[watmough]

Great quote in this article:

"For its part, the TSA says that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: "The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events."

Of course, the weasel words, "to the maximum extent possible" render this a mere sentiment, at fucking best (as Zed might say), meaning of course that your "privacy, modesty and personal autonomy" are toast.

[flipbrad]

This will sound shockingly heartless and coldly rational, but is the bigger problem with that statement not the idea that a few hundred, or even thousand people dying in a plane-related disaster (when magnitudes more will die of, say, bad diet, alcohol related deaths, or bad foreign policy?) is 'catastrophic'?

A catastrophe is, for example, the former, or spanish influenza. Does what I presume is the historically minute mortality (related to true catastrophes) associated with air travel, worth the cumulative inconvenience to millions, daily, of stupid, irrational rules (like no liquids in containers greater than 100ml, or no exposed sharp metals even though you could probably just take apart the hairdryer or pc cooler that you WERE allowed to take on, and have exactly the same thing)?

Unless realistic assessment of problems is undertaken, is there any foreseeable end to the severity of security measures that will be asked of us? Inflation is inevitable if we allow them to print FUD without checks or ties to the fundamentals.