Lt. Gov. and I Agree on Body Scanners

I was pleased to see that the Lt. Gov. of Alaska and I are in complete agreement on body scans for most passengers as an approach to security at airports.  I suspect on most other issues we aren't nearly so closely aligned.  Craig Campbell presents the position much more clearly and persuasively than I did in the previous post.   Some quotes from his piece in today's Anchorage Daily News:

While serving as Alaska's commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which oversees state Homeland Security, I questioned the use of full body scanners at airport security checkpoints. I quickly determined their use was an excessive and unnecessary invasion of personal privacy. . .

 Full body scanners create graphic images of our bodies that, as the ACLU pointed out, are "pictures of virtually naked bodies that reveal not only sexual organs but also intimate medical details such as colostomy bags and mastectomy scars." Full body scanners amount to a visual strip search by depicting a naked electronic image viewed by a federal agent.

We are told that the images will be immediately deleted from the system after the passenger exits security. Really, we already know that e-mails are not eliminated when deleted from computers and that these images can be reconstituted. . .

 We can achieve safety without infringing on personal liberties. Abdulmutallab's explosives would have been detected if existing security procedures, already in place, had been fully utilized. We don't need knee-jerk reactions that deprive Americans of yet another civil liberty in the name of security to ensure air travel is safe.

I hope the Anonynous commenter in the previous post reads this whole piece by a man who oversaw Homeland Security in Alaska.