Your Pee-Pee is Safe with the TSA

Far be it from me of accusing the U.S. government of examining your genitals — or your children’s tiny privates — before you board an airplane for Disney World.

As a matter of fact — from a tremendously pragmatic point-of-view — I really do believe that all laws and constitutional rights pertaining to privacy should be suspended if the US government is to keep you safe. After all, the United States has forcefully created determined enemies who will attempt to kill you and your children, in revenge, for the next 50 years or so.

I mean, we killed their kids, right? Tit for tat and all that….

TSA Promises Privacy For Subjects Of Clothing-Penetrating Scans

The millimeter wave scanning system being tested at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport can see through clothing to detect weapons, explosives, and other objects.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration today promised to protect air travelers’ privacy as TSA personnel peer through their clothes.

The TSA has begun testing a millimeter wave scanning system at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport as an alternative to pat-downs performed by security personnel when secondary screening is deemed appropriate. The technology can see through clothing to detect weapons, explosives, and other objects.

The TSA said that energy emitted by millimeter wave technology — 10,000 times less than a cell phone — is safe, that the technology is intended to keep passengers safe, and that it will keep the potentially embarrassing images safe.

So, the other day, I went to meet with this guy who sells gold (in coin form) to rich clients in La Jolla, California. He sells the gold coins, minted before 1930 — thinking it’s safe, because then they can call themselves “collectors” and their gold won’t be seized by Homeland Securiy in case of a “national emergency.” He also thinks you can take the gold out of the U.S. if you say you are a “coin collector.”

They pulled the gold right out of the mouths’ of Jews who tried that. I probably have an estate piece made out of someone’s molar crown.

InformationWeek — October 11, 2007 05:00 PM

“We are committed to testing technologies that improve security while protecting passenger privacy,” said TSA administrator Kip Hawley in a statement. “Privacy is ensured through the anonymity of the image: It will never be stored, transmitted, or printed, and it will be deleted immediately once viewed.”

Ensuring privacy, as the TSA describes it, involves having security officers view images from remote locations. Thus, the security officer cannot identify the passenger, visually or by some other means, but can send word to fellow officers if a threat is detected.

According to the TSA, the scanning system applies a security algorithm to further protect passenger privacy by obscuring the passenger’s face.

Not everyone finds such assurances credible. In a statement, Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, spelled out three objections to the TSA’s plans.

“First, this technology produces strikingly graphic images of passengers’ bodies,” Steinhardt said. “Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details like colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant — and for some people humiliating — assault on the essential dignity of passengers that citizens in a free nation should not have to tolerate.”

Steinhardt also expressed doubt that such screenings could really be considered voluntary if passengers did not understand the invasiveness of the images and that the program would remain voluntary in the future. Finally, he voiced skepticism of the TSA’s privacy safeguards. “They say that they are obscuring faces, but that is just a software fix that can be undone as easily as it is applied,” he said. “And obscuring faces does not hide the fact that rest of the body will be vividly displayed.”

Such concerns may not be shared by the majority of the public. The TSA says that since February, when it began testing backscatter scanning — a similar technology — in Phoenix, some 79% of those selected for secondary screening opted to submit to a backscatter scan rather than a pat-down.

Oh, by the way — Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, is where the TSA is testing this (underpants-peeking) technology. It is also where the TSA murdered that woman the other day — the one who was uppity. Remember her?

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I’ve been on a tear about this topic. Most recent diary —> http://www.docudharm…