[ryanscio]

Serious question: why?

Most people I know who object to full-body millimeter-wave scanners either do so on pseudoscientific health claims, or “philosophical” anti-scanner objections that are structurally the same genre as sovereign-citizen or First-Amendment-auditor thinking.

[wpm]

I should not need to show an anonymous TSA agent my genitals, even if they are in black and white on some monitor theyre viewing in some back room, to get on a plane.

[hackyhacky]

> I should not need to show an anonymous TSA agent my genitals

Unless you want to!

[ryanscio]

I'd agree with this, but TSA scanners do not show anatomical details.

[tkuraku]

At least currently the images are never seen by a person and are deleted after ATR.

[WaxProlix]

Sure thing, and my Facebook account was hard deleted when I asked them to.

[its_magic]

Are you implying that Mark Zuckerberg is a liar, sir?

[deaux]

You'll need to add a /s, else most here won't realize you're being sarcastic.

You are, right?

[anonymars]

"Fool me twice...can't get fooled again"

[AngryData]

I could ask the same serious question, why should I have to? There is zero reason to suspect me of being a suicidal maniac. Should we have such scanners to walk into a busy store or bus or subway system? Why don't private pilots and passengers have such screenings?

[prashantsengar]

Tangential: Here in India we have security guards with hand-held metal detectors in malls, railway stations, and urban transit rails (metro) stations.

The first time I visited a different country I was surprised to see my friend accompany me to the check-in counter and even further to drop me off. In India they wouldn't let you enter the airport if your flight doesn't depart soon enough.

[AngryData]

I don't think anyone in the US really cares about metal detectors, humans don't naturally contain metal and it is done completely hands off with no extra visual or biometric information or saved data. Plenty of people in this thread who opted out of other security measures still walked through a metal detector without any special note. Court houses and police stations have often have metal detectors that even a Senator or President would have to walk through. The same cannot be said of direct imaging of your body though or facial recognition or anything. If you wouldn't put your children through the process to go into school each day then it seems completely bonkers to require it for any form of mass transit.

[smelendez]

It used to be normal in the U.S. to walk people to the gate until 9/11.

Now you can escort someone to the check-in counter and up to the security checkpoint, and meet people at the luggage area to help with bags.

But in practice it seems rare to do so if there isn’t a particular reason, probably because you’d have to pay to park or ride transit and it’s usually a trek beyond that. Honestly if they allowed you to go through security with the passenger and wait at the gate, I’m not sure how many people would even do it here (or how many passengers would want their loved ones to do so).

[dboreham]

Pre 9/11 you could go through (useless) security without a ticket but longer ago there wasn't even security. And in some places the "gate" was...a gate. In a fence. So being at the gate meant walking from the street up to the fence. Good times.

[seg_lol]

You can walk someone to the gate, you just have to have a ticket.

[pigggg]

Post 9/11 you could get a waiver from the ticket counter to escort someone thru security all the way to the gate. Dunno if that's a thing anymore, but I had them print out a paper and showed it at security several times in the mid 2000s.

[sokoloff]

A gate pass is a thing to pick up or drop off people who will be flying as unaccompanied minors. I don’t what other circumstances allow their issue, but when I did it a couple years ago, everyone seemed to know the process, so it’s not that rare.

[joking]

not letting outside people at the luggage area seems fine to me, if anyone could enter there the number of stolen baggage would skyrocket.

[baubino]

There are legit health reasons to opt out of the scanner. I know because I have one of those conditions and have never been through the scanner.

[hackyhacky]

That's fine, but you don't need a health condition, legit or otherwise, to opt out. It's enough to say "I would like to opt out."

[bitexploder]

Millimeter wave scanners have a health exemption? Like because it would always detect something on your body?

[avalys]

What is an example of such a condition?

[jacquesm]

Pacemaker, pregnancy, probably others.

[OneDeuxTriSeiGo]

Studies have all come out clean on pacemakers and mmWave. No detectable interference in the hardware or on an EKG while in a mmWave scanner.

I could imagine other conditions potentially but pacemakers have been ruled a non issue for mmWave by academic studies (albeit I can understand still exercising caution despite that).

[kmoser]

Have they done thorough, decades-long studies on millimeter-wave machines to ensure they have absolutely no long-term adverse health effects?

[OneDeuxTriSeiGo]

Tbh I'm not sure but they've done accelerated dosage testing to simulate long term use by repeatedly exposing people to use of the machine over a more frequent period of time.

But mmWave really just is not dangerous. Current generation 5G cellular and WiFi standards are mmWave and they are just as harmless.

Molecular damage just starts showing up with THF/terahertz emissions band but mmWave is in the EHF and is has more than 10x the wavelength of THF (i.e. it is far wider/more gentle than THF). In a very real sense mmWave can't even interact with most of the molecules in your body.

mmWave can interact with the water in your body but at the levels it's being used it's only really useful for seeing the water. You'd needs orders of magnitude more powerful emissions than what these scanners use to actually cause damage at that frequency.

i.e. It's the difference between using the flashlight on your phone to see in the dark and using the concentrated light from solar-thermal heliostats to boil water or heat molten salt. No matter how hard you try, your flashlight is never gonna boil water.

[dboreham]

Mass hysteria.

[kmoser]

Then why do they routinely send kids through the (non-invasive) metal detectors, while adults get sent through the millimeter-wave scanners?

[sokoloff]

I think it’s a mistake to assume these policy decisions all have peer-reviewed science behind them.

[jMyles]

To me it's just a vote against the profiteers who make those machines.

Also I kinda like the process better; the pat-down is nothin', and you can a full table to yourself to recombobulate.

> First-Amendment-auditor thinking.

Uhhh, I like that kind of thinking. Is there something wrong with first amendment auditors now?!

[SpicyLemonZest]

Perhaps I haven't gotten a representative sample, but in 100% of the content I've seen from self-described "first amendment auditors", they're acting unpleasant and suspicious for absolutely no reason other than provoking a reaction. To me this seems like antisocial behavior that degrades rather than supports First Amendment protections. I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.

[jMyles]

> I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.

It strikes me that the first clause of this sentence and the last one are unambiguously contradictory.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't think so? The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense; they're not trying to communicate any message, they're just trying to make people around them uncomfortable. It's just hard to draw a clear line that would prohibit their behavior without chilling lawful speech.

Right now I don't think there are that many First Amendment auditors around, so there's not much point in passing new laws to deal with them. But if they became more common, it might be necessary to draw the line, as we did in the 90s with stalking.

[jMyles]

> The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense;

I didn't suggest it was speech; it's press, no?

Again, I don't have enough context to cast judgment about them being assholes or violating some other law (like harassment, etc) - I don't support that _at all_.

However, the basic right to document one's surroundings in public is absolutely essential to liberty, especially now.

[SpicyLemonZest]

No, it's not press either. First Amendment auditors do things like this: https://www.independent.com/2025/07/09/first-amendment-audit...

You say "harassment", but that's precisely the problem. Many things that any reasonable person would identify as harassment are protected speech under the First Amendment. So these auditors go around harassing people, knowing that they're causing people emotional distress, because they're bullies who want to make people feel bad.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

First Amendment auditors have usually been attention seeking individuals making click bait YouTube videos. It's been interesting seeing the transformation from that to what we're seeing with people monitoring ICE.

[jMyles]

To be honest, I watch very little of that content, so I had no idea. If they're unkind, then obviously that sucks.

But walking around with cameras maintaining the unequivocal right to record what happens in the commons seems like a very important and thankless task.