Avoid Gate Grope, Become a ‘Trusted Traveler’
May 18th, 2011Via: USA Today:
Upset with being frisked and having a naked image taken of you at airports?
Increasingly, stringent air security screening methods such as these are under question. And they’re not just being questioned by travelers upset at being groped. A consensus is building among the airline industry, business and leisure travel groups and even top government officials that something needs to change.
The alternative they’re looking to: traveler verification systems akin to trusted traveler programs, in which people’s backgrounds are checked beforehand, and they verify who they are when they get ready to board a flight.
The Transportation Security Administration and airlines already are testing a verification program for airline crews, which could end aggressive screening of them. It’s time, airlines around the world say, that similar programs — and tiered programs — should be extended to trusted or known travelers.
Now I get it (please bear with me, all you smart folks who already saw this): the plan is simple: institute ludicrously unpleasant measures to ensure “security” — like groping, like detrimental levels of radiation — then let people bitch about it for a few years till they’re good an sick of it, and then — TA DA! — offer an option that’s a “huge relief” for us all: embedded biochips. “Okay, everybody with a biochip, just walk thru the SUPER-LOW RADIATION scanner; everybody else, take your pick of having your genitals massaged by a stranger, or taking yet another dose of cancer-causing radiation.”
Slam dunk.