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Airport Body Scanners Have Been Used to Rate (and Berate) Your Junk
Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images
The advent of airport body scanners, broadly manufactured by the appropriately (albeit disturbingly) named Rapiscan Systems, has forced passengers and lawmakers alike to question the use of Superman vision to inspect people's junk for terrorist plots. But the TSA has long maintained the necessity of this creepily intrusive technology in the war on underwear bombs. Besides, it would be handled by only the most mature and highly trained individuals, right? Otherwise body scanners would render security screenings little more than an irradiated striptease for every puerile jackass with a voyeuristic streak.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News/Getty ImagesNot your grandpa's porn. But possibly your grandma.
Former TSA screener Rolando Negrin would probably beg to differ. While undergoing body scanner training at a Miami facility, his co-workers noticed on the screen that Negrin was packing a petite pecker. Naturally, Negrin's colleagues hounded him about this for months, withering his penis to an insecure husk and demonstrating the stalwart professionalism with which every airport patron is likely treated. Negrin, ill-equipped to dick-whip his assailants into contrition, cornered one of his co-workers in the airport parking lot, whipped out an extendable police baton, and proceeded to beat an apology out of his harasser. In doing so, he landed himself a stint in jail and guaranteed that any person confronting the probing eyes and hands of airport security would be examined in a dignified manner.
Natalie Behring/Getty Images News/Getty Images"This way, sir. My finger will be with you shortly."
Or not. According to ex-TSA agent Jason Harrington (and every fiber of common sense in your exposed body), body scanners are much more effective for mercilessly ridiculing passengers from behind closed doors than they are for spotting terrorists. Plastic explosives were apparently indistinguishable from fat rolls, leaving screeners with little more to do than make a sport out of laughing at overweight passengers and guessing the sex of ambiguously shaped bodies passing through scans. And when they aren't laughing their asses off at man boobs and crotchular irregularities, screeners racially profile your genitals in the name of ... national security, or, as Harrington explained, "All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels." Which makes us feel markedly insecure. In our pants.
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