Full Frontal

So I recently read an article on the illustrious Slate.com concerning a new technology called Back Scanning.

Basically its like that thing from Total Recall (bellow), a machine which can be used to identify weapons (or in this case drugs or even less dense objects) concealed on people's bodies.


Unlike Total Recall, you get a peak at a person's form rather then their skeleton. This basically presents a fundamental privacy issue as guards at the airport will potentially be checking out your goods as you get on a plane. The Slate article suggests that this isn't so bad, as long as this process is totally divorced from the individual.

Basically, somewhere, someone will see you naked. But they'll never know it was you. As you can see from these images from the TSA, each person (be they white, black, arab or asian) is pretty much reduced to a sort of zombie like blur. So as long as that blur is never put next to the person it belongs to, we should all be ok and can avoid the awkward screening and pat down system we have now.

One concern immediately raised on the Slate's Fray by a user named Fozzy is basically that these will become the new metal detectors, and the frequency of their use will decrease any kind of privacy standard like the kind mentioned at airports .

I'd say Fozzy's concern is very valid and really underscores the most depressing aspect of this war on terror: when are we safe. Technology like Back Scanners will let us peak deeper and deeper into people's lives to make sure their not going to blow us up. We're consistently asked to bear all in the name of our country.


















The thing that I find most disturbing about Back Scanning is how quickly I agree with it and would condone it. Because it beats pat downs and racial profiling, right? Because it keeps us safe, right? In the coming century, we as individual's will become easier and and easier to scrutinize. Trust will become less of a word and a code and more of a fact, verifiable by scans and probes which let us see when its safe.

"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." said Benjamin Franklin. I think this quote is especially pertinent given our current mindset about security after 9/11. I'm not saying that we can't be free and safe. But one has to ask themselves where that line lies and if we trust ourselves to stay to the right side.