Cost/benefit analysis of the TSA’s new pornoscanners:

Given the current deployment levels of AIT scanners, these scanners will over a long time horizon only save approximately 2.4 lives a year, while inducing 3.4 incidents of fatal cancer per year over the same period. Even more troubling is the increase in fatalities as people choose to drive when faced with the possible option of an intrusive enhanced pat-down, which can result in a median of 189 additional roadway fatalities a year. All together this means that while the AIT program reduces the incidence of a low likelihood, high risk and high profile terrorist attack, it induces a median of 190.7 deaths across other parts of American society.

I will be flying next week, and I have no intention of going through the pornoscanners. If the TSA is going to force me to submit to an invasive personal examination, I have no reason to make it easier for them, and certainly no reason to accept the health risk associated with X-rays, no matter how minor it is.

Beyond that, I’m tired of the farce air travel has become. What is the point of the fourth amendment if “terrorism” can justify arbitrarily invasive search and surveillance? I am vastly more likely to be harassed and deprived of time or property by agents of the TSA than by any “terrorist” attacker. The fact that the X-ray pornoscanners are, by themselves, more likely to kill you than a terrorist attack is hilarious, but it is true of the entire apparatus: it’s a bogus cure which is worse than the dramatic but extremely rare disease it claims to cure.

In the end, though, we won’t get free of this nonsense anytime soon no matter how ridiculous, invasive, and pointless it all is. The bureaucracy exists, and like any bureaucracy it is primarily in the business of keeping itself in business. The only solution is to avoid the whole mess whenever you can, and gum it up via passive resistance whenever you can’t.

From now on, I’m flying in a kilt.