Slashdot Mirror
A Nude Awakening — the TSA and Privacy
DIplomatic writes "The Oklahoma Daily has a well-written editorial about the current state of airport security. Though the subject has overly-commented on, this article is well worth the read. Quoting: 'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly. There's no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a choice between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one's right to privacy is variable contingent on the government's discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn't care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court. If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA's newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA's regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.'"
I don't want the risk of an airliner crashing into my house just because a bunch of pillow-biters don't want to be seen nekid. Don't you know you have no expectation of privacy in public?!
I just think it's funny that it took these back-scatter machines for the American people to take such an about-face in their rush to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Ahhhh...back in 2002 you were an America-hating terrorist-sympathiser with a dangerous tendency to disagree with government during war time if you spoke up about how silly the TSA's measures were. It's like they're still bolting the barn door after the cows had escaped, bred a new generation and died in the surrounding fields...
Blar.