Info Thursday
Being Thankful for My Sister Makes Me Unthankful for TSA

My sister has decided not to take the plane when we go to visit our family for the December holidays. The reason? She'd rather not be irradiated, shown nude, or rubbed down in all her intimate areas by TSA. Even though I don't personally have the same feelings, I do believe it should be someone's right not to have to endure this.

Plus, even I find the machines a little worrying. The back-scatter machines use X-Ray radiation. It's not very strong but some experts in the field point out that it's exposing your skin and not your bones to radiation, which puts you more at risk for skin cancer. Moreover, they just don't have enough research to prove it's safe to expose billions of people to this radiation.

The safe alternative are the millimeter-wave machines, but not all airports have these. Then my sister made a fair point that they're touching your privates with gloves that they sometimes forget to change from touching other people's privates which just is not sanitary.

But even if you don't believe it's a health risk, it still is a violation if people don't want to be touched there. Moreover, it's a violation to force TSA agents to touch people in places they don't want to touch! A bad situation all around.

I will still be traveling by plane but I will make it my mission to make TSA feel as uncomfortable and violated as they're making my sister feel. Intense eye contact, animal sounds, whatever it takes. I do feel immense sympathy for the TSA agents, but that's why I think they need to rise up and draw the line at what they will NOT do. They don't like doing it either. More importantly, it's not actually making us more safe (as proved in this video from Mythbuster Adam Savage). But there will always be too many passengers willing to travel no matter what, so it's the TSA that needs to draw the line at what they will and won't do to us. I understand we all want to keep our job in these hard times, but "I'm just following orders" is never an acceptable excuse.

Sources:
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-12/travel/body.scanning.radiation_1_backscatter-radiological-research-radiation/3?_s=PM:TRAVEL
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/11/17/whats-the-real-radiation-risk-of-the-tsas-full-body-x-ray-scans/