When "random" just meant a hand swab, I didn't think it was so bad. It was pointless but painless. I had it multiple times in one day, and it was just like a joke, nothing too terrible.

But the switch to full-body scanning and frisking destroys the appeal. The line is still often shorter but now there's just much more of a gamble.

After the attacks in Paris, the TSA is insistent on "ramping up" or "enhancing" security measures (those always seem to be the cliché phrases). This particularly includes gate screening, which all of us detest.

I still believe that they'll rethink their PreCheck plans over time. My thought is that TSA staff probably hate it immensely. Instead of happy passengers, getting through the checkpoint quickly, they now have uncontrollable long beeps at the discretion of some administrator. These can vary from day to day, and I'm guessing that no TSA employee wants to be standing at the metal detector on the days when someone decides it will go off for a higher percentage of passengers.

The even more cynical view is that a series of "dangerous articles" (another cliché term) will make their way through millimeter wave scanning. In other words, time will show that the machines just aren't so great after all.

I feel that the mentality is that the full-body imaging was something that many felt was the answer to all security fears. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's underwear forced legislators and some misguided members of the flying public into believing that full-body imaging provide instant safety to everyone. And we're not alone; Schipol has adopted it for its intercontinental flights. (Other airports, thankfully, seem to have saved it for secondary screening or left the machines turned off.) There is so much money to be made in selling those machines--a lot more than a metal detector.

For now, at least, nobody is going to loosen anything. But the rules seem to come in waves. Perhaps they'll shift the random full-body screening/frisking to some other idiotic and expensive screening technique.

Considering that Delta employees were carrying AK-47s in the cabins of domestic flights, I think the TSA should worry a little less about those of us vetted through Global Entry, PreCheck, and NEXUS, and worry a tad more about the massive gaps in security elsewhere in the airport.