Objects up to 2 inches in diameter and 8 inches long can easily be inserted into the rectum. This is certainly within in the size range for a substantial explosive device.

So who's to say that some jihadist group won't recruit/hire some blue-eyed, blonde-haired young women to smuggle bombs on board?

And a muslim looks like ____? What do non-muslims look like?

For me the "tipping point" was reached when airlines started charging extra for bags when they used to be part of the fare. With the TSA inspections, the airline overcharges and everything else, I'll take my chances on the open road. I can drive to Orlando and back for $600, including gas, food and motel. Yes, I'm spending four days in travel, but 5 days in Orlando is enough anyway. Same goes for Vegas. Best of all; I don't have to rent a car when I get there.

See the Nation for a different perspective on what may be the real issue behind the sudden "outcry" about pat-downs: Privatization

Say, suppose our government were to stop killing Muslims. I wonder whether that would have any effect on this situation. Hmm.

I just went through security at SFO on Sunday and was on my way in a total of <20 minutes including a full scan. IT WAS NO BIG DEAL!!

Having an artifical hip, I always set off the metal detector and have had pat downs every time I fly. This time they gave me the option of the scanner. It took 10 seconds and MUCH less invasive. A big improvement in my book!

The scanner used on me uses submillimeter RADIO waves (NOT X-rays) and the dose is supposed to be less than using a CELL PHONE.
There are some scanners that use weak X-rays but the dose is said to be less than the radiation you get when flying at 35000 feet for 2 MINUTES (because of higher exposure to cosmic rays at high altitudes).

To me, the "uproar" fanned by a few and hyped by the media is MUCH TO DO ABOUT NOTHING.
If you don't want to have a body scan because of fear of radiation exposure, then you should NOT be using cell phones or even flying in the first place!!!!!

Oh bullshit, this is about the Government + Industry swindlng tax dollars for "security" after 9/11 , not your review of a trip to the airport. It's also about the 4th amendment.

Chertoff isn't an idiot, he's a very successful business man, and the fear that helps seal the sales for Defense Contractors is overwhelming. These machines are no way cheap, but the idiocy, the insanity of assuming that everyone is a potential airplane attacker which is what the US has decided to do, is simply promotion of the police state. Al Qeada is no where near American Airports. Billions spent on goons, security guards, detection, and survelliance are here to watch you, the citizen, the guilty.

Don, giving up your liberties is a VERY big deal! The more you give up, the more the government will take away until this isn't a free country any more at all. This country was designed by the resistance of tyranny, and for the continued resistance of tyranny. Even God wouldn't have us bow down to ANYONE except Him, and then only if such bowing down is truly to Him and not some misrepresentation that government(s) give that bowing to them is supposedly bowing to God, like the U.S. government is already doing, as Hitler did, through the misinterpreted use of Romans, Chapter 12 (which was Hitler's favorite Bible chapter) and getting preachers to preach that we're allegedly supposed to bow to government no matter what, WHICH IS A LIE! Dear God, people, wake up and stop voluntarily giving up your liberties!...

"I just went through security at SFO on Sunday and was on my way in a total of <20 minutes including a full scan. IT WAS NO BIG DEAL!!"

It's a huge deal. They're stripping you nude using technology instead of their own hands, and meanwhile there's a huge crowd of people who have not been scanned or even background checked standing there, a massive open target, in a fairly confined space (SFO terminals are fairly confined).

The stupidity is astounding.

how many federal policing agency's do we need? can't people recognize the simple fact their are too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the current federal plan and its becoming obvious with the numbers of incarcerated... because the priority of a federal policing agency is to get results and to do that and prove their worth they justify themselves with arrests and convictions... even if the results are scandalous make work projects that make victims sit in corporate slave camps... Is this the actual end game of the neo-cons Project for the New American Century?
by collating all power within a small circle of radicals... for them maybe, but somehow I don't think it was part of the plan as envisioned by the founding fathers.

Americans! Whining about body scans versus intrusive pat downs.  Not exactly equivalent to the choice some have in other countries between capitulating to occupying, murderous US forces and mercenaries versus having US drone missiles slaughter hundreds of their civilians.  Seems Americans can’t connect personal privacy concerns with the brutal and cynical conduct of US foreign policy.   Cowardly US drone attacks in multiple countries; US-backed coups in Latin America; 737 military facilities worldwide; US blackmail regarding debt service; awarding Israel $3 billion in taxpayer-financed  fighter jets (really to preposition weaponry to attack Iran) in exchange for  a 90-day halt to settlement building.  The US – the modern-day Holy Roman Empire—has ever fewer friends, mostly a global ruling class. Every day fewer here and abroad are willing to accept the lies justifying its aggressions, crimes, and resource wars.  Now, faced with mulit-trillion dollar costs for all this, a class war is underway featuring the destruction of programs for children, retired, elderly, poor, disabled and the middle class. Pity poor Americans!  Forced to literally play the collective role of the emperor with no clothes or get felt up by their "democratic" government's security forces.  Whining all the while about the consequences of government misuse of tax dollars for war, corporations, and the wealthy, rather than organizing and mobilizing in their common self-interest.

There is no RIGHT to fly. As I said, if you don't want body scans or exposure to tiny amounts of radiation, then DON'T FLY!!

The so-called "invasion" of privacy and 4th amendment rights ( search and seizure) are being overblown -- in the media and in the comments above.

Basically, you agree to security checks and search when you buy your airplane ticket. If you don't want to be searched, then take a train or bus or car or bicycle or walk.

The latest news is that the "protests" against the searches and scanners was a big fizzle. Very few protesters or scan refusals.

There will always be people who get all worked up over change of any kind. And a few get enough attention to make the "news" and then it gets hyped by the media and internet.

Good security is an issue. Body scanners and security checks are a non-issue.

Get a life, folks!! And stop believing everything you hear on the news and internet!

Don, you are another idiot and traitor who doesn't understand the Constitution, and/or who doesn't take it seriously like it is your DUTY as a so-called "American", and the DUTY of ALL of us as "Americans", to do.

We have basic, foundational, innate rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", without any government interferrance, and/or prevention from being able to enjoy those rights, WHATSOEVER! Thus, almost everything IS a RIGHT! AND NONE OF THOSE RIGHTS are a privilege! We don't waive ANY RIGHTS when we buy an airline ticket, or anything else; and the Constitution is VERY clear that we CANNOT waive those rights even if the government claims we supposedly can and/or have!

We have the basic, innate right(s) to go almost anywhere we want, freely, and to get there any way we want to, as long as it isn't intentionally seeking to harm anyone else; and just because the government has for decades been little by little, more and more claiming that rights are supposedly privileges, doesn't make it so! Decades ago we began to fall for the lie(s) that driving, etc., is supposedly a privilege, and thus such false beliefs have snowballed until the government is taking away all of our rights and calling them "privileges"! Enough of this hogwash!

Truly Free people have the right(s) to do almost ANYTHING that doesn't intentionally harm other people, period! And that includes being able to drive and fly without having to show our "papers", or so-called "required licenses" which is the same thing, like in Nazi Germany; and especially without having to be technologically strip-searched and/or to have the private parts of our bodies groped because all of us are now, completely unconstitutionally, presumed guilty until we prove our innocence!

Don't you understand, Don and others, that the government has got it completely backwards?! Under the U.S. Constitution, and the state Constitutions, they have to PROVE our guilt of something, and NOT through presuming us guilty, IN ANY WAY(S) WHATSOEVER, to start with!! In other words, the burden of proof is on THEM!! The burden of proof is NOT on us to prove our innocence!! Therefore, every time we consent to being electronically strip-searched and/or to having our private parts groped, the government is requiring us to prove our innocence in violation of the Constitution(s)!!

Also, every time we consent to that, we are waiving our rights as well, which is an extremely steep, "straight-down-to-hell-on-earth", slippery slope leading to no rights at all, and to everything supposedly being a "privilege"; privileges which will more and more be denied to us if we continue to voluntarily give up our innate rights! So stop believing the lies of the corporate-fascist government and their propaganda arm, the mainstream, corporate-fascist media, that innate rights are supposedly "privileges" and that we supposedly have to give them up in order to exercise our other innate rights!

The government(s) has, and/or have, always used the apparently-plausible excuse that turning our liberties and innate rights into so-called privileges is for our "security", or for our own "protection"; but taking away, and our capitulating to it and consenting to giving up, our innate rights, and/or to have them turned into so-called "privileges", makes us MUCH LESS secure in our innate freedoms and rights; and, as we have seen, more and more opens the floodgates to government turning almost every innate right into a so-called "privilege", thus making us more and more unsafe at the hands of government!

Look at what's going on: Millions of completely innocent Americans are being visited by the government alphabet agencies to prove their innocence in order to exercise their innate, and Constitutionally-given, rights to stand up against all of this madness of doing away with our rights; to stand up against preemptively attacking defenseless countries and mass-murdering millions of their innocent citizens; also murdering those freedom fighters who are doing nothing but exercising their innate rights (and rights under international law) to defend themselves, their fellow countrymen and their country(ies) against completely unlawful preemptive wars; and the list goes on and on and on.

Millions more are having to prove their innocence in order to exercise their innate right(s) and liberty(ies) to travel, and so on. It just gets worse and worse, as we have been seeing for decades, but particularly since 9/11, and everything under the sun is used to to supposedly "justify" it. But NOTHING justifies our giving up our innate and Constitutional rights! NOTHING! Yet, what the government is doing is unconstitutionally backing us into a corner where there is no other way "out" but to either give-in and voluntarily waive our rights and submit to police-state tactics over and over again, with no true regard for our innate rights, liberty and true safety, especially from government encroachment, erosion and eradication of our innate human and civil rights, freedoms and liberties; or to give-in and choose to no longer exercise our innate right(s) to travel, etc.

It is so obvious where all of this encroachment and erosion of our innate civil liberties is leading, and that it is leading to the complete eradication of our innate civil liberties. But most so-called "Americans" are, with extreme stupidity, allowing themselves to bow down to and accept this madness and call it "patriotism". Yet it is NOT patriotism; it IS nationalism; just like the so-called "good Germans" who bowed down to and accepted "national socialism", aka Nazism, surrendered to, giving up all of their innate rights, and letting what few so-called "rights" they had left be completely turned into "privileges". True Patriotism is standing up AGAINST all such madness, NOT bowing down to it!

Wake up to the thuggery of the U.S. government that is masquerading as "protecting us" while they stealthfully do away with all of our innate rights, or what little of them we have left! Wake up to the fact(s) that what they are doing with all of these "checkpoints" and "prove-our-innocence" hoops that we supposedly have to sheepishly jump through "or else", which are an extreme invasion of our privacy and liberty, is conditioning us to more and more accept our innate rights being done away with, and to waive our innate rights to be Truly Free, and to be free from ALL of these invasive, rights-violating, oppressive and repressive control tactics being used to herd us like we're supposedly cattle, not human beings! The so-called "good German citizens" accepted this, but we must NEVER accept it! And they were a warning to all of us not to fall for this kind of human-rights-and-civil-liberties-destroying madness EVER AGAIN!

When we have no privacy, which is what the government is basically telling us to a gravely-extreme extent right now, WE HAVE NO TRUE FREEDOM! Don't you understand? You might appear to be free because you can continue to buy all of these electronic baubbles that don't make you Truly Free; and, by design of the powers-that-be, distract you from what's really going on, from the complete eradication of your innate human rights and civil liberties, and distract you from you DUTY(IES) to stand up against it; but you will more and more, as is happening already, be controlled at every turn, other than in your purchases of your "false-freedom gizmos" which they have bought us off with!

What it has already led to is our being corraled more and more, and what it is very quickly leading to is our being slaughtered like cattle---like the total of over ten million human beings, not just Jews, who were exterminated during the FIRST Reich! But, for God's sake, for your sake(s), for all of our sakes, wake the hell up and stop being "good little, complacent, sheepish, cowed, servile, capitulating, corraled slaves", and stand up against all of this larger and larger evisceration of our innate human rights and civil liberties! Stop being cowards, and take a stand against all of this madness before we don't have any control over any of it at all anymore! Remember, We the People are the ones who are supposed to be in control, and we are NEVER to surrender ANY of that control over ourselves, our bodies, our privacy, and the retention of our innate civil liberties and human rights, TO ANYONE ELSE, EVER; ESPECIALLY TO GOVERNMENT!

Once again:

"...(W)hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce (The People) under absolute Despotism (as IS happening right now), it is their right, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security (and liberty, freedom and happiness)..."! --Declaration of Independence, 1776. [Emphasis and/or clarification(s) added by me.] Since the Declaration of Independence is joined to the U.S. Constitution under the Supremecy Clause of the latter, it is part and parcel of the Constitution, and it is part of the Supreme LAW of the Land just like the rest of the Constitution; therefore, it is also the DUTY of every single American including government officers to OBEY it, just as it is their DUTY to obey ALL of the Constitution. So do it, COMPLETELY! Or you can't truly call yourselves Americans; and you are nothing but traitors to God, to the Constitution, to the United States of America, to human rights and civil liberties, and to the entire world!

LONG LIVE NOTHING BUT TRUE FREEDOM, AND GOD SAVE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE ENTIRE WORLD FROM THE CORPORATE-FASCIST SCOURGE THAT IS SWEEPING OVER THE U.S. AND THE WHOLE PLANET, ERADICATING ALL OF OUR TRUE FREEDOMS AND HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THUS ENSLAVING ALL OF US! FIGHT BACK AND TOTALLY STOP THIS MADNESS, YOU SHEEP AND CATTLE, OR YOU ARE DOOMING YOURSELVES AND ALL OF THE REST OF US!

Don is correct when he says that the searches are part of the airline ticket contract. When you buy the ticket, the fine print (which is routinely ignored) says that you allow yourself to be searched.

Wolf and the others are correct when they assert that the methods being used amount to violations of the 4th Amendment. They're also right that we are being led down the path where we're giving up our rights incrementally to the point where we will soon have no rights at all.

At the moment, we can cross state borders at will. I wonder how long it will be before they institute border crossing stations for states in the name of security and cracking down on illegal immigration?

Please check this out:

Article Title: TSA Gestapo Empire

Article Author: Paul Craig Roberts (former U.S. government employee as a member of the Reagan administration)
Website: Infowars.com
Date: November 24, 2010

Website Address: infowars.com/tsa-gestapo-empire/

Not disagreeing with you, but agreeing with you, David Craine: You see, one of the primary problems is, that most "Americans" have become un-American. Things have been designed, and they were intentionally made, that way. Why do you think most of them don't know the Constitution or take it seriously, even though it is the Supreme Law of the Land and the most important document in their lives? Do you think that is an accident? Americans have been intentionally dumbed-down about human rights and civil liberties, and why they are extremely important to them, so that they will willingly go along with, and even blindly support---all the while claiming to be "patriots"---the destruction of this country, their freedoms, and even of themselves with blind devotion to the very powers-that-be and government that are destroying their country, their world and them! Those powers-that-be absolutely love it when their targets, most of us, revel in and aid in their own destruction! Therefore, the ONLY One who can help us now, is God through Jesus the Christ (John 14:6)!

...Or, civil, civic, temporal and/or secular lives.

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