Made it through Atlanta security without getting the obligatory lecture about the safety of the full-body millimeter wave scan system that the TSA guy in San Diego told was now ‘mandatory’ to say to any one choosing to “opt out” of the aforementioned security screening. The woman at ATL just shouted “Male assist!” And told me to wait over there.
I am not surprised that the ‘mandatory’ recitation was only local to San Diego, and perhaps only to Terminal 2 (if not just that guy’s own crew, if indeed it was not his personal idea to tell me how much I’m helping the terrorists win by “opting out”). It underscores the arbitrary nature of power, and neither the reassurances of the safety of the electromagnetic rays which emit “no more radiation than you would get from a cell phone” nor the software which disguises possibly prurient info such as whether I hang right or left nor even the implied threat that he couldn’t say how long it would take to get someone to pat me down nor even the formerly humiliating fact of being patted down in public will deter me from “declining” the million dollar machines that made some rich lobbyist that much richer. I prefer any assault on liberty be literal and a spectacle for to be pondered rather than to have 100 GHz waves invisibly penetrate and violate my 4th Amendment rights.