ProPublica: Almost half of Americans oppose scanners

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Coffee, Tea or Cancer? Almost Half of Americans Oppose X-ray Body Scanners


Even if X-ray body scanners would prevent terrorists from smuggling explosives onto planes, nearly half of Americans still oppose using them because they could cause a few people to eventually develop cancer, according to a new Harris Interactive poll conducted online for ProPublica.
Slightly more than third of Americans supported using the scanners, while almost a fifth were unsure.

Sooo, as we know, it's all about what you ask and how you ask it.
I'm still disappointed that people don't care all that much about the privacy issue.

 

I know. This, to me, is the bigger issue. But "cancer" is just as much a trigger word as "terrorist."

And if it were to come out one day that no, the scanners don't cause cancer and never will, then we'll be left with yet another piece of propaganda the TSA will use -- "see, no big deal; now you have no reason not to go through the scanner."

The question of acquiescence, of blind obedience to authority -- that's the more important point to me. Of course I want us to use every bit of ammo we can, and if health concerns are part of that ammo, fine. But it's leaving out the bigger picture.

 

And I left a comment to that effect at the article.

 

Agreed. And cancer is something that is in our everyday lives, terrorism isn't.

Also agreed. We would still have the privacy argument, and less accessible to the general public, the legal argument (violating the 4th amendment & even laws on administrative searches)

And honestly, this is the point that I truly don't understand. What happened to that fighting spirit? Are people that uninformed? Do they not understand the consequences of blind obedience? Do they not care? Are they too tired? Too many people on prozac? Schools not doing their jobs? All of the above? None of the above?

I'm not asking rhetorically, I really don't understand why there isn't more of an outrage.

 

People don't care as long as they can get on the plane and take their long-planned for vacation or to their next business meeting. Until, of course, a grope in a private room happens to them.

 

Sunny Goth, believe me, I've also asked those questions umpteen times. But my friends don't get it. Even lawyers -- lawyers, for god's sake, who are supposed to understand the implications of the law at least, since it's apparently too much to ask them to understand the implications of history -- just shrug it off. As Doober points out, the sentiment is "just get me to my flight on time."

From childhood I've known that most people aren't willing to stand up for principle. Well, I guess my 10-year-old self wasn't so stupid after all.

 

In an election 50% vs. 33% is considered a large landslide. This is a significant margin & an indication that that we are winning.

 

I'll take any note of optimism I can find. Okay, so we're winning the PR battle. Now the question is what's going to be done about it?

 

A lot of my friends are like that too. I've convinced some of them, but a lot of them on a fundamental level, don't understand. And yeah, Doober's right, I think a lot of people don't want to be inconvenienced.

At least my colleagues - many of them lawyers, think the way I do. Good thing I chose to be a privacy advocate!! We're all on the same page (more or less).

I know the feeling. My 10-year-old self had a strong sense of justice and principle. I haven't changed much in that regard.

 

PR is most important when people are pursuing political goals, namely that of attaining or retaining office. Luckily for us, we're approaching an election year and the campaigns have already begun ramping up.

It's been said that the tools for preserving liberty are contained within four boxes: Soap, Ballot, Jury and Ammo, and they are to be opened in that order.

We've certainly been making good use of the soapbox, and this is proof. The PR tide is turning in the people's favour. Next up: the ballot box. It's a twofold approach - first, we need presidential hopefuls to understand that TSA is a make-or-break issue for their campaigns. Ignoring it is done at their peril, as is taking the wrong position. And as far as the people are concerned, yes, there IS a right and a wrong answer to the question. Second, voters themselves must be informed of who stands where on TSA and reminded that "Voting NO on safety is voting YES on freedom!"

The hardest part of that will be getting people to actually commit to defending a principle over a practicality when it's actually time to act.

 

Sunny Goth, you'll like this -- a comment from that Pro Publica article:

And there you have it! Privacy schmivacy!

 

Okay, you made me laugh.

 

P.S. Am urging TUG members to go over and post comments at that ABC story about the 3 grandmothers getting strip-searched. Every time I try to post a comment directly answering Mr. Know-It-All physician "Minorkey1" and directing him to TUG -- even without using the URL, without using an actual link -- my comment isn't allowed to appear. It might appear for a minute, then it disappears. I don't know what's going on with the moderator over there.

 

Lisa,

I created a Blogspot blog called Travel Security Tracker, at http://travelsecuritytracker.blogspot.com

If you and Fisher1949 want to send me copies of the lists (or I can just copy them from TUG here), I can post them up there and maybe have a way around whatever is getting in the way of TUG links at ABC.

If it still fails, then we'll pretty much know we have a mod with an agenda on our hands. Funny, feels like I've been down that road once before...

 

Do you mean you want me to send you the Word doc? It's about 54 pages at this point. I can email it to you if you PM me your private email address. Or you can just take it from TUG: Master Lists of TSA Abuses and Crimes.

 

Was able to post a comment pointing to TUG without hyperlink. I took a screenshot (thanks to another set of corrupt moderators for teaching me the importance of backing up my posts) to prove it went through, just for safekeeping.

 

Yes, I saw it. Well, all I can say is you're allowed to post a link to TUG; I'm not.

I'll try again later tonight. Maybe the mod will change in the meantime.

 

The postings at TUG are constructed to drive traffic to TUG, and they are converted from Word to HTML format to make them easier to view -- no need for Word, Word Viewer, etc.. There are a couple other sites that would love dearly to wrest these out of our control (they've already tried ). We do not want to dilute the effort by posting them all over.

If they are censoring references to TUG, I'd suggest you experiment with tinyurl.com to to see if you can get past the censors.

At some sites, links are simply anathema and they really go out of their way to block them in any format -- Deseret News is a great example of bozos who think them internet ends with them.

 

Mike, I first tried a tinyurl link. Didn't post.

Then I typed "Travel Underground" and said it was a "dot org domain name." Didn't post.

Then I commented that it was simply "Travel Underground" and said I didn't understand what was going on with ABC's moderation of the thread. Didn't post.

Then I gave up.

But CW's comment got through!

 

Thinking it over, you may have been oh-so-close with your third attempt and they may have refused it because you committed the cardinal sin of questioning the site's moderation practices. I know of at least one site (no, not the one you're thinking of) where people have been outright permabanned at the first offense for challenging moderation, so some sites apparently think moderation is Serious Business(TM).

Of course it's also possible that they were a rookie mod (not sure what's allowed and what's not), sexist (your username is clearly female whereas mine is gender-ambiguous) or just off their mod-meds.

One thing you can try is suggesting that MinovskyMonkey1 or whatever his name is do a Google search for "master list of tsa abuses". We're the first result, you're not posting any direct link, and there's no reasonable way of construing it as "member poaching" or spamming.