On that note, who says only two sides can play the "think of the children" card? To demonstrate otherwise, I'm going to make a third side which says that naked children aren't inherently that big a deal, and that greater harm comes from the implicit sexualization of children, and the paranoia about sexual predators that it causes. I don't really mind backscatter machines in airports; I find them funny and entertaining, if only for the vaguely Caramelldansen-like hands-above-the-head pose they had me assume last time I went through one.
What does bother me is how every time there's a sensational incident -- a terrorist attack, or someone getting kidnapped, or whatever -- people start screaming for someone in the government to DO SOMETHING!!1, and we end up spending an inordinate amount of time and resources guarding against something that happened once and isn't too likely to happen again. Smart terrorists would stay the hell away from airports; they'd get a higher marginal return on their efforts if they went for easier targets like sports stadiums or crowded subways. And if that starts happening, what are we going to do? Put backscatter machines and security guards everywhere? Completely sacrifice all privacy to assuage our fears about the most unlikely events, while neglecting the real killers, like car crashes and cancer?
So to hell with it. Go ahead and make me remove my shoes at the airport and strike a ridiculous pose in a backscatter machine; I'll just laugh it off. What worries me is the preposterous irrationality, and where it'll lead if we give it free rein for long enough. Won't somebody please think of the children?
> people start screaming for someone in the government
> to DO SOMETHING!!1,
This may have been the case with 9/11, but I didn't see anyone screaming at governments to 'DO SOMETHING!!11' the last couple of times that things happened (underpants bomber, shoe bomber, liquid explosives conspiracy, etc). If anything politicians and officials have been proactive (in the sense of being reactive before their bosses -- the general public -- hound them to be reactive).
I take from what you say as touching on something I've often thought, we're treating the symptoms of an example problem as though it was an epidemic. I think that there are two sides to the security theater, what they show, and what they don't. I think that these devices will catch people sure, and make a great number of people like yourself sort of a comfortable indifferent, but I do believe that there is indeed a total package of risk management, and these public faces of the effort is just the tip of the iceberg. The evidence I have of this is when I went to Mexico one time and my significant other bought some kind of pill with my card. They could care less about me at the border, they went for the exact pocket of her purse. It took a matter of minutes, and we were on our way. I have some theories about how they might have done it, and I'm sure it was simple, but it is by no means obvious (maybe my CC info? the way she carried herself?) exactly how it was done.
