Posted on 11/17/2010 5:59:53 AM PST by shortstop
Who do you let see you naked?
Seriously.
Of all the people on earth, which ones do you feel comfortable taking your clothes off in front of?
Odds are, the list is pretty short. Odds are, it's about to get a whole lot longer.
Your spouse, your doctor, and now Homeland Security. In the name of keeping you safe, Uncle Sam needs to see your nasty bits.
That's the bottom line on a new airport security plan that is going to be hard on both budgets and the Fourth Amendment.
Here's the background. The government has developed a scanning device that you walk into and which, by bouncing radio waves off you, is able to take a picture of your body through your clothes. It is black and white, and a bit grainy, but it is an intimately and anatomically correct.
You walk into the device, it scans you, and down the hall on a video monitor, there you stand in all your glory.The government's claim is that this is necessary in order to make sure that you don't smuggle a weapon onto a plane. If there's a gun in your waistband – or an intimate piercing somewhere – it will appear on the scan.
Which would be fine.Except that this intrusion is unnecessary, expensive and a dramatic incursion by the federal government into the most intimate aspects of your being. You always thought that your body was yours. Now you have to share it with whoever is the TSA scanner on duty.
And that is wrong.
It is immoral. Plus it is an unconstitutional and unwarranted abridgment of your rights by the government. The Constitution says that we are to be “secure in (our) persons” against “unreasonable search and seizure.” Asking law-abiding citizens who want to fly in an airplane to pose for the government's x-ray-vision machine is an unreasonable search which does anything but leave us secure in our persons.
Airport officials poo-poo any complaints on the grounds that the scanner will obscure faces, and that the people watching the naked-picture monitors will be down the hall, hidden in a room. How either of those facts does anything to minimize the personal violation inherent in this virtual strip search I have no idea.
For many people, this intrusion is intolerable.
Though the concept may not be familiar to Homeland Security, many people believe in modesty. As a matter of tradition, values or faith, many people believe that their bodies are private and even sacred. They believe it is morally wrong and inappropriate for most others to see their bodies.
Don't laugh. It shows your arrogance and intolerance.
For many observant Christians, Jews and Muslims, modesty is an article of faith. Revealing the body to someone other than your spouse is believed to be a sin, a violation of the person's dignity and an affront to God.
It's clear the planners at Homeland Security don't feel that way, but it's also clear that tens of millions of Americans do. The question is, does the government – in the name of an unnecessary security technology – have the right to impose its amorality on a person's morality?
If a young couple decide not to be intimate until they are married, they can have the satisfaction of knowing on their wedding night that no one has seen the beauty of their naked bodies except their beloved, and the federal government.
How can the government say out of one side of its mouth that women's religious head coverings must be allowed but so, too, must screenings that will strip that same woman naked. If her modesty is respected in one instance, why not the other?
Can it be true that the federal government wants your grandmother to parade through a machine that will do her the indignity of revealing her naked body to a stranger?
Can it be true that the federal government intends to do the same thing with your 7 year-old daughter and your 6-year-old son?
What exactly does it do to the psyche of a man or woman to be forced to expose themselves? Is there no potential for trauma as a shy young woman is forced to raise her arms as the machine circles her and produces an image of her most intimate and private parts? Can no one at the government see that, for some people, this is a type of sexual violation?
And no disrespect to TSA employees, but cops and doctors – both of whom are held to a higher professional standard than airport screeners – are routinely arrested for being voyeurs or pedophiles or sexual predators. In the age of Internet porn, do you really want to put in thousands of screens across the country and have low-paid folks at the bottom of the law-enforcement ladder stare at naked people all day?
This is intolerable.
And it is unnecessary.
The airport is already the most safe and secure place in our society. Since Sept. 12, 2001, American airports have been stunningly thorough in their screening efforts. There are magnets and puffers and hand-held scanners and even the occasional pat down. And they work. We have had no problems on domestically originating flights since the day they flew the planes into the buildings.
There is no need for this extra level of security. There is no need to waste the fortune each one of these machines costs.
There is no need to tell any American – man or woman – that the government has the right to strip them.
Of their rights, their clothes, or their dignity.
These machines are wrong. They don't belong in American airports.
And people who would support them don't belong in American government.
Well; that's one more place I'll scratch off my vacation list.
Phooey on the BS idea; but a TINFOIL stencil WOULD send a message!
Next time, please provide more data in your replies. We can’t be expected to make heads or tails of them in such brief postings.
HELL yes!
We "CHOOSE" to kill ONE MILLION of our own citizens every year for CONVENIENCE sake!
What's a few in a plane every now and then!
“Next time, please provide more data in your replies. We can’t be expected to make heads or tails of them in such brief postings.”
Which one?
Nice manners! I smell a lib! Tinfoil? um not nearly as fun.
Israel has as many flights in and out in a year as Hartsfield does in 6 hours. The Israelis couldn't do what they do in a country the size of the USA.
Thank the lawyers and the politicians. This is the one thing the French do that I admire. You can do whatever you feel like doing as long as you are willing to face the consequences.
Absolutely. They don't have the resources the size of the USA.
However, the USA could do what Israel does, because they DO have resources the size of the USA.
As usual, Lonsberry’s views are the closest to my own. I’ve just listened to a video of Hannity and Malkin discussing this; it’s sickening to hear that they (especially Malkin) will not take a stand against this on principle. Malkin even says outright that the privacy concerns don’t matter so much to her: “It’s not the privacy concerns that bother me so much Sean as it is the fundamental issues of trust and competence...The question here domestically comes down to, do you trust the TSA to administer this policy in an effective manner?”
The Nazis administered their policies in an effective manner, Michelle. :(
Why do you refer to the TSA staff as morons? They are doing what their job required, and may not like it anymore than you.
Second, the issue of children going thru these scans reminds me of Vietnam when kids were used routinely to pack explosives. We weren’t looking for box cutters before September 11th. The terrorists don’t care about life...yours or theirs.
Third, regarding dignity. Do these observant or shy people have a problem with x-rays, cat scans, etc?
Are perverts attracted to the medical profession? Maybe. So should we get rid of doctors? Nurses?
I have yet to hear any proposed solution from those who are so upset about the scanners.
>Why do you refer to the TSA staff as morons?
Um, I said “The Rebellion starts here.”
Somebody else has your junk :-)
Yes you have. There have been several references to the Israeli technique of professional profiling and seriously interviewing those people who fit the profile of potential hijackers. If we weren't so pitifully politically correct and pussified in this country, that's what we would do. No, we'll continue to x-ray and physically molest nuns and grandmothers.
I’ll tell them i’ll strip naked and they can observe from a distance and if they toubh me i’ll kick the shit out of them!
I’ll tell them i’ll strip naked and they can observe from a distance and if they touch me i’ll kick the shit out of them!
I...disagree.
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