Jaunted

In any case, you have until autumn, when the first ranks of machines are expected to be installed in airports around the country, to hide all your figure flaws. Of course, you can still opt for a pat-down instead, but will that get you tagged as suspicious? As William Saletan wrote in Slate, "The lesson of the escalating body scans, like the escalating pat-downs, is that TSA will do whatever it thinks it needs to do."

What did the TSA's Evolution of Security blog have to say about this invasion of privacy? Bupkis. Instead, it focused on a recent incident at St. Louis' Lambert International Airport which full-body scanners wouldn't have helped, in which a man with a metal box containing $4,700 in cash was pulled from line for questioning. Unfortunately for the agency's web presence on the Internets, 25-year-old Steve Bierfeldt was a Ron Paul supporter and the money was a political donation, causing an outcry of targeting for the search efforts. Apparently, he also had a large amount of bumper stickers on his person at the time, though those can be carried through security without a problem.

Political freedom is no joke, but we can see how that large an amount of cash could be a red flag. And that's pretty much what the TSA said, along with stopping just short of apologizing to Bierfeldt for one of its agents calling him "a smartass" in the part of the interrogation which he taped while protesting the interrogation process.

If you see a full-body scanner in the wild, or a suitcase full of cash for that matter, we'd love to hear about it.

Related Stories:
· Whole-Body Scans Pass First Airport Tests [NY Times]
· We See London, We See France, But Tulsa Sees Your Underpants [Jaunted]
· Deeper Digital Penetration: The expanding invasion of the naked body scanners. [Slate]
· TSA Caught on Tape Bullying Defenseless Ron Paul Supporter BlackBook]
· TSA coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: silas216]