Originally Posted by
princessyoga
I completely agree with you, Dorothy from a child protection point of view. The Nude-o-scope is the best of a bad lot. I agree children pick their clues from the parents and depend on us to protect them. Parents shouldn't have to explain to small children why we told them about private parts parts of their bodies and then that is ok just this once for someone to touch them.
Originally Posted by
dorothybaez
When a parent is made to seem powerless in front of his or her children, the experience sticks in the little mind. Much better to have your child Nude-O-Scoped, than patted down with you looking and being powerless. This is the choice I would make in your shoes.
If the machines were MMW (millimeter wave, uses radio waves), I would agree, because I have no safety concerns about these. But not for backscatter x-ray, which comprise the vast majority of TSA nude-o-scopes. Damaged DNA can sit latent for years and then cause disease that can be difficult or impossible to cure. If a person gets cancer in 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, they will never know if it was one particular trip through the nude-o-scope (or a medical x-ray, or flying too much), that caused it. Unless the kid has had serious/real trauma with bad touching in the past, any potential trauma from being patted down can be explained or explained away or distracted away--people in uniforms doing what they have to do, like going to the doctor, this sort of thing is only ok when I the parent say it is (and make a point of loudly giving the TSO permission to do the search when he asks for consent, which he should, so it looks like the parent is in control), whatever.
And which makes the parents seem more powerless to the kid? Complying with the strip search like sheep or loudly opting out and asserting their right to a patdown.
One of two things will eventually have to happen anyway. Either the kid will have to be taught that the USA has become a police state and we have to choose when to fight the indignities and when to let them pass and keep our powder dry to fight later. Or the kid will have to be taught how to act like a good sheep and keep their head down in the "new normal" Amerika. Taking the patdown lays the groundwork for whichever of these lessons the parent decides to go with when the kid is older.