Don't touch my junk

A little over a week ago a traveler in California denied the TSA's use of a full body scanner at a security check point in a San Diego airport. Keep in mind that a traveler does have the right to refuse the scanner machine, but in return will have to be subject to a physical pat down which this specific traveler insisted was border line sexual harassment. Is an x-ray scanner that big of a deal?

The traveler, whose name was John Tyner suggested that if the TSA was not a government agency then their pat down would be considered sexual harassment and that type of harassment should not be an option for him to travel. I understand the rage against the machine idea and how nobody wants the government controlling our every move, but in this case I'm more concerned about the plane that I'm flying in turning into a weapon for a terrorist attack than an x-ray machine keeping my picture on file for a million years. Get over yourself.

In retrospect, all this guy had accomplish was a few hundred thousand hits on YouTube and a spectacle for other travellers to muse at while they slid through the scanner machine, got on their airplane and went on their merry way. Tyner, I suppose, was trying to make a statement about government control, but has he lost the memory of 911? Has he forgotten that America has quite a few enemies these days and the airways have been used in a terrorist act before? It's ridiculous to me, I just can't understand how someone can value safety and security so little.

Perhaps I have been brainwashed by the government. Perhaps I have been somehow lulled into a trance to believe that a mere x-ray scan device could stop a suspected terrorist from boarding my plane and subsequently save my life. What a novel idea. Catch ya' on the FLIPSIDE.