If you do the math out, starting from the FDA's own numbers (1/80,000,000 likelihood of deadly cancer per screening) and working it out for the 800,000,000 person-flights taken every year, the "lives saved" benefit doesn't seem to exist, and this is even /before/ I bring up that even if cancer doesn't kill you, it can still be devastating, costing large sums of money an years of your life to only half recover from.
Seriously: hardly anyone is killed by terrorism in this country, and it isn't because of backscatter x-ray machines (obviously, as they didn't exist before). All of the plots that the TSA talks about as success stories were handled by intelligence before they even got to the airport, and most cases of airline-related terrorism in the last 35 years really come down to "reinforced cockpit doors", which we now have.
However, I want to directly address the nudity question, as a lot of people try to separate these concerns: even if there are no health issues, and even though people like you and me may be comfortable in this situation, some people have serious issues from having been violated in the past.
I have never been raped (and I doubt I ever will be: I'm giant, male, and reasonably unattractive), but I can still /try/ to empathize with the idea that some people are going to have been through situations where they had their freedoms and sexual independence stripped away from them by a stranger. The thought of going through that again makes many people freeze up (as opposed to scream), possibly putting them in a situation where they "let" the TSA screeners (who don't wait for an explicit "yes" and often don't even explain what is about to happen) push them to the point of having horrible flashbacks of what happened to them.
I'm going to go farther though: a world where people even can exist in the set "rape victims" (or "terrorist") is a world in which not everyone has pure intentions, and that has to be taken into consideration when analyzing whether we should allow "the government", and by which we all really mean "people who got a job as a TSA screener", to see other people naked. We have to ask the question: what if the screeners don't share the same enlightened view of naked bodies that you and I do?
That someone may be getting off on the idea of screening my (currently very young, but soon only somewhat young) half-niece (half-sister's daughter) because he either gets to a) see her naked (the scans are not limited to same-sex scanners) or b) do an enhanced pat down on her (while they claim same-sex pat downs, the screeners often seem to try to goad travelers into the uncomfortable situation of either thinking they will miss their flight or accept a mismatched screener) sickens me.
(I will point out here that it isn't like "just take the naked picture" is even an option, so it is kind of a strawman argument to begin with: if you are selected for more screening or the AIT "can't get a clear picture" it becomes "enhanced patdown" time, which we have to consider in this situation. When people could easily and issue-lessly opt-out of AIT I was a lot less bothered by the whole thing. It still bothered me due to the risk/reward tradeoff not working out, but the idea that these TSA screeners are now in a situation to do rather invasive "patdown" of people changes the game entirely.)
Once you accept that some people don't share your belief, the incentives are simply broken: if you are the kind of person who gets off in this situation, this is the job you will apply for. As you aren't a terrorist or an obvious "criminal", you will easily clear the background check. Once in this sort of job, manipulating the system so more attractive people, younger people, or maybe people wearing interesting clothing (a skirt you will be able to stick your hands up or someone obviously not wearing a full complement of underwear)--whatever floats their particular boat--is something you can easily make happen.
Remember: there are no statistics kept, no records written, and all decisions seem to be up to the screener in question. We /do not/ allow this sort of unwatched behavior among police officers (a profession that involves a lot more hurdles to enter and has much more risk when you get there): for decades we have required this kind of oversight among their ranks to make certain that they weren't abusing their position of power.
While it makes life really simple to think of governments and companies as large entities that have simple goals and beliefs, the reality of the situation is that we live in a world full of all kinds of people, and some people simply suck. We really need to be careful as we set up the rules of the world in which we live to not /encourage/ these people to suck more, to suck harder, and to suck in ways that get in our way.
Note: I'm not saying everyone sucks, and I'm not saying /most/ people suck, but only that there exist people who do, in fact, suck, and they are going to be the people who are willing to take a seemingly sad/painful job with a low salary whose only perk seems to be getting to have a form of sexual control over an unwilling constituency.
And, before you even go there, we cannot just filter these people well: we've already found a TSA agent who was apparently so bad he is now a convicted child molester). That guy didn't just suck, he was /stupid/: most people taking advantage of this system will stick to what they can get away with inside of the bureaucracy rather than also messing with children at home.
Maybe you still don't care... maybe you think I and anyone in this discussion are still just being uptight: that we should not care that the screener is enjoying it, that we are turning someone else's flaw into our own issue. To that I say: these broken incentives also undermine the benefit. Even if you believe a system is capable of working, if that very system is wasting time getting off it is not protecting the people. Again, /you/ may be enlightened, but it is equally important that the other people in the situation are. These people are now easy targets for terrorists: find one of them, and then use a confident ugly person (maybe me) to smuggle what you need into the airport.
Think about it... even if only one out of a hundred people in the TSA suck, or one in a thousand, maybe just a handful that suck really bad, that is a serious issue: to our freedoms, and even our safety. It isn't the government seeing us (all of us: you, your spouse, and your children) naked, it is "Craig the TSA screener", and it will still just be Craig when he tells you to prepare for your family to prepare for their "enhanced putdowns".
(This was all seriously typed on my iPhone in a coffee shop, and was partially motivated by a question to the OperationGrabAss subreddit regarding "how to respond to someone who thinks nudity should be ok", which is why I went into the number of argument levels that I did).
Woah, multiple typos in the last line. :( (I wish HN worked better on an iPhone: the text box is tiny and small. I am going to be writing future comments in Notes and then copy/pasting them over.)
...when he tells your family to prepare for their "enhanced patdowns".
Seriously: hardly anyone is killed by terrorism in this country, and it isn't because of backscatter x-ray machines (obviously, as they didn't exist before). All of the plots that the TSA talks about as success stories were handled by intelligence before they even got to the airport, and most cases of airline-related terrorism in the last 35 years really come down to "reinforced cockpit doors", which we now have.
However, I want to directly address the nudity question, as a lot of people try to separate these concerns: even if there are no health issues, and even though people like you and me may be comfortable in this situation, some people have serious issues from having been violated in the past.
I have never been raped (and I doubt I ever will be: I'm giant, male, and reasonably unattractive), but I can still /try/ to empathize with the idea that some people are going to have been through situations where they had their freedoms and sexual independence stripped away from them by a stranger. The thought of going through that again makes many people freeze up (as opposed to scream), possibly putting them in a situation where they "let" the TSA screeners (who don't wait for an explicit "yes" and often don't even explain what is about to happen) push them to the point of having horrible flashbacks of what happened to them.
I'm going to go farther though: a world where people even can exist in the set "rape victims" (or "terrorist") is a world in which not everyone has pure intentions, and that has to be taken into consideration when analyzing whether we should allow "the government", and by which we all really mean "people who got a job as a TSA screener", to see other people naked. We have to ask the question: what if the screeners don't share the same enlightened view of naked bodies that you and I do?
That someone may be getting off on the idea of screening my (currently very young, but soon only somewhat young) half-niece (half-sister's daughter) because he either gets to a) see her naked (the scans are not limited to same-sex scanners) or b) do an enhanced pat down on her (while they claim same-sex pat downs, the screeners often seem to try to goad travelers into the uncomfortable situation of either thinking they will miss their flight or accept a mismatched screener) sickens me.
(I will point out here that it isn't like "just take the naked picture" is even an option, so it is kind of a strawman argument to begin with: if you are selected for more screening or the AIT "can't get a clear picture" it becomes "enhanced patdown" time, which we have to consider in this situation. When people could easily and issue-lessly opt-out of AIT I was a lot less bothered by the whole thing. It still bothered me due to the risk/reward tradeoff not working out, but the idea that these TSA screeners are now in a situation to do rather invasive "patdown" of people changes the game entirely.)
Once you accept that some people don't share your belief, the incentives are simply broken: if you are the kind of person who gets off in this situation, this is the job you will apply for. As you aren't a terrorist or an obvious "criminal", you will easily clear the background check. Once in this sort of job, manipulating the system so more attractive people, younger people, or maybe people wearing interesting clothing (a skirt you will be able to stick your hands up or someone obviously not wearing a full complement of underwear)--whatever floats their particular boat--is something you can easily make happen.
Remember: there are no statistics kept, no records written, and all decisions seem to be up to the screener in question. We /do not/ allow this sort of unwatched behavior among police officers (a profession that involves a lot more hurdles to enter and has much more risk when you get there): for decades we have required this kind of oversight among their ranks to make certain that they weren't abusing their position of power.
While it makes life really simple to think of governments and companies as large entities that have simple goals and beliefs, the reality of the situation is that we live in a world full of all kinds of people, and some people simply suck. We really need to be careful as we set up the rules of the world in which we live to not /encourage/ these people to suck more, to suck harder, and to suck in ways that get in our way.
Note: I'm not saying everyone sucks, and I'm not saying /most/ people suck, but only that there exist people who do, in fact, suck, and they are going to be the people who are willing to take a seemingly sad/painful job with a low salary whose only perk seems to be getting to have a form of sexual control over an unwilling constituency.
And, before you even go there, we cannot just filter these people well: we've already found a TSA agent who was apparently so bad he is now a convicted child molester). That guy didn't just suck, he was /stupid/: most people taking advantage of this system will stick to what they can get away with inside of the bureaucracy rather than also messing with children at home.
Maybe you still don't care... maybe you think I and anyone in this discussion are still just being uptight: that we should not care that the screener is enjoying it, that we are turning someone else's flaw into our own issue. To that I say: these broken incentives also undermine the benefit. Even if you believe a system is capable of working, if that very system is wasting time getting off it is not protecting the people. Again, /you/ may be enlightened, but it is equally important that the other people in the situation are. These people are now easy targets for terrorists: find one of them, and then use a confident ugly person (maybe me) to smuggle what you need into the airport.
Think about it... even if only one out of a hundred people in the TSA suck, or one in a thousand, maybe just a handful that suck really bad, that is a serious issue: to our freedoms, and even our safety. It isn't the government seeing us (all of us: you, your spouse, and your children) naked, it is "Craig the TSA screener", and it will still just be Craig when he tells you to prepare for your family to prepare for their "enhanced putdowns".
(This was all seriously typed on my iPhone in a coffee shop, and was partially motivated by a question to the OperationGrabAss subreddit regarding "how to respond to someone who thinks nudity should be ok", which is why I went into the number of argument levels that I did).