Three TSA-Related Links Worth Pondering

First, from Techdirt: Why Congress Isn’t So Concerned With TSA Nude Scans & Gropes: They Get To Skip Them.

Self-explanatory.

Second, from MSNBC: Are airport X-ray scanners harmful?

Money quote:

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, did his own calculations and found the exposure to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray. He calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million, “which puts it somewhat less than being killed by being struck by lightning in any one year,” he told me.

While the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it’s about equal to the probability that an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist, he added. “So my view is there is not a case to be made for deploying them to prevent such a low probability event.”

(Did I just quote MSNBC? What’s come over me?! Via DaringFireball.net from Randal Schwartz.)

And, finally, from Ask the Pilot: News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11 We’ve been dealing with the same threats for decades. But we used to be a lot calmer about it, less self-defeating

Worth reading every word, but, to summarize:

“The terrorists have won” is a refrain I don’t like using. It’s sensationalist and ignores inherent complexities. But for the moment, I can’t think of a better way of putting it.

(Via Jason Sigger via Robert Farley.)