body scanners

For the past couple of weeks Matt Drudge has become mister outspoken advocate of privacy, going after the TSA for the full body scanners and pat downs at airports. Today he decided to post this headline:

What’s really interesting about this is how the right were the big defenders of these techniques prior to January 20, 2009. As soon as Bush left office the right becomes the big privacy concern trolls.

And if that doesn’t make you wonder enough, it turns out that picture Drudge is pushing is actually from 2007:

Only problem: if the terrorists did win, it happened in September 2007 — when this picture was taken by Dean Shaddock and posted at Flickr.

I remembered this because I posted the image at LGF in 2007, and titled it “Homeland Absurdity.”

Keep up the great work Matt! You’re really showing the whole world your hypocrisy.

This is something interesting that I never thought of. It’s from the Guardian, so it is in the U.K., but I bet the same thing would apply here:

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.