The backscatter nude-o-scopes might present a threat via ionizing radiation, but that risk is still debatable. IMO these devices, and the rest of the TSA, present a credible and quantifiable threat to human life. The data to show this are far less open to question and are largely available from public sources.
(There's also the loss of personal freedoms & rights, which I'll leave for a different thread.)
Originally Posted by
InkUnderNails
And it does not include the cost in lost lives when the TSA themselves say of you do not like it do not fly.
^ The TSA, by making flying more costly in terms of lost freedom, time (waiting in line), and money (added fees) drives people to other, far more dangerous, modes of transportation.
If my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct, the TSA kills someone for every 300,000 or so trips (one-way) that someone does by car instead of aircraft*. Since there are over half-a-billion passenger enplanements per year in the US (
source), that 300,000 trip figure is a tiny fraction of the total number of trips. If the TSA drives people to drive instead of fly 1% of time, that means
the TSA probably kills a few dozen people per year (again, ballpark figures; I hope this is wrong). This is just from people choosing to drive instead of fly.
*: I got my data for the rough calculations from
source 1 and
source 2. I based my numbers on the average trip distance and deaths per passenger-mile, and assumed that trips taken by car instead of aircraft would be half the average flight distance: i.e. people would opt for car travel for shorter trips, not longer trips.
Originally Posted by
BubbaLoop
You have to consider the overall death and morbidity rates the TSA promotes, not just NoS. Removing shoes surely leads to accidents and can lead to infections and death. Limiting liquids which may be medically important too. Bending down, trying to put shoes on and off or take items on and off the belt also can lead to injury. Plus, the psychological effects of passing through the checkpoint should be also accounted for. Altogether, I think the math will strongly show the TSA causes significantly more morbidity and mortality than it prevents.
Add to that the time lost waiting in line or in the humiliation cage (while one waits for screener to decide to get to work). Assuming an average of 5 minutes time lost to the TSA (non-scientific guesstimate based on personal experience), that represents over 5000 person-years lost per year. That's several human lifetimes lost to the TSA every year.
Someone please tell me that my figures (quick, ballpark, order-of-magnitude estimates) are horribly wrong.