I just flew recently, and had to walk through the X-ray scan machine. (Stand with your legs apart, socks on the yellow footprints, raise arms in an X shape).I recall about a year or two ago, when there was talk of these new machines being introduced, people complained a lot about the invasion of privacy. And they worried a lot about the images being spread on the internet, like so many other kinds of porn.
But since then, I havent heard a single word about those images.
Now, we all know rule #34: " if you can imagine it, it’s been porn-o-fied and there’s a website for it."
So what’s up? Did rule #34 get broken, or did this really happen?
Is my naked x-ray floating around the web somewhere? (And if so, I feel sorry for the poor guy who sees it! )
I never quite understood why any ever thought these would be sexy, even the occasional one that happened to be of a good looking person. I mean, sure, they are pictures of people looking sort of naked, but not like a real naked person does. These days you can get to much nicer pictures of genuinely naked, good-looking people, and even such people doing sexy things, with a couple of mouse clicks.
So, what type of scanners do they use? I just flew last month but I had my daughter with me and they directed us to go through metal detectors while everyone else was going through what I figured were the nudie scanners. Apparently not, but what are the other scanners?
Think about it- how many people at the airport do you really want to see naked? For me that number would be close to zero. As a straight guy, I’m not into seeing other naked dudes, and far too many women would be too old, too young, too fat, too dumpy looking to really get my interest. Folks like to say “we’re all beautiful in our own way” but that’s just a really nice way of saying we’re all fugly as hell.
OP…I flew about six times after the scanners were introduced and I only went through one (at LAX). The other ones were inactive or in the case of one at O’Hare in Chicago, it was being worked on while I was going through the line.
This is was a poor idea that they are seemingly phasing out as it simply wouldn’t have dome what they hoped that it would do for a reasonable cost.
They’re the same scanners as before.* What changed is they replaced a screener in a locked room who looked at the images and decided if a search was necessary with a computer that makes that determination and just shows the screener at the checkpoint a generic figure marked with the body locations to search. If you turn around after going through you’ll see it.
*One of the same scanners, actually. There were two, but the other couldn’t get its software to convert what it detected into the gingerbread cookie images TSA wanted. The good thing is that that version dosed you with a small amount of radiation (although much less than you’d get from the flight itself).
So what was the machine I stood in last week at Newark Airport?
It was a cylindrical “room” made of glass, about 8 feet tall. I stood in the middle, put my shoeless feet on the yellow footprints, raised my arms to an X shape, and the semi-circular “walls” of the device rotated 90 (or 180?) degrees around me. It took about 2 seconds, and as soon as the walls returned to their original locations, I walked out of the room, where, 2 steps away, a TSA guy patted me down. Then I picked up my shoes and carry-on luggage off the conveyor belt , and it was all over.
If I wasn’t being X-rayed, what was the cylindrical device? An MRI brain scan? A virtual-reality anal probe? A Vulcan mind-meld?
Me, well… there was that one blonde over at Gate 14, ya know…
But rule #34 doesn’t apply to people who , in your words, “think about it”. Rule #34 is for the weirdos, innit?
And gee whiz, after an exhausting day traveling, I was almost hoping I could be somebody’s porn star or something…
on edit : I see that Scuirophobic answered my question 12 minutes ago. I’m a slow typer…
My only comment is when me and the family flew through LAX we were in the scanner less than 30 seconds each. Some 19 year old chippie was in there at least 3 minutes. Surprised TSA didn’t make her do jumping jacks in there.
There are a ton of stories like this. Widespread, if antecdotal, evidence suggests that attractive people (of either gender) do indeed receive an inordinate amount of attention at the body scan station. Including having their images passed around like porn.
You are going through a millimeter wave imager. You know how a CAT scan machine works? It directs an X-ray beam at you from various angles and a computer uses the absorption info to create a 3D image of your insides. This is the same idea, only it uses microwaves instead of X-rays, and uses reflected radiation instead of absorbed. Basically, a radar gun is fired at you from many angles, and a computer uses the reflection data to construct an image of you under your clothes. (The radar penetrates through the cloth.)
Personally, I’ve never gone through one of the machines, and don’t plan to. (You can “opt out” and get yourself patted down instead, and as long as you leave an extra 10-20 minutes at the airport, this works fine.) I have no desire to regularly walk in front of a microwave transmitter at close range. It’s not ionizing radiation, but it’s high-energy photons nevertheless. I don’t trust the government’s soothing assurances of safety, because they have a decided conflict of interest there. It would be easy enough for them to slightly cook the numbers so they come out the way they want them to, e.g. assume the microwaves are absorbed throughout the body instead of in the first few mm, and so forth. Their safety record with respect to, say, the radiation from nuclear tests is not one to produce confidence.
Actually, I’m mystified by anyone who is more willing to stick his body parts into a microwave or X-ray cavity than to have a stranger feel him up to see if he’s carrying a weapon.
I would also imagine even attractive women wouldn’t be as nice. Their boobs are squished down by bras and shirts, and you’ll see underwire, etc marks. The belts and waistbands are compressing the waists.
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