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Following John Tyner's rebellion last week - Don't touch my junk! - against the ever-invasive requirements of fighting terrorists on commercial airlines, protests are planned in airports around the US, just in time for the holiday season around Thanksgiving.
In an attempt to demonstrate the excessive invasiveness of the current methods of detecting bombs possibly travelling on people, the groups (who met on the internet, but will protest in person) intend to eschew the comparatively fast, but more revealing Advanced Imaging Technology scanners for the slower 'enhanced' pat-down.
I have to say I don't get the logic. They appear to be demanding to be ravished in person by an unattractive troll, rather than have a snap of them in the nuddy (for this is what the images comprise, though the faces at least are blurred) being viewed by an unattractive troll.
Or as the American Civil Liberties Union legislative council Chris Calabrese puts it, "People are being groped at American airports."
To some segments of the population this will come, no doubt, under the category of 'News You Can Use'.
I guess the protesters' view is that a digital image lasts a lot longer than a ritualised grope, no matter how 'enhanced'. And yes, the machines can keep images, despite what Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano has said.
More likely they just feel like this is the last straw, the latest indignity that the American traveller has been subjected to under the premise of the terrorists not winning.
Taking the plane in the US, you often feel - in the curtailment of normal activities, and the time wasted - that they have at the very least managed a psychological victory. Flying, which was once only mildly unpleasant, is now irritating in the extreme.
As I pull up to the terminal at JFK Airport in New York, I know that several things are about to occur. The experience will have all the discreet charm and elegance that taking a bus used to have.
Someone will be unpleasant within the cramped and disagreeable confines of the invariably 'oversold' flight.
The security lines will be long.
The procedure will be awkward.
And, bending down to denude myself of my footwear, I will think, "@#$% Richard Reed."
Richard Reed was the ill-fated 'shoe bomber', the man who failed at his appointed task of killing innocents, but succeeded in creating multiples of the very quality that Americans dislike in their public lives: inconvenience.
Okay. Now I get it.
That's why these protesters are opting for the 'enhanced' pat-down. They want to fight hyper-scrutiny with inconvenience. The system will choke and break down. Or Transport Security Administration will back down, and find a less invasive option.
Or these protesters will be attacked by their fellow passengers who are desperate to reach their destinations by Thanksgiving Day, which is the American version of Christmas.
Around two million people fly the day before Thanksgiving. Their state of mind can be best described as something rather short of accommodating.
Such are the fully-intended by-products of terror: an erosion of civility and trust amongst non-combatants, a rise in chaos, and a growing attraction for what is perceived as orderly.
Read more Tim Wilson opinion.
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