Perhaps I'm unduly optimistic, but this doesn't seem like it will last.

The current body scanner plan is fairly stupid: go through the scanner, a piece of lint shows up in your breast pocket, then someone presses on the pocket to ensure that it's lint, not a machine gun.

The new procedure is laughably sinister: go through the scanner, lint shows you up in your pocket, so your entire body must swept up and down, swabbed, and frisked and re-frisked, even though the scanner pointed out the area of the "anomaly."

It's so time and labour intensive that they can't pull it off.

The quote about "cognitive strain" was unfortunate. TSA staff are begging and begging for respect. Now their own agency has made it clear that they do not believe that their staff have the intellectual capacity for the job. That comment could easily exacerbate tension at the checkpoint.

There are significant problems with public humiliation, but I also think such lengthy and intrusive searches point to the elephant in the room: "What are they looking for?" The answer is: "We'll know when we find it."