No. One of the most basic rights to privacy we have in any culture or any country is a right to basic modesty (i.e. to cover ourselves in clothing). It’s a right we grant even the most heinous of prisoners, and denial of that right is considered torture by international governing bodies. The fact that the person seeing you (whom you don’t know, and can never meet) *supposedly* doesn’t have any sexual feelings toward you doesn’t mitigate this right to privacy.

What’s even worse is that it’s an invasion of privacy that’s been shown not to work. Tests have demonstrated that these machines can fail to spot people concealing packages similar to the underwear bomber’s. By your logic, should the next step be required clothing removal to get on a plane? Maybe make you walk by a one-way mirror fully naked? I mean, *supposedly* the guy on the other side isn’t taking any sexual satisfaction from this; so that makes it okay, right?

Furthermore, there’ s the health aspect of it as well. When the pilots’ union issues a statement advising all pilots to avoid this kind of screening, that should be a warning indicator. Some commenters are quick to bring up the levels of radiation (“1/1000th of the levels of a cel-phone’s radiation”); but what they don’t bring up is that it’s a different kind of radiation. It’s an untested system that was rushed to market in an overtly aggressive display of security kabuki theater.

To me, this argument comes down to this. Assume for a moment we go back to pre-9/11 levels of security, and 1 in every 1,000,000 flights becomes the target of a terrorist attack (a very generous estimate; given how many flights there are a day, the odds should be much higher). Now, I will grant you this: being blown up in a plane is much worse than being sexually molested. But if the odds of dying in a plane crash are one in a million, but the odds of being molested come down to a coin-toss… I’m gonna have to place my bet on being blown up, thank you very much. I feel that the greater cumulative evil perpetrated by exposing children and rape/ abuse victims to this kind of treatment, just for the opportunity to travel, exceeds that of allowing terrorists to occasionally blow something up.

So walk through the scanner already! The person who views the scans doesn’t care what you look like, and won’t remember one minute later, when the next person walks through.

I try to be as caring as the next person, but I have to call this one just a lot of whining by a tiny minority. About as meaningful as those who refuse to fly because they are scared of heights.