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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I feel they are doing that demeaning of a body search to coerce others into going though the scanners.

That's exactly what they're doing. There was a recent article (sorry, no citation) where supposedly the TSA agents said that the more complete pat down is designed to encourage people to stick to the scanners. Lesser of two evils, at it were.

At least there's a choice, of sorts. Hands-off scanner or hands-on pat down. It'd be crazy if the pat down wasn't able to reveal the same items the scanner can, so it makes sense to me, and I'd definitely choose the scanner (I went through one of the trial ones in 2009 and it was quite interesting, though I had no idea what it was at the time).

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You went through a machine which took photos of your naked body without your knowledge and you don't see a problem with that?

I went through a machine in Amsterdam last year and was super pissed when I realised, after going through, what it was. I'm not planning to opt out whenever possible.

"You went through a machine which took photos of your naked body without your knowledge and you don't see a problem with that?"

To be honest: No - don't see a problem with that.

I am more worried with the radiation. The volume of the body that's exposed to the radiation is smaller and that makes the energy absorbed per volume much higher. Since I plan to have kids soon, I really don't want to be exposed to X-rays.

The volume of the body that's exposed to the radiation is smaller and that makes the energy absorbed per volume much higher.

Much higher than what?

I think the health risks are probably overplayed. I've only seen one article quoting an expert, David Brenner, and that seemed somewhat out of context. He points out that the primary risk is going to be skin cancer and problems for people with certain genetic syndromes that are hypersensitive to radiation, like ataxia-telangiectasia.

These machines don't come anywhere near producing the doses necessary to cause temporary or permanent sterility in males (0.5 Gy and 6.0 Gy) or females (2-12 Gy). 1 Gy = 1 J/kg. But more importantly, the radiation isn't energetic enough to penetrate to your gonads, that's why it's suited for backscatter imaging.

The privacy, etc, is a whole different issue...

  There was a recent article (sorry, no citation) where 
  supposedly the TSA agents said that the more complete pat 
  down is designed to encourage people to stick to the 
  scanners.

You're probably thinking of "For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance"[1]. Not exactly a reliable source of information, but entertaining, and definitely worth a read. Also, my recollection is that the TSA agent didn't say the pat down was designed for that purpose, just that he expects most people to opt for the scanner, because the new pat down procedure is so invasive.

[1]http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-...

Well, but can it? Some places are still unreachable by pat downs, and people have always hidden stuff there to get it into jails, etc. So what is the point of pat downs?

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