Are New Airport Security Measures Actually Keeping Us Safer?

More and more questions about the effectiveness of full body scanners at airports.

"You take away box cutters and cork screws, they put explosives in their shoes. You take away shoes, and they put it in liquids. Take away liquids, and they put it in their underwear," said Bruce Schneier, a Minnesota-based security expert and author.

"Now they're putting in full-body scanners, so they're going to do something else."

Mr. Schneier is part of a group of experts who question the efficacy of security measures implemented at airports in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. They argue that the bulk of the tactics adopted by governments simply clog security lines, infringe upon civil liberties and do very little to guard against future threats. In fact, Mr. Schneier and other critics say many of the measures, including the most recent ones implemented after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit, are simply adopted to create a sense of security that something is being done in response to these new threats, but actually do very little to enhance safety.

"This is a stupid game and we should stop doing it," Mr. Schneier said.

What on Earth is AANR Thinking?

In one of the most bizarre public relations moves in recent memory, AANR has endorsed the government's use of full body scanners at airports.

“Put this issue in its proper perspective,” recommends AANR Executive Director Erich Schuttauf. “A trained security professional in a remote monitoring station takes a few seconds discreetly screening passengers to be sure they’re only bringing what nature gave them aboard. In exchange for safer skies, AANR believes it’s completely worth it. But you don’t have to be a nudist to agree these measures are based on common sense.”

No, these measures are based on FEAR, and have nothing to do with common sense. In addition, this worldwide move to body scanners could be nothing but a huge scam, designed more as a means to appease the traveling public than as a truly effective security measure.

Doesn't Schuttauf realize that endorsing the government's intrusion into personal privacy is contrary to nudist interests? The same power the government is wielding to strip off your clothes can also be used against nude beaches, nude resorts and clubs, and even nudity in the home.

As a nudist, I have no problem with people seeing my naked body, but that's not the issue here. What is happening day-by-day is a gradual erosion of our personal freedoms, willingly sacrificed to a government which declares its primary purpose for existence is to keep us all safe. If they can look under your clothes, they can look inside your home, your computer, your cell phone, and eventually inside your mind.

So for the sake of a public relations stunt, AANR, the self-professed "credible" voice of reason, has thrown personal freedom under the bus, much as it did with San Onofre beach. Equating government control over our bodies with skinny-dipping is not only incredibly stupid, it's patently dangerous.