When should government employees be able to see naked images of your family?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from television shows such as
Law & Order and CSI, it’s that once something exists on a hard drive, it can never really be erased.

This is the first thought I have whenever the topic of full-body X-ray scan comes up. It’s the new-new thing in airport security, designed to thwart the latest danger to air travelers, which is, among other threats, your 16-year-old daughter.

To protect the traveling public, airport security is going to take pictures of her, naked, to make sure she has no weapons.

She won’t “feel” naked because the camera will look right through her clothes to record her image.

“Don’t worry,” officials say, because after the security team studies the photos, the digital images will be immediately destroyed. That’s because
(a) guys always tell the truth about deleting photographs of naked girls,
(b) no one will try to hack into the hard drive containing all the pictures, and
(c) stolen material never gets posted to the Internet.

Obviously, airport scanner security will have to be stronger than other systems that have leaked social security numbers, bank passwords, and confidential memos from secret Congressional investigations. Because if it’s not, your daughter’s picture will be out there for everyone to see, for the rest of her life.

Look, security is certainly a good thing, but so is common sense. Are X-ray images a benefit to travelers, or are they a public accident waiting to happen? What do you think?

Peg Prideaux, CTC
110409

P.S. If you’d like to see a sample of an airport X-ray image, brace yourself and then click here.