Creep

[sabotabby]

Remember when no one wanted to go through the porno scanners because they cause cancer and the TSA wanks to the pictures?

We all just go through them now. They're still just as potentially carcinogenic and the TSA still faps to it, but we all just accept it.

Comments

[mycrazyhair.livejournal.com]

I still request the patdown.

[kakodaimon.livejournal.com]

Same, although patdowns are really hard for me. I don't think anyone knows that the images ever get deleted, either -- why would they?

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I get the pat down a lot. I think I'm just that cute.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Fifthed. I ask for the patdown every time.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

At Newark, they make a point of stepping on your shoeless toes "by accident" every time you ask for a patdown.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I try to avoid them, if I can. But, mostly I just live with it, yup.

[jvmatucha.livejournal.com]

I don't. I ask for the pat downs.

My ex, who's in the medical field, told me those things haven't been tested at all for the kind of radiation they put out, and that they're off the scale for being apotential health hazard. Sure, she was semi-hypochondrial, but better safe than sorry.

She also said the ones most likely to be affected by the detrimental health hazards are the TSA workers.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

I haven't flown since 1979, so I'm not overly concerned about the airport scanners, but I go through the ones in government buildings all the time; I even stopped carrying my Swiss Army knife because it was too much of a pain to have to hide it in the bushes before I went into a federal building downtown.

So how do these scanners compare with the TSA scanners? Anyone know?

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I have a big steel rod in my leg, so I always set off the metal-detector gates and get the full patdown - so I get the booth when I can, but even then I often get the patdown anyway, or the X-ray my wallet, or something. I also seem to be "selected for random examination" far more than is my due; it seems to happen about one-third of the time I travel. It's rather strange because I look like a law-and-order type (at least I think I do).

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

I opted for the pat-down for a while but then took the coward's way and started to go through. Though the last time I flew I got sent through the old-school metal detectors. I really want to start taking the train to my mother's but it takes over 24 hours to get there and if you don't book five months in advance the little train roomlettes are very expensive. Sadness.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Last I checked, I decided the radiation wasn't that big a deal--but once Fall starts, I may be flying more like once per month than the previous once or twice per year, so your post was well timed & I'm looking into the hazard issue again.

Researching this online, I'm annoyed by both the "we don't know it's safe, so it's dangerous!" and the "we don't know it's not unsafe, so it's safe!" To me, the former is often a sure sign of fear-mongering; but when it's paired with the latter, that's different. Backscatter x-ray may be a situation, as with nutrition, where there really is no conclusive answer yet & we just have to make the best personal bet we can. I often get limited pat-downs even after the scan--I think it's because the picture doesn't map my flabby & fat thighs well--so that's a point on the side of just getting a total pat-down to begin with.

I'm certainly willing to believe radiation may be used with foolish abandon: I'm just old enough that my older sisters told me about the x-ray machines in every shoe store, so you could actually see the fit of the shoe, which bored kids used over and over and over while parents shopped or paid. OTOH, that didn't seem to have any wave of cancer associated with it, unlike other careless uses of radiation, from watch dials to doctors/researchers carrying unshielded radium when it was first used for cancer treatment.

It looks as if millimeter-wave scanners may be much safer-- Do you know anything about how to tell which machine is being used or any way to work for adoption of mm-w machines?

A troubling conundrum.

OTOH, even when I had a much more wankable body, my attitude has been, wank away. I'm odd that way, I know.

But "fap" seems to me a very ugly word--am I alone in this? (Our family term, oddly enough, is "thank the pig.")

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

I really could not care less if somebody wants to get their jollies to a scan of me... (not that they would!)

The cancer thing is a bit more worrying, though...

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

"Fap" is a word that I find really creepy too.

[sabotabby]

People who masturbate to airport scans taken in a situation where consent can't be freely given are creepy tho.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

True. It's like the word and the situation really deserve each other in their gross creepiness.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Yes! But womzilla started using it as the general term & says he thinks it's cute. We agree to disagree, just as we do about pugs, which I think are cute and he thinks are ugly. Just don't use the term for or around me, I said.

But further discussion makes me wonder if employees really can wank to airport scans. I actually worked that kind of airport security in the 1980s, and unless there's a way to save images and bring them home--which could be, but I'd be surprised--it seems impossible. Making fun of the images seems a lot, lot more likely. And that would bother me, in a way that their thanking the pig wouldn't, until I remind myself that that's giving a supposed act by a stranger too much power over me.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

It's just the TSA that does this, right? I can't remember a single time I've been in an airport and had to go through a scanner or get patdowns, I've only just gone through metal detectors and people usually only get patted down on those if the detector beeps. I've only travelled within Europe but I'd like to start going to other continents soon, so I feel like I should know if this is just in North America or if they do this on other contients as well. Or have been lied to and are those metal detectors not actual metal detectors?

[sabotabby]

No, you can tell the porno scanners from metal detectors. They are very obvious. And it's just an American thing as far as I know; other countries still have their dignity.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

Ah, thankfully. I'll just avoid going to the US until they get rid of the porno scanners. I'd feel really uncomfortable with that (or having to be patted) and I don't understand how they'd be more effective than x-raying handbags and getting people to go through a metal detector.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

Remember how when Bush junior was president the dems were all up in arms about state surveillance and military spending?

Those only increased under Obama, but somehow they're not related to the party in power anymore.