So you’re off on your yearly family vacation. You are prepared for the growing list of inconveniences at the airport.  You wear slip on shoes, and ensure that your children do the same.  You don’t wear a belt or carry change in your pocket.  No deodorant, medicine, sunscreen, or hygiene items in your carry on bags.  OK we are ready to go.  Well not quite.

Newly implemented technology and “Advanced pat down” techniques ensure that you and your family will either be seen naked, or have your genitals manhandled before you are allowed on the aircraft.  According to new policy, if you opt out of the full body scanner treatment, you will receive an advanced pat down with a complimentary genital groping.   According to TSA chief John Pistole, “The patdown is unavoidably intrusive, embarrassing, uncomfortable…”.  Need I say more?

Of course you need not be subject to the pat down.  All you and your children have to do to avoid it is go through the body scanner.  Don’t worry though.  The TSA claims that the agent cannot see your face, and cannot interact with you.  The TSA also claims that it does not save any of the images(however, it does not state that another agency or company does not store the images).  That’s good, because the scanner does not leave much to the imagination.

I feel safer already

Now, I know we need to be vigilant in our efforts to stop people from using airplanes as weapons against our nation, but is all this humiliation and degradation really necessary?  Do they have to feel up my children or view them naked?  I guess I will need to explain to them that it is OK if the TSA thug touches them in their private areas, because they are agents of the government.  They are just making us safe.  But are they really making us safe?  What are they really protecting us from?  An underwear bomber?  A shoe bomber?  What happens when the religious zealot shoves C4 up his rectum to blow up a plane?  Will the TSA make cavity searches the next mandatory search?  Why not?  It will save me a trip to the proctologist, and I don’t have to fly after all.

The real rub here is that these machines really will not make us any safer.  They will only give people the illusion that the government is protecting us, while simultaneously indoctrinating Americans and enculturating heavy handed government authority into our every day lives.

In my opinion this is a violation of our right to privacy and to be free from unreasonable search.  The government does not have the right to violate our constitutional rights simply because we have a choice.  Of course we do have a choice.  We will not be getting on a plane unless we submit to the humiliating roughhousing or peepshow. We are still free to drive or take the bus, but of course, that is a privilege too.  At what point do we stop allowing the government to trample our rights in the name of exercising our privileges?  The right to be free from unreasonable search is not dependent on whether we choose to fly.  We have that right, no matter the choices we make.  That is, if we fight for it.