TSA Full Body Scanners: Congress Votes to Stop Stripping Americans Of Their Privacy

Passing through airport security can be more intimate than a successful first date, but the Rapiscan backscatter X-ray body-scanners that leave nothing to the imagination are now going the way of the Dreamliner.

The 2009 Detroit Christmas underpants bomber pushed the TSA to start scanning nudes. Even though that Nigerian Al-Qaedan would never have gotten on the plane in the first place if his passport had been checked, the executive branch decided to annex more of your person just in case.

The effectiveness of these sexually-charged machines was dubious. One man posted a 2,000,000-hit YouTube video of him passing through scanners across the country whilst concealing a suspicious metal object under his arm. The TSA response to this popular video dismissed the “crude attempt” of “some guy." Further, the TSA justified their machines elsewhere, saying that the admittedly revealing images were never stored and could only be viewed by the screener — a setup that seems to work well for 4chan.

Oddly, we have Congress to thank for removing these electro-strippers from airports. In a rare, bipartisan move to protect the privacy of citizens, the legislature swung their mighty regulatory hammer down on the TSA and its machinists, making it prohibitively difficult to abide by the law and continue to use the machines.

Nevertheless, full-body scanners are not gone forever. You will no longer be subject to Rapiscan’s potentially harmful x-rays, but rather to L-3’s safer millimeter radio waves. Your body will no longer be modeled and ogled but simply traced and highlighted for further review.

But weep ye not for the $180,000 disrobers. The scanners should find good homes in prisons or military bases — actual government locations and not private transportation hubs.