Congressman: Naked Body Scanners Are Just About Harassing Passengers

From http://www.prisonplanet.com/congressman-naked-body-scanners-are-just-about-harassing-passengers.html

Congressman: Naked Body Scanners Are Just About Harassing Passengers

Dangerous and invasive radiation x-ray devices labeled stupid and pointless by experts

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, February 5, 2010

More prominent public figures have slammed the slap-dash introduction of invasive naked body scanners at airports, with Congressmen and security experts labeling them a stupid and pointless measure that does nothing but harass innocent travelers.
The likelihood of an amendment that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress back in June preventing the TSA from using body scanners as a primary search method getting Senate support has been bolstered after a major international radiation safety group warned that the devices increased the risk of cancer and birth defects and should not be used on pregnant women and children.
Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson slammed the hasty introduction of the scanners yesterday as nothing more than an example of security theatre that doesn’t even counter any supposed threat.
“I think we’ve gone way overboard,” Peterson told the Minneapolis Post. “I think a lot of what goes on at the airport is for show. It’s almost like we’re harassing passengers so they feel better.”

Peterson pointed out that every time an alleged terror attack is foiled, the terrorists simply change their tactics, meaning the measures introduced as a response only inconvenience innocent people and do nothing to make anyone safer.
“We can’t keep fixing the last thing that happened, we have to fix the problems at the start,” Peterson, a former pilot, said. “We can’t be reacting to the last thing, and spending a lot of money, because then the terrorists are winning.”
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Peterson’s condemnation of the scanners was echoed by prominent security analyst Bruce Schneier, who warned that Congress was “Preparing to spend a “stupid” amount of money in an effort to fix a problem that isn’t broken in an effort to solve an unsolvable problem.”
“Assuming these machines are perfect, at best they force the bad guys to make a minor change in their tactics or targets,” Schneier said, adding, “This is stupid, the terrorists are just going to do something else.”
Schneier points to the example of a suicide bomber who recently attempted to kill a Saudi Prince by inserting explosives in his rectum, a method that would not have been detected by the naked body scanners. Indeed, other security experts agree that such scanners would not even have stopped the incident that has been exploited to justify their widespread introduction – the Christmas Day underwear bomber.

Despite the ceaseless drone of zombies insisting they will endure any humiliation imaginable to ensure their “safety” when flying, Schneier highlighted the fact that short of “closing all the airports and bulldozing the runways,” such perfect security did not and could never exist.
Schneier cited the example of making people remove their shoes as another pointless security measure that achieves nothing apart from harassing passengers.
If authorities in the United States follow the example of Britain in making it compulsory to go through the scanners in order to board a plane, they should prepare themselves for a cascade of lawsuits. Legal history in North America has established that strip-searches of innocent people are a fundamental violation of human rights, especially when conducted by a member of the opposite sex, and there are a plethora of successful cases to prove this fact.