By way of Oleg Volk, I happened to come across further evidence that we, as a society, are more or less screwed. This article is a disturbing read from beginning to end, but I will try and highlight some of the points that jumped out and caught my eye:

Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport. Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

Right. So remind me to go out of my way to not fly out of any of those airports. Through them would be ok, since I would not have to go through security again, but departing... nyet.

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person's gender. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," Schear said.

So, you are basically looking at a black-and-white image of the person, in the buck-assed nude. Great. Oh, sure, they are going to "delete" them... like there is no way around an automatic deletion system, or, God save us, the person doing the deleting will not ever "forget" if a 34D-24-36 walks through...

The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin, said Peter Siegel, a senior scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "You probably could find very common materials that you could wrap around you that would effectively obscure things," Siegel said.

... Wait a second - you are, more or less, saying this entire system is pretty much useless, right? Yeah, because the government/TSA/police departments have never subjugated the American populace to embarassing, imposing, and/or intrusive systems that, in the end, served no verifiable purpose. Of course not.

Stepping into the 9-foot-tall glass booth, Eileen Reardon of Baltimore looked startled when an electronic glass door slid around the outside of the machine to create the image of her body. "Some of this stuff seems a little crazy," Reardon said, "but in this day and age, you have to go along with it."

(Emphasis mine.) What, like we have to "go along with" the police randomly stopping people and demanding papers, simply because they happen to be in a certain neighborhood? "But that was Nazi Germany! That would never happen here in the good old US of A!" you say... Well, I beg to differ.

Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down. Schear, the Baltimore security director, said only 4% of passengers decline. In Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where scanners have been tested since last year as an alternative to pat-downs, 90% of passengers choose to be scanned, the TSA says.

Alright, so they give you an "option", like that is somehow supposed to make you feel better: You can either face having your birthday suit scrutinized by God-alone-knows-whom behind some screen somewhere, or you can be groped by... well... God-alone-knows-whom again, only this time, you get to see his/her face. Kind of reminds me of being mugged by two separate guys, but the second one mailing you a thank-you card. Uhm. Yeah. Can anyone say, "Hobson's Choice"?

You know, I can almost understand the government trying to exert more control over and surveillance of its people... it is, after all, what governments do. But I just cannot wrap my head around the people, the selfsame people who should be controlling the government and not the other way around, so willingly going along with it.

Of course, it was not too long ago that people willingly walked into gas chambers and ovens...