Peep Show at SeaTac

            I’m old enough to remember when flying was fun.  I recall uncrowded planes with legroom and seats that reclined.  I remember young stewardess.  The airlines sometimes lost your bags and the meals were awful, but considering all the rest, you could put up with it.  When I fly today, they still lose my bags, but now I’m crammed into a cattle car so packed that I can’t move.  Legroom?  Forget it.  I’m worried I’ll die of a thrombosis.  Sometimes the airline offers a meal, but now you pay dearly for school cafeteria food.  Sleeping would be my best option, if the seat would recline.  I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but it soon will.  By late September, Seattle-Tacoma Airport will have full-body scanners.  Using low-dose radiation, these scanners allow Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents sitting in dark rooms to conduct virtual strip searches. 

          The TSA tells us not to worry, images are not that detailed, cannot be stored and will be immediately destroyed.  However one agent, Rolando Negrin, passed through the screener during a training session and afterwards was repeatedly teased about his small genitalia.  Negrin’s solution was to assault his co-workers.  Despite reassurances, images are not always destroyed.  Scan images of an Indian film star were copied and passed about by agents at Heathrow Airport in London.     

          While I’m confident that no one would get turned on seeing a full-body scan of me or circulate the image, if they can see Negrin’s genitals they could see way too much of my wife.  I may be old fashioned, but no man takes that kind of picture of my wife or daughter.