Today, as I went through security at Boston-Logan airport, I took the path least traveled by opting out of the scanning system and receiving a full pat down from a man named Bill with a thick Boston accent. I’ve been patted down a dozen times since the press got their hands on this late last year. The pat down was huge as it was the patriotic thing to do and something that we should all do to get those scanners out of airports. As the 200+ people ahead of me were divided up between different lines, I watched as each person slowly removed their shoes and casual travelers forgot to take out loose change and remove belts (seriously people, why do you not have this down yet?) and then one by one, they entered the Backscatter machine, raised their arms up and received a fully nude body scan.
We know the TSA agents make jokes about our nude photos and we know that, in many cases, those images are being stored and distributed and we’ve seen first hand the “groping” to our babies and ignorance to those with pacemakers, prosthetic legs and those in wheelchairs. We’ve seen the practical jokes played by women who decided to only wear bikinis under trench coats for their security scan and we’ve spent hours listening to experts on cable news networks tell us about the program, shout out monetary costs for these machines and our rights as Americans versus the growing risk of terrorism.
After all of this and after 6 months of ignoring real news, you no longer hear of these machines and I was one of 200 people to opt out. In fact, from 5AM to 10:30AM, I was the first person flying out of Terminal A to request an opt-out according to Bill.
I’m starting to figure out how this works. If you make a decision that people don’t like, simply ignore the masses until they stop caring. Sure, there will be a few nuts out there like me who insist on being self-riteous and never forgetting 9/11 and never forgetting Katrina and not buying an SUV just because gas is cheap this month but, most of us just move on to whatever is new.
I agree that the crisis in Japan is far larger of an issue than nude scanners in airports but damn, you guys were really up in arms over this. The issue was even making its way to tech blogs and that’s when you know things are getting crazy. I don’t know why we are this way. The point of being forced to pick a side about naked body scanners will help you internalize the reality of what’s going on and hopefully, once the press junket ends, we all still continue fighting for what’s right. Instead, we forget that this was ever a problem and walk through the scanners willingly.
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Often, I’m emailed by people asking me to weigh in on real world things like Japan or Haiti or various political battles. I don’t do this here on the blog or even via Twitter. I won’t engage in the conversation or pop culture because that tweet is stale and worthless within 2-6 weeks.
Dipping my toes into a conversation about the next popular conversation point brings me Google traffic and it fades as soon as I decide my stance on it. I guess we’re all talking heads now who simply hear that you can no longer burn tires and screaming as loud as we can about the issue before ever reading a newspaper or doing research. Once everyone stops talking about it, we move on and blindly take our tires to the recycling site nearby.
It’s an odd way of living.
I’m going to continue opting out of the program of having my photos beamed to two people in a back room just so I can fly on an airplane. I wish others would take a stand on these issues or at least be activated on what they feel passionate about. Take a stand for something. I deal with a lot of hate but I speak on what I believe in and what matters only after doing my research and making an informed decision after the talking heads run out of breath and that’s how I’ll continue to live.
Thanks for reading.