Homeland security pervs have my full support

It would appear that DCA is one of the airports at which the Transportation Security Administration is testing its new millimeter-wave"virtual strip search" machines. (CNN) I went through one of these for the first time a couple of days ago at National.

You are asked to stand in a phonebooth-sized pod, and what feels like many jets of air are blasted at you from openings within the pod. (Holy Quantum Leap! Will I be teleported? Preserved in carbonite like Han Solo for the duration of my trip?) Then you move on. But this is what some random TSA guy sees:


This particular virtual strip search technique is a little less invasive than the "backscatter" method, which produces images like this:
(Sydney Morning Herald)

The ACLU is still concerned because "the images generated require passengers 'to display highly personal details of their bodies,' which [they say] shouldn't be necessary 'as a prerequisite to boarding a plane.'" (ABC).

Maybe I'm missing some legal principle here, or maybe I just have zero natural modesty. (Or, more likely, both). But I personally could not care less if some government employee sees my anonymous, kinda-sorta naked body along with many others as part of an effective effort to prevent weapons being carried on board planes.

One would think that the fact that all air travelers would have to submit to the search is an argument for the appropriateness of such a practice, not an argument against it, as the ACLU would have it. The only question in my mind is whether this is a significantly more effective way of keeping weapons off of planes than the traditional magnetic scanner. If the added security benefit is enough to justify the increased invasion of personal privacy, and the scanning is applied non-selectively to all passengers, then there is no problem here.