I’ve been reading Becky Akers’s articles on this site for years. For a long time, she has been a lone voice against the TSA nonsense. I do feel a little sheepish that it took the scanners and groping (and being a mom) to take a stand. Lew and Becky are to be commended for fighting for our freedoms in the face of a dense collective public. Her article today is very powerful and I agree with every word, save one.
She says that the TSA was talking about the scanners long before the Underbomber, and cites a TSA statement from 2006. Actually, this has been going on much longer and — I’m sure no LRC reader will be truly surprised — it pre-dates 9/11. In researching the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the alleged safety of the scanners, I found out that the FAA commissioned the National Academies of Science to assess new security technologies. I do not have the full report, but the executive summary, published in 1996, states the following:
This book addresses new technologies being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for screening airport passengers for concealed weapons and explosives … [including] implementation of systems that generate images of passengers beneath their clothes for analysis by human screeners.
By the way, if you do write the airlines, feel free to “cc” me if you want it to be posted in the public domain.
5:10 pm on November 20, 2010
