Nineteen security airport scanners or backscatter devices are already installed in U.S. airports with a goal of 130 more by 2011, with a cost of $25 million taxpayer dollars. I believe that these devices deprive us of our right to privacy as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
These backscatter devices violate the most private aspect of a human being and that is their own body. By what authority do lawmakers or politicians have to allow the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and their agents to look at the nakedness of a woman or man? These machines can reveal every contour of the body, including breasts, implants, genitalia and more.
The act of looking upon the naked forms of women and men was done in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. People were stripped of their clothes, humiliated, treated like animals and eventually killed in the end by the guards. What qualifies these security agents now or qualified German guards in the past, regardless of gender, to look at someone”s naked body?
According to the TSA these machines cannot store or save the image. However, there are conflicting reports about this. One, from the manufacture, is that the machine has to be in test mode and can save and print the image. Another is that if the security officer feels that the passenger poses a threat to national security they can use this option. National security thought Jews posed a threat to Germany.
It would save millions of taxpayer dollars and reduce the amount of security personnel to just have people show up naked at the airport, and with the one minute it takes to go through the scanner they could put their clothes on after they pass through the checkpoint. The downside to this is that they still have to take off their shoes and they wouldn”t have the choice between the backscatter device or the metal detector and pat-down search. And most importantly the American people must have their freedom of choice.
Sadly, the freedoms that the American people once held so dear are being taken away by fear and compliance.
Patty Conley
Kelseyville
