So there’s those new high-tech scanners that make a 3-D image of your naked body, right? I guess they’re coming to the local airport right now so I’m seeing discussion in the papers of whether such an invasion to personal privacy is worth it for that security. It sometimes seems like I am supposed to hold the opposite view considering all my other beliefs, but I really don’t consider those scanners all that bad. Sometimes I think that people are a little too reactionary when it comes to “Orwellian” stuff like this. In 1984 the fact that Big Brother Is Watching seemed much less evil to me than the fact that Big Brother was lying to the populace and suppressing thought and actively manipulating minds and torturing and all that. Now I’m not saying that the government should be tapping everyone’s phones and have flying cameras peering into their windows, but being scanned before you get on a plane does seem perfectly reasonable to me. I guess people consider this one of those situations where we’re on the slope and in danger of falling further, but it just doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

The only compelling argument against it I’ve seen is the people who say it wouldn’t really make things that much safer. But even then as someone who has been patted down and had his bags searched and all that, I’ll take the scans just for the expediency it seems to offer against our current system that also doesn’t work.

Of course, as always, my preferred method of making air travel safer would be to try to make a world where people don’t see blowing other people up as preferable to the lives they have to live. But that might be a bit more work.