haven't had to travel yet, so I'm morbidly curious how this will play out when we do during Christmas break.  Yesterday was supposed to be the big protest day where travelers would opt out of the full body scanners and go for the patdown.  However, it sounds like it was mostly much ado about nothing and it doesn't look like there was much of an impact.

Some thoughts:

*  Did they really have to make you hold your hands up like a common criminal when being scanned?  Really?  

*  Michael Chertoff, using his position as former Homeland Security Secretary to strongly advocate for the body scanners, has a consulting company which includes as a client Rapiscan Systems, the company producing the scanners.  How is this not an immense conflict of interest?

*  I don't understand why pilots had to go through all of this (they've since stopped scanning them).  If they wanted to hijack or crash the plane or crash, they could, well, just use the controls...

*  If a terrorist wanted to create havoc, there are now much easier targets than an airport, especially now that the cockpits are locked and informed passengers would never let a hijacker take control of a plane.

*  How do we tell our kids that it's not right for anyone to touch you in those special places unless they have a uniform on?

*  I wouldn't have as big of an issue with this if the the body scanners actually worked (at least if their purpose is to catch terrorists).  Whether it's stories like the TSA missing 12 inch razor blades on Adam Savage or actual terrorists already demonstrating that they've learned to smuggle bombs in various bodily cavities, there are easy ways to get past the them if you wanted to.

*  This is why I think that statistics (along with financial planning) needs to be a mandated class for everyone.  By any statistical measure, whether you are looking at total number of deaths, normalizing for number of deaths per traveler or number of deaths per mile traveled, driving is orders of magnitude more lethal than flying.  So why isn't there even a fraction of the resources going into stopping drunk driving?  How about any of the other leading causes of death (which include tobacco, diet, alcohol, and firearms)?  Even worse, it appears that the amount of radiation dosed by the bodily scanners, although small, will actually result in more deaths than from the terrorist activities it's supposed to prevent.  This is not a good trade off.

*  What are we so scared of?  Why don't we just realize that terrorism is such a small risk that we stop being so afraid of it?  Whatever happened to being the Home of the Brave?  Surely continuing to live our lives is the best victory against terrorists.

Sadly, it looks like most people will just go through the body scanners without complaint because it's easy or "it's the law".  Despite how comfortable or easy it is, it's still a strip search.  Still, I suppose it's easier to just do as you're told.  To be fair, if given the choice this Christmas, I'll likely submit as well...sigh...