In the last little while there has been an uproar over the TSA and security screening techniques at airports. There is a battle being waged (it has been raging for milennia, but you mightn't have noticed), and we are losing.
Who's this 'we' I speak of, you ask? Well, it's you, and me. The little people. The little people who make the World go around. You know, IMPORTANT people. We represent the first half of the title of this diary, which has a source below the fold and is the inspiration for this diary.
Of course, a battle can't be fought with only one protagonist, so who are we up against? Yes, you spotted it. Material interests. Now, this has been going on forever, this war. The fight between doing what is right, and what is profitable, is delineated (literally) in this battle as 'The Bottom Line'.
This 'Bottom Line' either blurs or sharpens according to the direction you approach it. From our side of the line, it looks blurry and from our point of view is sustainable with some give and take, but from the other side there is no leeway. The line is razor sharp.
"Jeebus in a backscatter x-ray machine! Get to your point, Clive!"
OK, OK... My point is, as always - follow the money. The TSA and staff are not the true foe in this brouhaha.
The Moral Principle and the Material Interest
A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.
"Down, you base thing!" thundered the Moral Principle, "and let me pass over you!"
The Material Interest merely looked in the other's eyes without saying anything.
"Ah," said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, "let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed."
The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare.
"In order to avoid a conflict," the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, "I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me."
Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. "I don't think you are very good walking," it said. "I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water."
It occurred that way.
Ambrose Bierce, in:
FANTASTIC FABLES
BY AMBROSE BIERCE
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press 1899
It occurred that way, then. It is occurring that way now. And it will occur that way in the future unless something snaps...
Take a look at Europe. Right now.
Cross-posted from Writing in the Raw
UPDATE - If you thought that these machines were limited to airports, think again...
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
"This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever," says Reiss.
[...]
The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.
It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)
"It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans]," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. "But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable."
The article is long, but well written.