The Classic Liberal Blog

The horrible events that took place on 9/11/01, gave our then wanna-be totalitarian State just about everything it desired. Not only did they achieve total war, but got half the electorate to cheer each time they passed a law further restricting our rights. Fast-forward and ... Today, I don't even recognize my country anymore.

Airport body scanners? You've got to be kidding me!

Body scanners would have accomplished nothing in regards to stopping Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from trying to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253, nor would they have caught him if the explosives were hidden in his body cavity. Drugs are smuggled in and out of America prisons all day long this way, so surely a suicide bomber would happily do it.

But nevermind that these scanners can't keep anyone safe, because that's not what they're for in the first place. The government is using the scanners for humiliation and control. They're training you to submit. And they're not shy about starting young either.

Recently, a 12-year old girl was pulled out of line in Tampa and subjected to irradiation in one of these porno-scanning machines, without parental consent to boot.

Airport body scanners reveal all, but what about when it's your kid?

"Our daughter was scared and didn't understand what was happening," said Michelle Nemphos, the mother of the girl. She declined to give her daughter's name. "In essence they conducted a strip search on a 12-year-old girl without her parents present to advocate for her."

• • •

The girl told her story in a phone interview:

Okay, I was coming home to Baltimore, Md., from Siesta Key, Fla., and I was with my friend and her parents and I was going to this airport security check.

I put my bag through, and they pulled me aside and told me to go over here. I thought it was some high-tech scan and I walked right through it and this lady said '"Hold on, you can't just walk through this thing. Put your feet on the yellow footsteps and make a triangle above your head." I guess it was so they could see my whole body.

I heard a beep and she said, "Okay you can leave."

I heard one of the guards say "affirmative on the female," and I knew they were talking about me. And that made me worried.

I couldn't see my friend and her dad, and I was really worried that I was separated from them. I was trying to look happy when I saw them but inside I was really scared.

• • •

When the girl first got home to Baltimore, she didn't mention the beaches she'd visited or her trip to the aquarium. All she wanted to talk about was what happened at the airport.

"Why did they pick me?" the girl asked her mother.

Nemphos wasn't sure. She couldn't imagine the Transportation Security Administration needing to scan a 12-year-old girl for weapons.

Today, there are 134 imaging technology units in use at 38 airports. But by next year and beyond, 1,000 of them will likely be deployed around the country.

According to TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz, anyone who can hold their arms over their head for 5 seconds or more can be selected for a body scan. That'll show those terrorists who's boss. Parents can opt for their children to get patted down by a strange adult instead, but as Koshetz reminds us, officers don't have time to ask permission.

Of course, any sane human being would "opt out" of humiliating a young girl, let alone snapping a naked picture her. But it becomes ever more obvious by the day, that sanity isn't on the list of qualities needed for a government job. The scanners also have the ability to store and transmit pictures, so I must ask, what more do you need as evidence to realize the government isn't your friend?

Then, what about health risks? Sure they tell us being irradiated is safe, but the government lies all the time. Are you really so naive that you trust these strangers with yours and your child's life? Because you see a few politicians on TV?

Airport body scanners 'could give you cancer', warns expert

They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin - one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body - that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is 'very low', he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.

He says children and passengers with gene mutations - around one in 20 of the population - are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA.

The most likely risk from the airport scanners is a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, according to the academic.

The cancer is usually curable and often occurs in the head and neck of people aged between 50 and 70. He points out it would be difficult to hide a weapon on the head or neck so proposes missing out that part of the body from the scanning process.

'If there are increases in cancers as a result of irradiation of children, they would most likely appear some decades in the future. It would be prudent not to scan the head and neck,' he added.

How Americans fell in love with the State, I'll never understand. But hey, what do I know ... We've got to spend some more "stimulus," then go fight another war!