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Comment by jervisfm | Hacker News Reader

> I always refuse the scanner

Would you mind to share your reasoning as to why you elect to forgo this option ? It would appear to me having a machine scan you is less intrusive than a full body search by a human agent.

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I do it for a few reasons.

1) It requires agents turn away from their normal tasks and clogs up the works to some degree. I disagree with the program and opting for the pat-down is a legal action I can take that will, ever so briefly, disrupt it.

2) I do it in the hope that the agents doing the pat-down will be uncomfortable while doing so. Any legal action I can take that makes their job ever-so-slightly more unpleasant is something that I will do. If it were done en-masse and people in their personal lives ostracized them for their job, then maybe (just maaaybe) the TSA would experience higher turnover.

3) To add one more data-point to the agents' awareness that a portion of the population does not approve of them or their job.

4) So that other people waiting in the line can see me skip the full body scan and learn that they can as well.

5) So that I get to tell other people what I just told you.

Personally, I decline the scans because it's my one way of protesting the security theater and its enormous waste. It's the one thing I'm allowed to decline, so I decline it.

Here's a really good way to protest security theater (albeit very much at your expense): write SSSS [1] on your boarding pass, and see how you're treated! (Security officers can write SSSS on your boarding pass, so it doesn't need to be printed on the pass, so this will work...)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Se...

I do it also, because I don't trust them to not save the images, and I suspect the images will either get hacked by or flat-out sold to a third party later. The pat-down doesn't make me feel like I'm being raped, although I guess I can see why others would be uncomfortable.

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