TSA has a blog, and it's oh so "hip", "now" and "with it".
Travel Advice for Domesticated Turkeys: Stay away from humans
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Snow Globes: We are not in cahoots with the Heat Miser, but snow globes are not permitted in your carry-on luggage. They are sealed containers full of liquid that would have to be opened and destroyed to test. We’re not in the business of busting snow globes, so we suggest you place them in your checked baggage or mail them ahead of time.
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Travel Advice for Pilgrims: Leave your muskets at home and refrain from wearing clothing with large buckles.
All this from "Blogger Bob" of the "TSA Blog Team". Ready to hurl yet? But ... wait ... there's more!
Remember those pornoscopes that Mike Chertoff schlepped off to TSA? Blogger Bob sez they won't store the photos of your naughty bits, so chill!
TSA has not, will not and the machines cannot store images of passengers at airports. The equipment sent by the manufacturer to airports cannot store, transmit or print images and operators at airports do not have the capability to activate any such function.
Note that phrase: "at the airport." Let me rephrase that:
TSA has not, will not and the machines cannot store images of passengers at airports. The equipment sent by the manufacturer to airports cannot store, transmit or print images and operators at airports do not have the capability to activate any such function.
In other words, the images can and probably are being stored somewhere besides the airport. Probably being cross-indexed with the information the agency got about you when you bought your ticket.
And if you think about it, why wouldn't the information be saved?
If they're really trying to stop terrorism (sorry if your cranberry sauce came out your nose when I said that) and somebody's smuggling a bomb on in their underwear, wouldn't you want an image of that for evidence? And how are you going to link it to the would-be terrorist unless you've got a cross-index of image to passenger data?
Now of course, none of these little details about what happens to your personal centerfold is actually told to anyone ... national security you know, same reason why TSA's gotta look at those images of 13 year-olds nekkid!
Come to think about, what IS being done with the photographs of children? Deleted automatically? Never saved ... ever?
And, completely aside from the children issue, what about the images of adults, if they're so ho-hum, why have the reviewers in some backroom where they're doing Goddess knows what?
Let's try an experiment here. TSA can give people printouts of what their own personal scan shows. Also give them a picture and circulum vitae of the former McDonalds employees who will be checking them, or their children, out. Then let's see how many people want to use the Chertoff Pornosccope.